Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho

People always arrive promptly at the places where they are expected.
(The Pilgrimage)

Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet

This space is for you to share your ideas on anything that you consider relevant today.

You can publish here excerpts from your blogs or news and articles in general that you think make a difference to the world today. Try to make a bit of editing on what you post here – try to highlight passages with copy-paste, rather than simply giving links.

Please keep in mind that this blog is currently viewed by 230.000 unique visitors a month, and chances are that many of them are going to read your thoughts.

Paulo Coelho

In our obsessive wish to arrive, we often forget the most important thing, which is the journey.
(The Pilgrimage)

Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet

I very much enjoyed ‘A life in the Day – of the Boy from Brazil’ in the Sunday Times Magazine today. It was so different from the many famous people who are usually in this column due to the way in which you have shaped your life in reflective way.
Today in the Sunday Times, you are quoted as saying ‘ but there is a high price to pay for being different. I’ve paid a price for being different ……… I’m proud of my scars; they are like medals’.
Why do you think some of us are called to be different and make a difference and suffer the pain that this brings while others are content not to make a difference and therefore do not suffer the pain? Is this linked to our spirituality?

I’m not so sure about your assumption that people content themselves with what society asks of them. Furthermore, I don’t think they are as placid as you think.
Actually in my book The Pilgrimage I talk about this feeling. Indeed, when you abandon your dream, the first feeling that creeps in is a type of calmness, stillness. This is the first indication that something of precious in your soul is dying.
I would say that it is better to feel – completely – the consequences of your fight because these indicate that you are alive.
Of course, sometimes we wish to reduce the pain – and I think this is part of the battle. Ideally, the best would be to reduce the suffering in the realization of our dreams. Hence the need of allies and most importantly of all: faith.
The most beautiful accomplishment in my eyes is to fight with happiness in our hearts. I prefer this immensely more than some type of mild satisfaction of not taking risks.

This space is for you to share your ideas on anything that you consider relevant today.

You can publish here excerpts from your blogs or news and articles in general that you think make a difference to the world today. Try to make a bit of editing on what you post here – try to highlight passages with copy-paste, rather than simply giving links.

Please keep in mind that this blog is currently viewed by 230.000 unique visitors a month, and chances are that many of them are going to read your thoughts.

This space is for you to share your ideas on anything that you consider relevant today.

You can publish here excerpts from your blogs or news and articles in general that you think make a difference to the world today. Try to make a bit of editing on what you post here – try to highlight passages with copy-paste, rather than simply giving links.

Please keep in mind that this blog is currently viewed by 230.000 unique visitors a month, and chances are that many of them are going to read your thoughts.

In many if my books I talk about symbols as I also do in this blog. But we are one step away of becoming paranoiac about the signs interpreting absolutely everything we stumble upon. So readers often ask me what is a sign and what isn’t. And I say that I cannot answer since my signs are not other peoples signs. It is an individual alphabet to talk to God.

So, instead of explaining the signs, I normally try to share my signs. So why don’t you try to share your signs?

I’m not saying it is an universal language that your signs can be imposed to others but you can give us examples of signs when these changed your life.

This space is for you to share your ideas on anything that you consider relevant today.

You can publish here excerpts from your blogs or news and articles in general that you think make a difference to the world today. Try to make a bit of editing on what you post here – try to highlight passages with copy-paste, rather than simply giving links.

Please keep in mind that this blog is currently viewed by 230.000 unique visitors a month, and chances are that many of them are going to read your thoughts.

Thanks Lipika! The books has been released so far only in UK, India and Russia. But during the month of April it will be released in US, Greece, France, Holland, Hungary, South Africa, Lebanon and Middle East.
In May: Australia, Iran, Bulgaria, Poland and Slovakia
If you pass by a bookstore and you happen to have a camera on you, if you see the book in a visible place – it would be great that you would take a picture and send an email to : paulocoelho.writer “at” gmail.com. Thank you!

With the disappearance of the nomad hunters of the glacier age, the house became the symbol of the center of existence for the new sedentary. The house is then disposed most of the time according to cosmic orientations, houses as well as cities being built in relation to the stars.

The eldest houses in the world were discovered in Jericho and at çatal Hüyük in Anatolia. They were built 6500 years B.C, meaning before the appearance of urban civilizations and contemporary to the development of agriculture.

The house then crystallized the beginning of civilizations. It became then the symbol of stability for mankind inside the cosmos. In Buddhism, the house is associated with the body, and one is supposed to destroy the roof in order to evade the material world of illusions.

In psychotherapy, the presence of house in dreams represents the very dreamer: the house can than appear as in construction, new, abandoned…

Now you take the floor: what do you associate with the house? Furthermore, if you were to describe yourself as a house – how would it be?

Caros leitores, aqui esta um documentário que foi feito sobre mim em 2001 para o Discovery Channel. Ele dura 46 minutos e esta em portuguíªs com subtí­tulos em espanhol.
Com amor Paulo

————

Caros lectores, aquí­ esta un documentario hecho sobre mi para el Discovery Channel. Dura 46 minutos y esta en portugués con subtí­tulos en castellano.
Con amor Paulo

P.S : Dear Marie-Christine – thank you for providing the translation of this documentary in English in the comments below.
Much love
Paulo

Paulo Coelho

The moment we set off in search of love, it sets off in search of us. And saves us.
(By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)

Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet

How do we know if we should try to help someone or if we should walk away?

I think that there’s no true answer for this. But I take it from another perspective : how far are you willing to go for someone who is lost? How far can you walk away from your path in order to “help” someone who doesn’t want to be helped?
In The Alchemist, I use the metaphor of the sheperd : sometimes we sacrifice the whole flock for a single sheep. Is it worth it?

Paulo Coelho

[…]

The band struck up a waltz. People moved to a small paved area in front of the band-stand to dance. The alcohol began to show its effect and they all became merrier and drenched in sweat. I noticed a girl dressed in blue who must have been waiting for this wedding just for the moment of the waltz to arrive because she wanted to dance with someone she had dreamed of embracing ever since she entered adolescence. Her eyes followed the movements of a young man, well dressed in a light-colored suit, who was sitting with a bunch of friends. They were talking away merrily, they had not noticed that the waltz had started, nor had they noticed that a few yards away a girl in blue was staring at one of them.

I thought of small towns, of marriages with the chosen boy, dreamed of ever since childhood.

The girl in blue noticed me looking at her and moved away. And as if the whole movement had been rehearsed, now it was the boy’s turn to seek her out with his eyes. Discovering that she was close to other girls, he went back to his lively conversation with his friends.

I drew Petrus’s attention to the two of them. He watched them exchanging glances for a while and then returned to his glass of wine.

“They act as if it were something shameful to demonstrate that they love one another,” was his only remark.

Another girl was staring at us, she must have been half our age. Petrus raised his glass, made a toast, the girl laughed in embarrassment and made a gesture pointing towards her parents almost in apology at not coming closer.

“That’s the beautiful side of love,” he said. “Love that challenges, love for two older strangers who have come from afar and tomorrow will already have parted down a road that she too would like to travel. The love that prefers adventure.”

Then he continued, pointing to an elderly couple:

“Look at those two: they haven’t let themselves be affected by hypocrisy, like so many others. They look like they are a couple of farm workers: hunger and need have obliged them to overcome many a difficulty together. They have discovered love through work, which is where Eros shows his most beautiful face, also known as Philos.”

“What’s Philos?”

“Philos is love in the form of friendship. It’s what I feel for you and others. When the flame of Eros no longer able to shine, it’s Philos who keeps couples together.”

“And what about Agape?”

Tomorrow Agape will be posted here

Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet