On Dreaming by Paulo Coelho

“ON DREAMING” by Paulo Coelho and his
book THE PILGRIM.

“We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul,
just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered
and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming.
If we don’t, our soul dies, agape cannot reach it.
A lot of blood was shed out there; some of the cruelest
battles of Spain’s war to expel the Moors were fought on them.
Who was right or who knew the truth does not matter;
what’s important is knowing that both sides were fighting the good fight.

The good fight is the one we fight because our hearts ask
it of us. In the heroic ages – at the time the knights in armor –
this was easy. There were lands to conquer and much to do. Today, though,
the world has changed a lot and the good fight has shifted from the
battlefields to the fields within ourselves. The good fight is the one that’s
fought in the name of our dreams. When we’re young and our dreams first explode
inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned
how to fight. With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer
have have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do
battle within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that our dreams are childish, or
too difficult to realize, or the result of our not having known enough about life.
We kill our dreams because we are afraid to fight the good fight.

The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time . . .
The busiest people I have known in my life always have enough time to do everything.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties.
Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think
of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life.
We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we see the
great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see
the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged
in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s
important is only that they are fighting the good fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace.
Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease
to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we
think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our
youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised
when people our age say that they still want things out of life.
But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we
have renounced that battle for our dreams–we have refused to fight the
good fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period
of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and infect our entire being.
We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty
against ourselves. That’s when illness and psychosis arise. What we sought to avoid in
combat – disappointment and defeat – comes upon us because of cowardice. And one day,
the dead spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death.
It’s death that frees us from certainties, from our work,
and from that terrible peace of Sunday afternoons.”

It was good for me. Was it good for you?
WE MEET AS ONE….SUZANNE LEWIS

About Suzanne

Suzanne Lewis, editor and manager Wholisticbodymind.com since 2000. Suzanne is a Planetary Peacekeeper, an Agent for Conscious Evolution, a Spiritual Healer, a Mother, a multi - faceted artist (beads, gems to trade beads; guords star seed art; published author and Lover of Life for the sake of All our Relations.
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