Aleph - Extracts

Hi everybody,

I share with you today some extracts of the Paulo Coelho's latest book : Aleph.

Focus on yourself

If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you’ll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.

People vs books

Reading is very important, but anyone who puts all his faith in academic tomes and creative writing courses is missing the point: words are life set down on paper. So seek out the company of others.

The ability to receive

I know very few people capable of receiving, even when the gift is given with love and generosity. It’s as if the act of receiving made them feel inferior, as if depending on someone else were undignified.

What’s life?

Life is the train, not the station.

Routine: the enemy of Faith

Why have I been complaining all these months about not being in touch with the Divine Energy? What nonsense! We are always in touch with it, it’s only routine that prevents us from feeling it.

Stop the excuses

You can spend your entire life blaming the world, but your successes or failures are entirely your own responsibility. You can try to stop time, but it’s a complete waste of energy.

Be strong

‘I will be capable of loving regardless of whether I am loved in return,

Of giving even when I have in the midst of difficulties,

Of holding out my hand even when utterly alone and abandoned,

Of drying my tears even while I weep,

Of believing even when no one believes in me.’

Dreams are reel

When we dream: we enter our recent or remote past. We wake up thinking that we’ve dreamed the most ridiculous things while we slept, but that’s not true. We’ve visited another dimension, where things don’t happen exactly as they do here. We think it’s all nonsense because when we wake up, we’re immediately back in a world organised by memory, which is our way of understanding the present.

People don’t represent the religion

I belong to a religion that perpetrated horrors in the past. That’s what I’m getting at, because, despite everything, I still have the love of Jesus, which is far stronger than the hatred of those who declared themselves to be his successors.

The change is within you

No, nothing has changed. But we –who went off in search of our kingdom and discovered lands we had never seen before – we know we are different.

Travel

Yes, I could have reached the same conclusions without ever leaving Brazil, but just like Santiago, the shepherd boy in one of my books, sometimes you have to travel a long way in order to find what is near.

Hope that the extracts have aroused your curiosity and that you'll decide to read the book soon and share your thoughts with us.


Amal.