Paulo Coelho

Stories & Reflections

Benefits of spiritual partnership

Author: Paulo Coelho

Paulo and Gary


by Gary Zugav

The benefits of spiritual partnership are the highest goals that you can reach for, such as freedom from fear, and also the most grounded, pragmatic, and useful tools that you can develop, such as how to use power struggles to grow spiritually. All the benefits of spiritual partnership are interconnected, and each leads to others. Here are some.

Love for Yourself. Love is a state of being. It is not an emotion or response. You cannot create Love, but you can experience it, and when you do it envelopes you. You cannot love one person or one thing more than another. Love makes all things precious, including you. It eliminates all constraints. Love is without limits, conditions, judgments, and hidden agendas.

Meaning and Purpose. Traveling in the direction that your soul wants to go fills you with meaning. Traveling in other directions diminishes meaning in your life. Traveling in the opposite direction empties your life of meaning. The intentions of harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life take you exactly where your soul wants to go””toward people, Life, health, fulfillment instead of satisfaction, and joy instead of happiness.

Real Courage. Courage enables action when a frightened part of your personality is active. Some courageous actions are noble, such as risking injury to save another, and some are not, such as attempting to impress others (pursue external power) by doing something dangerous. Fear generates courage when you challenge frightened parts of your personality in order to be accepted, admired, or successful. Love generates courage when you challenge a frightened part of your personality in order to benefi t another or to create authentic power. That is real courage.

Ability to Use Dramas and Tragedies to Grow Spiritually. “Dramas” and “tragedies” are experiences of frightened parts of the personality. When you say, “What a tragedy this is!” you can more accurately say, “What a fear this is!” When you are immersed in a drama around you or within you, you can detach from it and recognize it as an experience of fear.

Compassion for Yourself and Others. If you are unable to distinguish between frightened and loving parts of your personality, you will not be able to distinguish between frightened and loving parts of other personalities either. A “passion to protect the environment,” for example, may come from love or from fear. When I stood in clearcuts that extended as far as I could see and hated the timber industry, my passion came from fear (powerlessness). When I am grateful for Mother Earth, my life, and awed by the exquisitely beautiful and delicate ecology around me, my passion comes from love.

(Condensed from “Spiritual Partnership”. To read more about each item, please CLICK HERE)

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