How to Use Your Life

I read The Alchemist perhaps fifteen years ago, but never fully grasped Paulo Coehlo's journey until today, when his semi-autobiographical The Zahir presented the key clue. In The Zahir, Coehlo chronicles his lifelong resistance and eventual surrender that allowed him to craft and publish The Pilgrimage at age 40. The Pilgrimage, his first novel, depicts his journey along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the transformational route in northern Spain that Shirley MacLaine also eloquently described, in The Camino.

I decided to read The Pilgrimage in 2012 after ingesting Coehlo's latest autobiographical masterpiece, Aleph. But it's only now, learning the order in which he wrote his books (The Pilgrimage first, then The Alchemist, beloved worldwide) that my ah-ha erupted: In The Alchemist, the young protagonist is named Santiago! With this brilliant literary echo, Coehlo conveys how he has become the path, his experience informing his journey and infusing the reader with faith in the outcome.

This is the essence and purpose of my own life work: to use what I have understood at each stage of my unfolding in service to the next, and to all with whom I come in contact. Are you using your life to its maximum potential, pouring the elixir of who you've been into who you're becoming?

The Burning Times

We've entered the season of Fire, and boy, are we feeling it here in northern California, where the 100+ degree temperatures and heat lightning have touched off hundreds of wildfires, many raging unchecked as there are simply not enough firefighters to attend to all the blazes. Smoke diffuses the sunlight; the air hangs heavy and rank, and we are advised to remain indoors with windows shut.

Amusingly, my favorite healthy cereal heralded this conflagration: when I bought a new box of it several days ago, just before the fires broke out, it tasted charred. I returned it for another, and the second box was the same. It seemed the company had burnt the entire batch. Micro-macro; as above, so below. Coincidence? Not really ...

In these times of alchemical transmutation, when everything that no longer serves must burn clean, synchronicity runs as high as ancient emotions, and promises a wealth of new doorways. I decided to type "fireandwater.com" into a search engine, since Fire and Water is the title of several different articles I've penned and a long-running theme in my life, and behold, it's the site for renowned author Paulo Coehlo, who wrote The Alchemist. So far this is the only book of his I've enjoyed, but I've now found a relevant source for summer reading. The Witch of Portobello is a highly intriguing title, especially for these Burning Times ...