In my book, 11 Minutes, there’s the following passage:
"‘I’m the one who should feel ashamed for being unable to arouse them, but, no, they always blame themselves.’
To avoid such embarrassments, Maria always tried to put men at their ease, and if someone seemed drunker or more fragile than usual, she would avoid full sex and concentrate instead on caresses and masturbation, which always seemed to please them immensely, absurd though this might seem, since they could perfectly well masturbate on their own.
She had to make sure that they didn’t feel ashamed. These men, so powerful and arrogant at work, constantly having to deal with employees, customers, suppliers, prejudices, secrets, posturings, hypocrisy, fear and oppression, ended their day in a nightclub and they didn’t mind spending three hundred and fifty Swiss francs to stop being themselves for a night.
‘For a night? Now come on, Maria, you’re exaggerating. It’s really only forty-five minutes, and if you allow time for taking off clothes, making some phony gesture of affection, having a bit of banal conversation and getting dressed again, the amount of time spent actually having sex is about eleven minutes.’
Eleven minutes. The world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes.
And because of those eleven minutes in any one twenty-four-hour day (assuming that they all made love to their wives every day, which is patently absurd and a complete lie) they got married, supported a family, put up with screaming kids, thought up ridiculous excuses to justify getting home late, ogled dozens, if not hundreds of other women with whom they would like to go for a walk around Lake Geneva, bought expensive clothes for themselves and even more expensive clothes for their wives, paid prostitutes to try to give them what they were missing, and thus sustained a vast industry of cosmetics, diet foods, exercise, pornography and power, and yet when they got together with other men, contrary to popular belief, they never talked about women. They talked about jobs, money and sport.
Something was very wrong with civilisation, and it wasn’t the destruction of the Amazon rainforest or the ozone layer, the death of the panda, cigarettes, carcinogenic foodstuffs or prison conditions, as the newspapers would have it.
It was precisely the thing she was working with: sex."
Do you agree?
sex is nt runnin d wrld…..
frustration is….
Sex is lonely and transient and dominates the world today because it is adulterated instant gratification. Dark and polluted like carbon when it is found in burning coal.
Love is honest and pure, in a bond so profound that it withstands the many pressures of time, like carbon when it forms a diamond. It becomes transparent and vibrant allowing God’s light to shine through. Undeniably beautiful and impossible to forget.
Sex is lonely and transient.
Making love…takes a lifetime
Buy a paper, tourn on a TV, walk a street and look at billboards, or simply at people around You. Is there any doubts? All people need love, sensitivity, tenderness, caress… But they forget what’s is all about. I see this as a cimbing a mountain. On top there is a sex with someone you love. But you can’t fully experience this feeling if you stay near the top and only go few meters up when you feel you need it. You should take a walk around that mountain, see all it’s beauty and all hidden passages. Only then you can fully experience love.
Right now everyone is timeless and they searching for back routes and shortcuts… they want to land on top with helicopter and take what they think is best. And they don’t even know what they missing. This is sad.
Definetly…nowadays we are all missing the little things in life. We show interest only in some things we consider the most important for our existence, those which give us pleasure: sex and money. Is not bad to place them at this level but shouldn’t we pay some attention to the elements we are missing on the way there?
It was so, the obsession with sex throughout the ages, only that we find different ways to say it. The temples of Khajuraho show how sex was never considered evil or an act of depravity. What bought about the twist was religious teaching later that proclaimed this as taboo. But people never change, come matter what, and under the covers, alas, everything is the same! The paragraph mentioned in the heart of the book eleven minutes- what poetry in prose!
C’est curieux toutes les excuses que l’ont donne aux hommes au sujet du sexe. “Ah! c’est un homme !Il en a besoin, etc” pour les femmes c’est “Elle couche avec tout le monde, c’est une prostituee.”
Esther Perel dans un interview avec le Monde Magazine a dit ”
“Pourquoi ne pas reconnaitre que c’est une ENGAGEMENT EMOTIONEL davantage qu’un engagment sexuel exclusif.”
Je suis tout a fait d’accord (pour les hommes et pour les femmes) bien entendu.
It’s curious all the excuses that we give to men concerning sex. “Ah it’s a man, He needs it, etc, as for women its”She sleeps with everybody, she is a prostitute, etc”
Ester Perel, a sexologist, in an interview with Le Monde Magazine said:
“Why not acknowledge that this is an EMOTIONAL COMMITMENT rather than an exclusive sexual one.”
