QUOTE: Lewis Carroll

"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle."

From the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light Issue #125

In this issue
- On the Road to Santiago, 1986

“This cloud has to come to an end”, I thought while struggling to discover the yellow marks on the stones and trees along the Road. For nearly half an hour the visibility had been close to zero, and I went on singing to chase away the fear while waiting for something extraordinary to happen. Shrouded in the fog, all alone in that unreal atmosphere, once again I began to see the Road to Santiago as if it were a film, right at the moment when you see the hero doing what nobody would do, while in the audience you think that these things only happen in the cinema. But there I was, living this situation in real life. The forest was growing quieter and quieter and the fog was beginning to clear up. Maybe it was coming to an end, but that light confused my eyes and painted everything around me in mysterious and terrifying colors.
All of a sudden, like in a magic trick, the fog lifted completely. And there in front of me, driven into the top of the mountain, was the Cross.
I looked around, saw the sea of clouds from which I had emerged, and another sea of clouds way above my head. Between these two oceans, the peaks of the highest mountains and Cebreiro peak with the Cross. I felt a great urge to pray.
Despite the desire, I did not manage to say anything. A hundred meters beneath me, a village with fifteen houses and a small church began to turn on its lights. At least I had somewhere to spend the night. A stray lamb climbed the hill and placed itself between me and the cross. It looked at me, somewhat afraid. For a long time I stared at the nearly black sky, the cross and the white lamb at the foot of the cross.
“Lord”, I finally said. “I am not nailed to that cross, nor do I see You there. This cross is empty and so it shall remain for ever, because the time of Death has passed. This cross was the symbol of the infinite power that we all have, nailed and killed by man. Now this Power is born again to life, because I have walked the path of common people and in them I have found Your own secret. You too walked the path of common people. You came to teach all that we were capable of, and we did not want to accept this. You showed us that Power and Glory were in everyone’s reach, and this sudden vision of our capacity was too much for us. We crucified You not because we are ungrateful to the son of God but because we were very afraid to accept our own capacity. With time and tradition, You again became just a distant divinity, and we returned to our destiny as men.
“There is no sin in being happy. Half a dozen exercises and an attentive ear are enough to make a man realize his most impossible dreams”.
The lamb rose and I followed it. I already knew where it was leading me, and despite the clouds the world had grown transparent for me. Even though I was not seeing the Milky Way in the sky, I was certain that it existed and showed everyone the Road to Santiago. I followed the lamb, which was heading in the direction of the small village – also called Cebreiro, like the mountain. A miracle had taken place there once – the miracle of changing what you do into what you believe. The secret of my sword and the strange Road to Santiago.
As I climbed down the mountain I recalled the story. A peasant from a nearby village came up to hear Mass in Cebreiro one day amid a heavy storm. That Mass was celebrated by a monk of little faith who within himself disdained the peasant’s sacrifice. But at the moment of the Consecration, the host transformed into the body of Christ and the wine became his blood. The relics are still there, kept in that small chapel, a greater treasure than all the wealth of the Vatican.
I went to the small chapel built by the peasant and the monk who had begun to believe in what he did. No-one knew who they were. Two nameless headstones in the cemetery nearby mark the place where their bones are buried. But it is impossible to know which is the monk’s grave and which is the peasant’s. Because, in order to for there to be a miracle, the two forces had to fight the Good Fight.
Since then, whenever I am faced with an important challenge, I remember the story of the miracle of Cebreiro. Faith sometimes has to be provoked before it can manifest itself.
And this year I am celebrating the twentieth anniversary of my pilgrimage - which changed my life. Next week, on the 25th of July, we commemorate Santiago de Compostela Day. If you can, offer up a prayer in homage to the saint.

Copyright @ 2006 by Paulo Coelho
Warrior of Light Online, published by www.paulocoelho.com.br

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Selected Warrior of the Light issues are available as free e-books (PDF format) from the Smink Works Books site

