the alchemist

So I dragged myself to the New Orleans Food Coop potluck/meeting on Monday night. I wasn't all that enthused by the mission as narrowly stated: "Healthy, affordable groceries for everyone!!" I took the flyer off my doorstep, and with a pen hastily crossed off the word groceries and substituted FOOD.

“Continue in the direction of the Pyramids”, said the alchemist. “And continue to pay heed to the omens. Your heart is still capable of showing you where the treasure is.” - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Regardless, I knew I'd go, if only to have the privilege of complaining and critiqueing with first-hand knowledge ;) After weeks in New Orleans, I'd seriously begun to wonder if I'd made a huge, big mistake coming here. Was this city at the cusp of a Renaissance? Was it really the place drawing the vanguards of the blank canvas?

“This world is but a canvas to our imaginations.” - Henry David Thoreau

And did my vision mesh with said city? The answer was starting to seem like No. After BarCampNola, it was upgraded to Perhaps maybe.

Little did I know that meeting would be a pivot point, whereupon I meet another kindred spirit that recites (and lives) the stone soup story too, talks of the omens and signs that led him to New Orleans, and about participatory engagement ("Be the change you wish to see in the world"). And just when I was about to give up...

“Is that the one thing I still need to know?”

“No”, the alchemist answered. “What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.” - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

To me, this doesn't contradict "Can we become the sign we so desperately seek?" as long as I'm following my inclinations moment to moment (they feel like the very next dance step), rather than waiting for a signal, or to verification that there's light at the end of the tunnel, as sometimes one does waltz forward in the seeming dark first.

p.s. I swear everyone's bookshelf in New Orleans, particularly among the transplants, seems to have the book, The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, prominently displayed. More quotes from Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream:

"Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own."

"No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it."

"It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them."

Art credits Enchanted Pyramids by EnchantedMistress; Painted Desert by Strohat.

Comments

[mystic7]

I started to read The Alchemist, but couldn't get into it. However, I have read The Little Prince and did resonate with it. I could give you a long list of books that have had a powerful impact on my life, but just because they work for me doesn't mean they would work for you. Well anyway, here's one to consider: "What We May Be" by Piero Ferucci

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

It's never really about the book in my blog posts, but I did find it fascinating that I've seen so many people reference "The Alchemist" since I've been here. Every city has its own soul too, so something resonates in that book for folks that came here from elsewheres in last five or so years.

Hmmm, I probably should stop referencing so many books; I don't really read all that much anymore, though I will pick up a book and see what page it falls onto - and often, I'll include that in my blog posts. So I may read a paragraph or too, the ones I'm supposed to, out of a whole book. As I said recently, I don't really read an entire book cover to cover (with exception of a few children's books), and I don't subscribe to magazines, watch TV, or read the news. But blogging is text intensive, and I suppose that maybe I can do less remixing, which is the nature of digital media, and more of my own words, we'll see.

[Romy]

"After weeks in New Orleans, I'd seriously begun to wonder if I'd made a huge, big mistake coming here. Was this city at the cusp of a Renaissance?...And did my vision mesh with said city? The answer was starting to seem like No."

You could look at it as an ongoing magickal ceremony. I am thinking of the second phase of Crowley's magical formula, IAO. The first phase of the formula is when we start a practice or a personal quest with enthusiasm and lively interest. Then comes the weariness, the boredom, the doubts and crisis of faith. The night will eventually end and with it our raw enthusiasm. At that point, however, our quest or whatever we have started would no longer be a mere vision, an object of interest, or something that is yet apart from ourselves. It would rather have been assimilated as a living part of our lives. The way becomes the wayfarer and we indeed become what we seek.

The formula is IAO. Isis or Nature, destroyed by Apophis, is resurrected as Osiris. http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/aba/chap5.html

[donna]

I enjoyed The Alchemist, a good hero's journey tale.

For me the tales of coming back to the world are most important right now. The return...