I agree with that version (for men and women) of course.
sex
is
a
genital
embrace..
Sexuality is good and necessary in human communications i think. But the portrail of it in the modern capitalist society is complietly wrong, i.e Pornography. I think it is a tool of “the devil” (sounds a bit too extreme i know, but the only good words to use) and it has taken full advantage of the lack of feminine powers on the planet, and uses the basic needs and desires of humans to its advantage, to twist it and turn it into something it was never meant to be and with the right tools, make it not only legal to portrai it with this, but also commonly accepted and desired; and a powerful drug for many.
It has become a problem because we made it into something else, we took something basic and pure and gave it saddistic, abusive, degrading elements – thus made it wrong. Now many do not know how to be sexual in a way that they can feel comfortable with, because we recognise that it has lost the purity it had when it was about connecting.
Yes. Sex is dominating the civilisation, morality, business, sense of happiness. Today’s generation is more into sex, less into love. Sex is easily available, less taboo, and relaxing as well as rewarding too. for genuine lovers, it is the bliss, fuel of life, way to nirvana. For pleasure seekers, it is commodity, a way to feel superior to buy sex.For businessmen, it is a tool to get contracts.For married ones, it is a ritual.
Do I think sex is dominating the civilization?
Well yea, but I think it’s more a matter of us humans learning to control ourselves better… don’t you think?
It’s important that we have sex as it regulates health and allows us to have children.
But I do think that in a sense sexuality has come to be one of the most talked about subjects there is.
So I agree and disagree.
THE BOOK IS VERY AMAZING, and it is because Paulo Coelho is such a great writer. WHEN I BOUGHT THE book, i could not stop reading from page one until the end. i learned so many things about life and how deep the writer’s perception are. IT is so overwhelming whenever you have books written by paulo coelho. keep writing senor,,!!!
Sex is part of our life that healp us speak with our “other half” at other language .
it is just a dilemma when it comes on understanding why sex has occupied the human mind so much since the early ages … it is very confusing for again i must say that,since everything is relative and thus the conditions of needs and performance and reasons behind those men and sometimes women running to sex as a refuge from the mundane worries and troubles differs and varies,yet,human nature shall hold some basic standards in common…
i see sex as an act of mere love and thus God has allowed it to be the reason for the generations to go on and proceed throug productivity…because love is the thing that must keep the world going on…
about those that use it and abuse it for money,or even use money to get it,i think there is a major problem … i think sex for money is just like emotional eating..wen part of our lives is empty..or sad…or hollow,,we tend to fill it with this placebo or even anesthetic that temporarily puts them or transcends them from a certain painful situation unto one they think to be of pleasure
well sex for me is actually losing its true self, its a worship n is being used as work!
I believe that there must be some kind of mystery behind this; human being’s final mystery. I am writing a story myself based on this final mystery.
One of the mystery is; why doesn’t other animals do the same thing?
Only human being do this.
sex is the way we are, part of the big plan, of the big process of evolution. Sex has always been dominating in human civilization.
Sex is like Food, clothing or shelter. We realise its importance only when we are not getting it. Now, do these basic needs rule the world – No! They create a discontentment inside us and put us on a drive to reduce this discontentment. And by the way, its the anticipation that is intoxicating, the act may well be only of 11 minutes!
hi sir,
i am an avid fun of yours. i love your honesty and openness as an author. i love all your books especially the alchemist and eleven minutes. it inspired me a lot…so gripping your hands are glued to the books. in fact, i have all your books as my collections. The eleven minutes, i just read it for only one day. so inspiring! because of that book after i read it. I started my own and i am doing a finishing touches of it right now. For me, sex is sacred and important in our life especially you will do it with PASSION and TRUE LOVE. When we say sex is just easy to do,to whom, or where but having sex with someone you truly loved is very big different. It is very passionate and sweet….
sheryl
Sex is pure life essence. It is more than sacred – it is Godly. Too much sex puts you off. There is too much sexual abuse in this world – there are no limits nowadays.
We have forgotten the Godly rules (commandments – how to have sex, with whom and when to have sex.