THOUGHTS ON: Villa Incognito, Gwen Stefani and deaf frogs

While reading Tom Robbins' 2003 book Villa Incognito, one of the many pithy quotes stood out. Like many lightbulb-above-head events we get from fiction that is philosophical, it was illuminating because it resonated with a life experience.
The quote: "Self-importance and self-doubt are usually interchangeable."
I think it's amazing that when you decide to step out and try something new - in effect overcoming fears of failure and the like - that there is a chorus of self-important people ready to fire their negative comments your way. I'm not sure why people spend ANY of their precious life time being negative about others, but I am sure that their own insecurities are integral to their actions. It is easier to criticize others than to step out yourself. For a very small moment, the downcrier feels better than the individual they are firing negativity at, but it is short-lived, self-doubt returns, and the negativity thrower needs to look elsewhere for a self-importance hit.
(Robbins himself must have stepped out at one point - since his unique, very quirky books are not your everyday fiction.)
The Tom Robbins book isn't the only place I got enlightenment from on this issue. I'm not sure why, but often you send out a question or a dilemma to the universe and it delivers on several fronts.
Someone forwarded me one of those light and frothy emails that you usually just bin, but for some reason I read it. Long story short, lots of frogs are climbing a big mountain and lots of people are standing at the bottom saying they'll never make it to the top. One by one the frogs stop climbing the mountain, believing the negativity emanating from the naysayers. Only one frog keeps climbing. He makes it to the top despite the loud unbelievers. Turns out the victorious frog is deaf.
But, well, you don't have to be deaf to step out, pursue your goals, do what you want to do -
And so when I also heard that Gwen Stefani song "What are you Waiting For?" this week, it resonated -
Stuck in a moving car
A scary conversation, shut my eyes, can't find the brake
What if they say that you're a climber
Naturally, I'm worried if I do it alone
Who really cares, cause it's your life
You never know, it could be great

SM

Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light - Human nature

In this issue
- Human nature

Every day, bombarded by acts of cruelty, we ask ourselves: how can men be capable of so much evil? The example stretches from Rio de Janeiro, where a journalist friend (Tim Lopes) was barbarously tortured to death, all the way to the Abu Graib prison in Iraq where young American men and women who always behaved in exemplary fashion in their own small provincial communities back home end up behaving like monsters.
In 1971, professors from Stanford University in the United States created a sort of simulated prison in the basement of the Psychology Department. Using no special criterion, they chose 12 students as guards and another 12 as prisoners, all from the same social background, middle class, strict upbringing, dignified moral values. For two weeks the “prison guards” would be given total power over the “prisoners”.
The experience had to be interrupted after a week: after a few days the “guards” began to reveal a form of behavior that became increasingly sadistic and abnormal, committing barbarities never before suspected. Today, over 30 years later, the two groups still need psychological counseling.
The idealizer of the Stanford experience, Philip Zimbardo, told the Herald Tribune: “I was not surprised at the photos of the Abu Graib prison in Iraq. This is not a group of rotten apples placed in a basket of fresh fruit, but exactly the opposite: when faced with the possibility of absolute power, people of good sentiments lose all notion of limits and let the most primitive instincts be released.
Another interesting study was carried out by Stanley Milgram for Yale University. A group of students was chosen to study “punishment techniques”. They stayed on one side of a glass with a machine for electrical shocks, while on the other side of the glass a student had to give the right answers to certain questions. Every time he made a mistake, the students were to apply a shock, progressively increasing the voltage, even knowing that after a certain point they could kill their fellow student.
The machine for shocks was false and the “student” was an actor, but the students in the experience did not know that. To everyone’s surprise, 65% of the “interrogators” reached what would have been the mortal dose.
In short, when we are faced with situations that allow us total and absolute control over someone else, none of us can be certain that we will not overstep the limits. But only those who have undergone this type of experience (and, unfortunately, I remember certain attitudes during my youth that would include me in this group) know that at a certain moment we completely lose control and move beyond reason.
If this is human nature, what are we to do? An old story that takes place in the Pyrenees – possibly a legend – tells how a certain monk called Savin, who came to collect donations in gold for the chapel he wanted to build, passed by the house of one of the most feared bandits in the region. Since he had nowhere to spend the night, he asked if he could stay there.
The bandit, surprised at the monk’s courage, decided to test him, and asked:
“You have come here to provoke me. You want me to kill you and steal your money and make you a martyr. If the most beautiful prostitute in town came through that door right now, would you be able to think she wasn’t beautiful and seductive?”
“No. But I would be able to control myself.”
“And if a monk came in with gold to build a chapel, would you be able to look at that gold as if it were stones?”
“No. But I would be able to control myself.”
Savin and the assassin had the same instincts — good and evil fought for them, just as they fight for every soul on the face of the Earth. When the evildoer saw that the monk was just like him, he also understood that he was just like Savin, and became converted.
We have good and evil before us, and it is all a matter of control.
Nothing more than that.

Copyright @ 2006 by Paulo Coelho
Warrior of Light Online, published by www.paulocoelho.com.br

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Selected Warrior of the Light issues are available as free e-books (PDF format) from the Smink Works Books site