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks so much Romy, I think that was exactly what I needed to hear. Gee, I wish so that you had a blog.

Donna, Actually I came to Nola for the return - for engagement, living, embodying who I'm being in presence out in the tangible world. No more "studying" or "preparing" or working on enlightenment in monastery for me. But even so, there are elements of the hero's journey it seems. I'm finding my own inner resistances (reflected in outer) to "coming out in the world" etc.

Yep, you're right that The Alchemist, depicts Joseph Campbell. So one can easily get the idea these are grand one-time-in-a-lifetime descents into hell and back to integrate, engage what was learned in the journey (the return) in the world. You can read the Tarot as a journey from Fool to World. But many times have I started over as the Fool, and many times have I reached World, in readings, in relative reality.

I once believed the ultimate journey was to awaken - like that was the final journey, but my own experience, I find it seems to be more like a series of continual birth-death-rebirth evolutionary cycles. After awakening, it feels like the beginning of another journey with my eyes wide open this time; I'm not sure "final enlightenment" is final either in the Infinite. It's feeling like climbing a spiral staircase of many, many, many hero's journeys. Clare Graves, the psychologist work whose work was reframed as "spiral dynamics" -- what I got from him was that each time we reach the "peak" mountain (end of journey), we look up and realize there is yet another summit ahead that was obscured from below until we got to this point. And he definitely uses the evolutionary spiraling upward type metaphor - so there are many returns. Ken Wilber in The Atman Project expressed my sense that the 'bardo' between lifetimes in Tibetan Book of the Dead is really referring to a moment-to-moment birth-death-rebirth. So the hero's journey feels somewhat fractalized - minute to minute embedded within day to day within season to season within chapter to chapter, ad finitum...

The return's supposed to be very simple, since the lessons of the journey are digested, integrated, fused with our being. Like what Keroauc calls "working for Joy" or Adya says "Serving the One":
http://www.workingwithoneness.org/article_adyashanti.html

In practice, I'm not so sure about the simplicity! Actually, I think it was simple for some time and then I got to a point where I wrestled with the inevitable flow and began resisting the dance of emptiness. And so, that's what feels like a "journey" - collapsing through my resistance. We'll see.

[ruby dosen]

WHaT aRe yOu Up 2 girlfriend....:)
I used up all the candles, ty.
went back to landmarkeducation, felt that it was a good thing since I am not levitating yet, am currently working on being in three places simultaneously, let me know if you see me around town :)
meet me @ hi-desertlighthouse march14th-16th, for gary renards first ever retreat......just in case we missed something in his DOU ..............After weeks in New Orleans, I'd seriously begun to wonder if I'd made a huge, big mistake coming here. Was this city at the cusp of a Renaissance? Was it really the place drawing the vanguards of the blank canvas?

“This world is but a canvas to our imaginations.” - Henry David Thoreau

And did my vision mesh with said city? The answer was starting to seem like No. After BarCampNola, it was upgraded to Perhaps maybe.

Little did I know that meeting would be a pivot point, whereupon I meet another kindred spirit that recites (and lives) the stone soup story too, talks of the omens and signs that led him to New Orleans, and about participatory engagement ("Be the change you wish to see in the world"). And just when I was about to give up...

[mystic7]

I was dreaming. I was in a luxury hotel in Europe. I was at a scientific conference giving a speach on evolutionary psychology. I was speaking very passionately about the subject. I woke up and bounded out of bed still almost ranting passionately. At that moment I looked down on the floor and say an anule lizard (the lizard had gotten into my house from a hole caused by Katrina-I let the lizard stay because it scared away the roaches). The lizard seemed to be listening to my rant very intendly, very adoringly, almost as if worshiping me. I said to the lizard "You know what I mean don't you lizard. You come from a long line of ancestors that bares out what I'm saying". The lizard looked at me and seemed to say "Yes brother, I know what you mean. We're strong, we're fit. we will endure."