The Witch of Portobello, by Paulo Coelho

Despite the fact that I got quite terrified reading some parts of it alone, the book is just perfectly written - yet again - by the master of writing, Paulo Coelho. Being an open-minded Muslim (Amen :P), I didn’t see this book as anything misleading or brain washing. The message was simply wider than just those religious point of views.

Compared to the world wide hit, The Alchemist, I find this book a lot more universal and a bit less personal. Another meaningful book full of enlightening answers to philosophical life questions, completed with discussions of one my most recent obsessions, the Law of Attraction (also what the book Quantum Ikhlas is all about).

When we’re interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenomena “signs”, the sceptics “coincidence”, and psychologist “concentrated focus”..

**

You are what you believe yourself to be. ..Don’t be like those people who believe in “positive thinking” and tell themselves that they’re loved and strong and capable. You don’t need to do that, because you know it already. And when you doubt it - which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution - do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you’re better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humour. It will be difficult at first, but you’ll gradually get used to it.

**

After all, what is happiness?
Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield, it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony..
I spent a lot of my life looking for happiness; now what I want is joy. Joy is like sex - it begins and ends. I want pleasure. I want to be contended, but happiness? I no longer fall into that trap.

the end.

How could something end, when it never even started?

So I thought I was losing something. I thought I was broken and torn apart. I thought something dramatic has yet happened again to me.

But then I looked around. To everything that surrounds.

Have I really lost something? Was there really something that I had that is now gone?

Why does it seem just the same on the surface? Was it something inside my head? My heart? Was it something unreal, something I had only decided to believe in?

That something is now leaving me gently, like a mother letting go of her child only after knowing that they’re ready to. Without any pushing, punishing, hating, regretting, or even hurting.

That something knows that I was once too vulnerable to see. But now I think I am glad that it had ended. Even though it seems like nothing have ever started at the first place.

You just gotta let it go

I need some sleep.
I can’t go on like this.
I try counting sheep,
But there’s one I always miss.

Everyone says I’m getting down too low
Everyone says: “You just gotta let it go”
“You just gotta let it go”
I just gotta let it go

I need some sleep
time to put the old horse down
I’m in too deep
and the wheels keep spinning round

Everyone says I’m getting down too low
Everyone says: “You just gotta let it go”
“You just gotta let it go”
I just gotta let it go

You just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go
You just gotta let it go

Eels - I Need Some Sleep

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This song really describes my condition at the moment. Not the “i need some sleep” part, cos obviously I’ve been getting excessive sleeping lately. It’s the “letting go” part. I need to start letting go, and try to accept the truth that is happening.

But sometimes I wonder, how do we know that it is time to let go? How do we know when to keep on hoping and believing, putting all our heart into something, believing that somehow the Universe will attract it to us, and we will get what we’ve been wanting after all?

How could we be certain that it’s time to quit believing, stop hoping, and give up our faith when all that we are certain of is.. uncertainty?

..and nobody lived happily ever after

I have been witnessing some of the most unbelievable things lately.

People hurting their loved ones, deciding not to be faithful to them anymore.

People not grateful with what they’ve got already, trying to create unnecessary dramas in their lives..

Which makes me wonder, do we really want happily ever afters?

Do we really expect life to go smoothly always, without any fights, tears, pains?
Are sweet lovings and happy endings really all we need?
Aren’t those pains and bleedings what make us human?
Reminding ourselves that we still have emotions, feelings and senses?

And the next time you hope and pray to have a perfect, happy, and peaceful life, ask yourself if that’s really what you want.
Cos in the end, you’ll most likely take them for granted and can’t stop asking for less.

“Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.”
-Carl Jung