My Everyday Blog

T he most romantic thing in airport. We make our way to the other terminal. I enter a florist’s and buy a dozen roses. We reach the arrivals gate, which is crowded with people waiting for friends and relatives arriving from far-flung places. “ Does anyone here understand English?” I shout. People look startled, doubtless because of the three burly men with me. “ Does anyone speak English?” A few hands are raised. I show them the bouquet of roses. “ A young woman whom I love very much will be arriving shortly. I need eleven volunteers to help me give her these flowers.” Eleven volunteers immediately appear by my side. We form a queue. Hilal comes out of the main door, sees me, smiles, and heads straight for me. One by one the volunteers hand her the roses. She looks half confused and half happy. When she finally reaches me, I hand her the twelfth rose and fold her in the warmest of embraces. “ Aren’t you going to tell me you love me?” she asks, trying to keep co...

A conversation about River and Love! Walking alongside a river created by the thaw, a remote village in Siberia “ In Novosibirsk, you made me forgive you, and I did. Now I’m asking you for a favor: tell me that you love me.” I take her hand. We are both gazing at the river. “ Silence is also an answer,” she says. I put my arms around her, so that her head is resting on my shoulder. “ I love you,” I tell her. “I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake, where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth. “ I love you like a river that creates the right conditions for trees and bushes and flowers to flourish along its banks. I love you like a river that gives water to the thirsty and takes people where they want to go. “ I love you like a river that understands that it must learn to flow differently over waterfalls and to r...

Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path. No one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded. Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything. Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it - which of these two attitudes is the least destructive? I don't know. From Maria's diary, two days after everyt...

The Chinese Bamboo (Covey)  After the bamboo seed is plated, you don’t see anything for approximately five years, other than a tiny shoot. All of its growth happens underground; a complex root system that extends vertically and horizontally in the earth begins to form. At the end of the fifth year, the Chinese bamboo grows until it is approximately 25 meters tall. Many things in life, personal and professional, are like the Chinese bamboo. You work, invest time, energy, do everything possible to nurture your growth and, sometimes, you don’t see anything for weeks, months or even years. But if you have the patience to keep working, to keep persisting and nurturing, your fifth year will arrive and with it will come changes that you hadn’t even dreamed of. Remember that one must be very daring to reach great heights, and at the same time, a lot of depth to stay grounded. Source :  http://paulocoelho.com/foundation/repositorio/Mensagens-Diarias-por-Numero-PDF-ingles...

"..... and told me that in the steppes they use the word ‘blue’ to describe the sky even when it’s gray, because they know that, above the clouds, the sky is always blue. He took me by the hand and helped me to go through those clouds. He taught me to love myself rather than to love him. He showed me that my heart was at the service of myself and of God, and not at the service of others."  “He said that my past would always go with me, but that the more I freed myself from facts and concentrated on emotions, the more I would come to realize that in the present there is always a space as vast as the steppes waiting to be filled up with more love and with more of life’s joy." “Finally, he explained to me that suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself—free and untrammeled, guiding us with its force and driving us on.” Conversation between two's..., Paul...

Forgiveness from the novel A leph by P a ulo Coelho Published by Harper Collins Remember the Aleph. Remember what you felt at that moment. Try to bring into this sacred place something that you don’t know but that is there in your heart. If necessary, think of a favorite symphony and let it guide you to where you need to go. That’s all that matters now. Words, explanations, and questions won’t help; they’ll only confuse something that is already quite complex enough. Forgive me, but let that forgiveness come from the depths of your soul, the same soul that passes from one body to another and learns as it travels through nonexistent time and infinite space. We can never wound the soul, just as we can never wound God, but we can become imprisoned by our memories, and that makes our lives wretched even when we have everything we need in order to be happy. If only we could be entirely here, as if we had just woken up on planet Earth and found our...

'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost'. A conversation between Brida O'Fern and Paulo Coelho as a Prologue, of a novel Brida. On 'taking risk', 'attitudes of life' and 'growth of the whole world'. That’s a risk we’re now going to take together, Brida. An anonymous text from the Tradition says that, in life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they’re doing. Then they find they’re hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops. Then there are those who plant. They endure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener’s constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure. Gardeners always recognize one anot...

Knowledge of Prayer from Brida by Paulo Coelho "It is through prayers that we commune with God. A prayer, when couched in the words of the soul, is far more powerful than any ritual.” “Because you lack the humility to listen to it and find out what it wants. You’re embarrassed to listen to the urgings of your soul and afraid to take those requests to God, because you think He doesn’t have time to concern Himself with them.” A prayer by teacher - Magus “We are human beings, Lord, and we do not know our own greatness. Lord, give us the humility to ask for what we need, because no desire is vain and no request is futile. Each of us knows how best to feed our own soul; give us the courage to see our desires as coming from the fount of Your eternal Wisdom. Only by accepting our desires can we begin to understand who we are. Amen.”   A prayer by student - Brida “Lord, help me understand that all the good things in li...

The conversation between research assistant to a physics professor at the university and his girlfriend, her quest for knowledge. From the novel Brida by Paulo Coelho “Just look at that sky. What we’re looking at now is how the sky would have appeared thousands of years ago. Many of those stars have already died, and yet their light still fills the Universe. Other stars were born far away, and their light has not yet reached us.” “So no one knows what the real sky looks like?” “We don’t know. We study what we can see, but what we see is not always what exists.” “What are we made of ? Where did the atoms that make up our bodies come from?” “They were created along with these stars and this river. In the first second of the Universe’s existence.” “So after that first moment of Creation, nothing more was added.” “No, nothing. Everything moved and continues to move. Everything was transformed and continues to be tra...

The teacher and student conversation on Finding Soulmate From the novel Brida By Paulo Coelho “Think of your Soul Mate.” “What do you mean by ‘Soul Mate’?” “Only by understanding the Soul Mate can we understand how knowledge can be transmitted over time.” “And when people think of reincarnation, they always come up against a very difficult question: if, in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of Earth, and now there are so many, where did all those new souls come from?” “In certain reincarnations, we divide into two. Our souls divide as do crystals and stars, cells and plants. Our soul divides in two, and those new souls are in turn transformed into two and so, within a few generations, we are scattered over a large part of Earth.” “And does only one of those parts know who it is?” “We form part of what the alchemists call the Anima mundi, the Soul of the World. The truth is that if the Ani...