During this afternoon in Leon, in the remote year of 1986, I still don’t know that in six or seven months I will be writing a book about my experience, that Santiago the shepherd is already dwelling in my soul looking for a treasure, that a woman called Veronika is preparing herself to take some pills and commit suicide, that Pilar will arrive by the Piedra river and write, whilst crying, in her diary.
All that I know is that I’m walking this absurd and monotonous path. There is no fax or cell phone, the refuges are sparse, my guide seems irritated all the time, and I have no way of finding out what’s happening in Brazil.
All I know is that at this precise moment I’m tense, nervous, unable of talking to Petrus, because I just found out that I can’t go back to what I was doing – even if this means declining from a reasonable amount of money every month, turning away from a certain emotional stability and from a work that I already know, and in which I master a few techniques. I need to change, walk towards my dream, a dream that seems to me to be childish, ridiculous, and impossible to be accomplished: to become the writer that secretly I’ve always yearned to be but that I’m not courageous enough to become.
Petrus finishes his coffee and his mineral water and asks me to pay the bill so that we resume our walk, since there are still some kilometres to travel until the next city. People continue to pass and talk, taking glimpses towards the two middle-aged men, thinking how there are weird people in this world, always ready to relive a past that has already died (*). The temperature of this ending afternoon is about 27o C and I ask myself, for the thousandth time, if I didn’t take the wrong decision.
Did I want to change? I don’t think so but this path is transforming me. Did I want to unravel the mysteries? I think I did, but this path is teaching me that there are no mysteries, that – as Jesus Christ once said – there is nothing occult that wasn’t revealed. Basically, all that is happening to me is the opposite of what I was expecting.
We get up and start walking in silence. I’m immersed in my thoughts, in my insecurity and Petrus must be thinking – I think – about his work in Milan. He is here because in a way he was obliged by Tradition, probably wishing to finish this walk in order to go back to what he likes doing.
We walk most of the rest of the afternoon without talking. We are isolated in our obliged acquaintanceship. Saint James of Compostela is in front of us and I can’t imagine that this path will lead me to this city and to many other cities in the world. Neither Petrus nor I know that in this afternoon, on the plains of Leon, I’m also walking towards Milan, his city, where I will arrive almost ten years later, with a book called The Alchemist. I am walking towards my destiny, so many times dreamt and denied.
In a few days I will arrive exactly where, today, twenty years later, I write these lines. I am walking towards what I’ve always wanted, and I have no faith nor hope that my life will change.
But I keep going forward. Towards a remote future, passing in a few days by one of the bars where now my wife is sitting reading a book, and me, typing this text in a computer, that in a couple of minutes will send it through internet to a newspaper where it will be published.
I am walking towards the future – in this August afternoon of 1986.
(*) In the year that I did my pilgrimage, only 400 people had walked Saint James’ Path. In 2005, according to non-official statistics, 400 people where crossing – per day – the bar mentioned in the text.
The next text will be posted on the 26.04.06
{ 27 comments }
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Not much on my mind right now, but it’s not important. I’ve just been letting everything happen without me. I just don’t have anything to say right now.
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There are no mysteries? hehe I just wrote on my previous comment that life is a mystery. :D
Maybe it is both ;) , we see everything but not meant to understand it fully for now.
You are blessed because you realized your dreams. :)
Thank you for sharing this.
And 400 people a day? :) :)
~katrina
Your comments about the mysteries are intriguing. Specifically, the realization that there are none.
All my life I have walked with God. This is not to say I am a good man, in fact I certainly have failed Him more times than I care to admit. Nevertheless, I have felt His guidance and have never felt separated from him by anything save my own rebellion.
For this reason I have always been suspect of the mysteries of any faith, for they seek to remove Him from me, to educate me into accepting a chasm where there never has been one. Mind the gap. Isn’t this part of the significance of the curtain being rent in two?
This is the first time that I have heard one on the path deny the mysteries, or at least call them into question. Could it be they exist and cease to exist, all at once? Perhaps as we grow the consciousness of them reveals them more and more to be innate, and thus common, and thus not mysteries anymore?
CQ
Hello once again,
I even don’t know where am i walking and what am I walking to. I just know that most of my life, I have spent in doingwhat I have not enjoyed doing. I will be 30 soon, the speed with which age passes annoys me and more than that what annoys me is that death with every passing day is drawing a step closer towards me and I haven’t done anything till date which will give me the courage to give it – death- a smiling welcome when it finally knocks at my door ( or should I say knocks me down). I am still leading my life the way I don’t want, there is a rebel within me and it’s really suffocating for Him down there, Oh come out you the rebel within, oh come out soon.
