Brida

Reading Paulo Coelho books is often a disturbing experience. It is disturbing the sense that it sets you thinking about the greater wisdom of life which we often shelf it aside to make space for more mundane decisions, such as what to eat for lunch and how to spend the weekend. From the Alchemist when one confronts the need to have a dream and to pursue the dream relentlessly to Veronika Decides to Die when we have to confront death.

Brida centres around soul mates, path to spiritual development and faith. Brida was a young girl seeking spiritual path to magic to better understand the meanings of the world and to find her soul mate. She studies from the Magus who practised the Tradition of the Sun and from Wicca who practised the Tradition of the Moon. Through her practise, she also self-discovered new knowledge and wisdom. When she found her soul mate, she would be able to see the light above the left shoulder of his soul mate.

I have extracted some of the more meaningful passages and paragraphs here to mull and ponder upon.

"...each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they're doing. Then they find they're hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops.

Then there are those who plant. They ensure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener's constamt attention, it also alows life for the gardeners to be a great adventure."

Do you want to be a gardener or a builder?

" ...for us each day is a dark night. None of us knows what mught happen even in the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have faith."

Do you have faith?

"And when people think of reincarnation, they always come up against a very difficult question: if in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of Earth, and now there are so many, where did all those new souls comes from?
...
In certain reincarnations, we divide into two. 
...
In each life, we feel a mysterious obligation to find at least one of those soul mates.
...
By taking risks. By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for your Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end."

Do you believe in soul mates? Have you found your soul mate?

"Sometimes we set off down a path simply because we don't believe in it... All we have to do then is to prove that it isn't the right path for us. However, when things start to happen, and the path does reveal itself to us, we become afraid of carrying on."

Have you spent time destroing paths that were wrong rather than following the right path?

William Blake - "What is now proved was once only imagin'd"

Hence, one should never stop imagination.

"People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of Love. Anyone who tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in the field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of the damp earth adn the cloud of the horizon."

 I hope the above paragraphs and passages have invoked some thoughts and feelings in you.