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by
Paulo Coelho
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November 25 - December 22, 2017
God is wherever we allow Him/Her to enter.
The more we love, the closer we come to spiritual experience.
Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all of the inhibitions and preconceptions of their era. They have been able to sing, to laugh, and to pray out loud; they have danced and shared what Saint Paul called “the madness of saintliness.” They have been joyful—because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender.
Sooner or later, we have to overcome our fears, because the spiritual path can only be traveled through the daily experience of love.
Thomas Merton once said that the spiritual life is essentially to love. One doesn’t love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect someone. If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object, and we are seeing ourselves as wise and generous persons. This has nothing to do with love. To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God.
That is why I write—to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.
Every day, God gives us the sun—and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived that moment, that it doesn’t exist—that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem
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Sunday, December 5, 1993
I was there because suddenly life had presented me with Life.
Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.
LOVE IS A TRAP. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.
In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.
“The man’s aggression was easy to see, so it was easy for us to refuse the role he wanted us to play. But other people also ‘invite’ us to behave like victims, when they complain about the unfairness of life, for example, and ask us to agree, to offer advice, to participate.”
Why do we always do this? Why do we notice the speck in our eye but not the mountains, the fields, the olive groves?
“I am just like everyone else who listens to their heart: a person who is enchanted by the mystery of life. Who is open to miracles, who experiences joy and enthusiasm for what they do. It’s just that the Other, afraid of disappointment, kept me from taking action.”
He laughed. “I knew we were going to find a room, and we did. The universe always helps us fight for our dreams, no matter how foolish they may be. Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.”
The Goddess uses water as the means to manifest Herself.”
Virgin Mary,
Shechinah,
I...
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Water is the symbol of the power of woman, the power that no man—no matter how enlightened or perfect he may be—can capture.”
Immaculate Conception.
Putting up shutters in front of windows to keep the joy of the sun from entering—just so the sun’s rays wouldn’t fade my old furniture.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
You’re making me happy. And happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.”
I had already looked for God in the four corners of the earth.
“May the Great Mother inspire me,” he said. “May this music be my prayer for the day.”
Only a man who is happy can create happiness in others.’
A divided kingdom cannot defend itself from its adversaries. A divided person cannot face life in a dignified way.’”
that was a matter suspended between heaven and earth, awaiting the hand of destiny.
Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.
all wisdom was the result of listening to one’s own soul.
Ave Maria.”
Love can only be found through the act of loving.
think that God, in Her infinite wisdom, conceals hell in the midst of paradise—so that we will always be alert, so that we won’t forget the pain as we experience the joy of compassion.
But sometimes if you think you know something, you do wind up understanding it.
Someone dared to look for water, water was found, and people gathered where it flowed. I think that when we look for love courageously, it reveals itself, and we wind up attracting even more love. If one person really wants us, everyone does. But if we’re alone, we become even more alone. Life is strange.”
book called the I Ching?”
Wait. This was the first lesson I had learned about love. The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways—and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don’t know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.
The more God asks us to participate in His mysteries, the more disoriented we become, because He asks us constantly to follow our dreams and our hearts.
And that’s difficult to do when we’re used to living in a different way.
scientist who studied monkeys on an island in Indonesia was able to teach a certain one to wash bananas in the river before eating them.
“There are several similar scientific studies. The most common explanation is that when a certain number of people evolve, the entire human race begins to evolve. We don’t know how many people are needed—but we know that’s how it works.”
“The world itself has a soul, and at a certain moment, that soul acts on everyone and everything at the same time.”
alms,
“At moments of transformation, martyrs are born. Before a person can follow his dream, others have to make sacrifices.
“Nowadays, warriors of the light confront something worse than the honorable death of the martyrs. They are consumed, bit by bit, by shame and humiliation.
“Saint Teresa of Avila,”
Perhaps in our future there would be moments when the situation was reversed—when I would guide him with the same love and certainty until we reached a safe place and could rest together.
It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.