Regards
Greetings, In reading and re-reading the Pilgrimage I recognise my life is that of a Pilgrim on The Camino and this brings a sense of peace.
I always enjoy how you courageously speak of lack of courage, fear, doubt and sense of loss of ability and I am inspired to recapture my dream which is echoed in your words: ‘to become the writer that secretly I’ve always yearned to be but that I’m not courageous enough to become.’
When I turned 50 I felt it had been necessary for me to live my life so as to achieve my dreaming. Now in little over one week, on May 8, I will be 58 and my heart is skipping beats knowing that while I may have acquired some insight I’m still stuck in ‘secret yearning’. I feel pushed to burst out and so nominate this writing as symbolic of piercing holes in my resistance!
When I was young, before needing words, my grandmother’s voice inspired my imagination and through pictures and images I could visit all points of the world, witness events in all times, feel the spectrums of Earth, Planets and the Universe, speak with animals, vegetables and minerals and encounter the best and worst of humanity.
By the time I was thirty I had birthed three souls onto three different vortex of Earth. The love and the joy of rearing my young sons instilled a resillience in my marrow that has sustained me through twenty years of dark with light. In 1986, I lost my place, my face was removed from the world and I felt the path of the homeless yet I never surrendered to total death in life as my bones held the purpose to live, know and heal the unresolved memory of my family.
To-day I feel I need ‘get out of my own way’ so I can write. It is not my Path to tell my personal story but to write from the collective mythic realms where we access memory and wisdom. Until now I have never needed to travel. My feet want to walk along the bones of the Earth and record the encoded collective stories.
Paulo your writing takes me to the depth of self enquiry and without your permission, I have nominated you as my ‘personal mentor in storytelling/writing.’
I hope you embrace this as a deep compliment.
It is such a joy to be directed to this blog. in reading the stories and insights of others I do not feel as isolated.
I now dream to meet others who also walk the Camino on the many roads, realms and dimensions of existence.
Is there a Camino group in Australia or New Zealand or a fan club I could contact?
While you cannot give information, I notice Thea is from Sydney and I met Julius a German man who met you on the Camino in 1986. He said you had taught him to look for omens and when he saw a brightly coloured tractor with the number plate LOVE he felt it was just for him. A couple of days later he met an Australian Julie who was also walking the Path and she is now his wife.
walk gently Christine
“All that I know is that I’m walking this absurd and monotonous path”
Your words above have floated through my mind about my life many a times. My path on the road in the journey we call life has often been absurb and montonous. My life once again has taken a turn and changed direction violently. Through every turn of my road, there has always been a Paulo Coehlo book I can turn to. Not because it has all the answers but it gets me asking the right questions and on a deeper level resonates with me at the very fibres of my being.
Every so often I re-read your books. I have just re-read By The River Piedra, I sat Down and Wept. I picked up The Pilgrimage on Thursday to re-read again. By chance today I checked an old email account that I emailed your office once from years ago. Lo and behold I see the email from your office advising of the anniversary of your journey and your journey down the road once more.
I have chills down my spine with the ‘coincidence’ of it all knowing that there is no such thing. The universe is simply asking me to pay attention.
As I am writing this. I am reminded of The Beautitudes from The Bible and the verse which says ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled’
May your soul shed light on your path and your heart be your guide! May you continue to touch so many lives through your work and may this journey revisited bring to you insights which will manifest for the highest good.
I look forward to seeing you if and when you do pass Sydney again.
Yours in Light,
Thea
Soulmates :-) so many of us thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same way when reading your words. I wouldn’t like to walk that specific path today, as Swedish (my etnicity) I prefer more solitude… what about Trondheim?
( This Is An Indication )
Dear Paulo
( please read my letter with emotion )
I’m very glad to write this letter , finally at this time .
My name is amiroo , and I’m 30 years old .
I’m married and I don’t have any children yet , fortunately !
I had been read ( and live with it !) first of your masterpiece about 6 years ago .
From that time until now , I’m reading all of your books which been translate
To Persian and living whit one by one of them .
I know that you are very busy but I beg you to read my mail to end , personally .
( I’m sure that you will be reading my mail because of power of godly love
between human !) .
Paulo , now , I’m going to finish your last book that named O’Zahir in Persian .
Usually , I use Gospel to grow my faith and your book to find a way for
Mentioned Faith .
It’s need to say that , O’Zahir is truthfully of your books and o Diario de um Mago is
Fully masterpiece .
Exactly , by reason of above points , I beg you to help me for living true in my way .
Because of this , I would like to be in contact wit you .
So , if you like to contact between us , please reply my mail personally I find my Ester
In my spiritual life with my wife .
I esteem you so much and say god thanks for power of love .