I’m not sure if this is true but I read somewhere or someone told me a long time ago if you look at the tarot card V The Hierophant (pope) you will see three + sewen on his gown of office.I just looked at a couple of sets I own and do not see them on any of the pictures there so it must be a spcieal new set which abound these days !
Anyway I have keapt the person’s lesson to me in my mind and this is it.
The frist coss is above the knee and below the waist
We can all guess where and that it means the first step of sex the body and the desire we feel within it.
The second is on the heart and is where the love of our soulmate(s)resides.
The third is over on his headdress and could very well have once been on a diffrent headress just over the third eye.
This is the sex that,by many different paths that really are all one of at least fragments of the one disovred how ever they are that lead to what is mentiond in the 11 minute book.
(Parhaps we all have a uniqe awakeiung within the same path I don’t know )leads to something most of the world never gets to.
Also I would argue that few more then the sacred sex but less the the lowerst form the “body sex ” the heart sex is often ignored or mingled to easy with the body sex.
Anyway I am no expert at tarot or sex so please no one qoute me.
It just seems to me we are never tought the truth abought what sex really is and so stumble amilessly abought and become the very men(and women)that are mentioned.
Thank goodness we live in a time were we can so easliy learn abought things like this by people writeing books for the world becuase God and angels told him to !
Oh and yes I do think that the lower sex is dominating us becuase after all we are inside in need of the higher sex and don’t evan know it’s there. And or where to get it.
It’s like if you eat nothing but junk food and it is slowly killing you. Your body sends you a signal it is still hungry or at least to eat becuase there are no nutrients in your body and in real life it is starvng for these but not in caliries so if you don’t eat anything else that is healthy you can starve for vitamins and that is most of the world when it comes to sex.
So we easly fall in the the MTV advertiseing Hollywood traps. And onlt achive so little of what we are in the lower sex which is so little of sex.
Sorry to be so long winded !
When I gave birth to my son, I remember the blissful bundle of sweet heaven that was him and I remember thinking, Wow this great prize from sex. I think people forget that sex does create life and that is why it is sacred and not to be trifled with.
Yes, it is. It seems that sex rules everything around us and everywhere.
We don’t need sex that much. What we really need is more meditation, self-consciousness. But sex is only in our mind not anywhere else.
;))
What is Sex? A pleasure full method to preserve your gene and a survival of human race, “pleasure” a status of mental freedom regardless from surrounding something divine as saints, Sufi, yogi, monks achieve through meditation. while an ordinary person achieves it through sexual ejaculation it is the very status of stopping worldly thinking process and getting freedom (emotional, physiological, social, biological and all other aspect for the fraction of moment) one can get either both or one at time, I believe rest is the story meet the god and save your race. Should always respect the person who takes you through this divine journey… so yes survival of human race dominates the human civilization because it is THE PROVEN method to our genetic system for survival
Sex can be heaven for them who know how to do it properly…first learn the ways
I don’t think sex is all that it’s about. But yes, there is something very wrong with the world. People are ignorant–of what they want from themselves and from the people in their lives; what really matters and what doesn’t. Sex becomes a convenient escape from life’s ‘problems’, and the pleasure distracts you sufficiently enough, to stop thinking about the little nagging doubts and regrets in your head, for a short while.
Totaly true.. every problem finishes during sex.. all i see is the person with me and how beautiful she is.. i dont know how to express myself clearly.. but sex is amazing when there is love and passion… maybe all we need is love
sex organs are powerful than words or swords!!
As I believe the problem lies with hypocrisy. Western society claims that sex is no longer taboo, but talking about feelings in sexuality is not done. Everybody boast on how good they are in bed and how many times they have sex. But in reality they are just little boys and girls ashamed of themselves. I believe the biggest problem (and the reason why there is such an industry) is honesty (even if that means you fantasize about somebody else, just getting it out in a relationship – and the partner coping with it and both people looking for a solution, whatever that may be – is the best way)
Sex should just be a way to enjoy, and express life. But one must be wise, in how he/she and with who to engage sex with.
Hi, I thought I’d post and inform you that your web site layout is really messed up on the Firefox browser. Seems to work OK on Internet Explorer though. Anyhow keep up the great work.
i wished i had a good opinion about this, but it is to prematour for me to say anything.
The sex urge is so important in one’s life as it is so satisfying and so relaxing. And it is hard to satisfy. Thus we get married for regular and easy sex.