Yours truly
Amir Mirshekari
Thank you for making a difference in the lives of Peoples.
Dear Paulo,
Since I read my first sentence in your first book I became a fan an addicted girl to your books, your write as if you see me, you put down your thoughts as if you know me. I know you heard this alot but it is very true. like Fatma i am a Muslim and Arab and proud to be so, I was lucky to atend one of your events in Cairo when you visited last summer I wish I can get the chance to sit and talk with you some day.
i wish you a safe trip and waiting for your book to reach Egypt to read it.
I don’t know if you are going to read this post or not! But hopefully you will.
You’ve inspired me years ago when I was in my early teenage-hood.. you made me feel home when the whole Arabia rejected me and my ideas about life and everything!
However, your words gave me the energy to believe in Allah my lord more, and gave the passion to continue as a warrior of light.
What makes me even closer to the energy you spread through your writings that you know a lot about Islam which happens to be my religion and know a lot about the Arabs which is my ethnicity. You know how to make everyone special and unique.
May Lord bless your pilgrimage and gives you the power and faith to continue and never hesitate, whatever you’ve accomplished earlier worth thinking and meditating..
Wish you all the luck and all the health and energy to fulfill your dream and goals in life Warrior =)
Dear Paulo,
I wanted to send you something I wrote. It’s a piece I wrote during a writing class. I have this idea that either you get MANY people sending you their material, in which case you’re used to it, or they send you nothing at all, because everybody thinks that everybody sends you things, in which case this could be a little piece of reading during an idle moment of your day ;)
Sincerely, Paulo, thank you for helping me to get in touch with myself, through your writing. It makes me happy and hopeful.
Have a good trip and savour the sunshine along the way.
‘I remember that I was a child. It was dark outside and in my room and I was in bed. My teddybear was beside me. A soft light on in the hall outside. I hear my mum and dad talking in the living room downstairs. Soft, comforting voices. But they were out there, not in here. I am scared. A branch from a tree bangs on the window. Someone wants to come in. I feel this in my heart, but I don’t understand why. I don’t open. I’m afraid. Afraid of the darkness filling the room, afraid of whatever wants to come in, afraid of the dark sea under my safe bed. A light appears outside the window. It’s my great grand mother. She smiles and stretches her hands towards me. She is floating in the air, she wants me to come over and open, she loves me; she wants to give me warmth. The sea is dark in front of and under me.
My fear tells me that if I open that window, everything I care about will dissolve. Everybody I love will vanish. That good is not really good. But Olla is just floating in the air. A light streaming from her heart. It hits the window, but some sift through the glass. The light floats through the bedroom, a path of light crossing the dark sea and reaching me. I look at Olla and smile. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m safe. She loves me. I know that she wants me to come over and open the window and let her love embrace me. But I’m safe enough. The path of light is just enough to give me the courage to lie down. While Olla is floating in the light outside, I fall asleep. My great grandmother’s smile is filled with sadness and infinite compassion and love.
My fear tells me that if I open that window, everything I care about will dissolve. Everybody I love will disappear. Everything will rest in darkness. And it will stay dark. That darkness is the truth. The soft path of light between my heart and my great grandmother’s heart is the only thing in the darkness that says “No”; Light is truth. A feeling grows inside a child. Certainty fills her heart. She gets up. She carefully steps down on the surface of the sea, understanding that the dark waters under her feet is in fact carrying her. I run barefeet towards the window, I open it without hesitation; I throw myself in Olla’s arms. I can walk on the ocean; I can float in the air. Olla holds me, she’s smiling, I feel loved. I remember this love. I have experienced it before. My boyfriend loves me like this. Behind all the fear, behind all the misunderstandings, behind what we call life, but which compares more to navigating through rough waters. And I suddenly know. I want these kinds of eyes. I want eyes that see these kinds of things. I want to find safe havens in my life that give me certainty. I want to share. To show that all people’s fears are similar, that we seek the same, love the same, need the same, are ashamed over the same things… and we let shame linger in our soul like heavy rocks never ceasing to grind. A weight with nothing but one purpose: to keep you grounded. To teach us that we can’t fly. We CAN fly.
I want to search inside my soul until it’s empty. I want to carve out my fear and thrust it naked in front of the light. It will reflect in my love and become love. My fear is ashamed of itself. My fear needs my unconditional love. To dissolve, it must be acknowledged. To become light, it needs to be allowed to be darkness. Everything happens for a reason. Every step is a process, all pieces fit. Finding one self and through this to become happy. Not through becoming an image of the perfect human, but by being who you are, being faithful and honest to who you really are. I want to love myself unconditionally. Like was I my own child.
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