In the Light of Innocence
Just as the epic poem IN THE PATHS OF MYRDDIN WYLLT resulted from blind 'chance...' from picking out a single book, from thousands, in countless boxes laid out on tables in a huge indoor roller hockey rink, and it sparking a new thread of inspiration ending an epic poem the length of a novella... so IN THE LIGHT OF INNOCENCE had a similar coincidental beginning. From the most insignificant of ‘chance incidents,’ come the most significant events in our lives; and the tiniest passing coincidence can have the greatest staying influence. And so it was, from the ‘chance’ sighting of another book that inspiration came to write my own; and a novel, this time.
We had a lovely French girl stay a few weekends,
and when she left, she gave us her favourite book THE ALCHEMIST, by Paulo Coelho. She had written on the flyleaf,
amongst other thoughts, ‘This is my
favourite book it’s like my Bible. This book answers questions about life . . .’
After one of the family had finished reading it, I read it, too. Inside I found what must have been a bookmark . . . a Motor Vehicle Relicensing form, folded up, and in the ‘Change of
Address’ section there had been written in lovely cursive handwriting a quote from
this book:
“This natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and marvels of his wisdom.”
“This natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and marvels of his wisdom.”
I was thrilled, and amazed because I had
been writing along these lines for years. In a flash it confirmed all that I
had seen and discovered for myself. I had already written a memoir THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL: Portrait of a Lost
Star, filled with such discoveries and, when I read Paulo Coelho’s book I
realized, with a piercing bitter sweetness that my insights and joys were on
another level, different from Coelho’s beautiful insights.
I saw in the seeing instant that the
insights of SPIRIT are altogether in another sphere to the insights of SOUL.
The insights given me were painful to SOUL for they were opposite they ‘took’
before they ‘gave.’ Coelho had seen and
known this, but he kept his joys mainly in the realm of SOUL . . . where gain
was not so painful, and where insights were mostly entrepreneurial, helping us
prosper in the natural realm. And so he made his gorgeous book extremely
popular and an ‘international bestselling
phenomenon.’
THE ALCHEMIST really
is a beautiful book. It is an introduction to the glories of synchronicity,
which Paulo Coelho calls ‘omens.’ But all these synchronistic coincidences
and omens are only made truly glorious in the realm of SPIRIT, where our interior
revelations are through darkness in ‘the losing to find,’ rather than in ‘the
gaining to get.’
Just as the stars shine, only in the dark when they have lost light: the natural light of the Sun (the light that shines on the outside of them) for the light that shines from within them, so the insights of SPIRIT find only their spiritual Light and Life in the dark when they have lost light: the natural light of the Son (the light that shines on the outside of us) for the Light that can shine only on the inside of us, in our veiled dark holy of holies, the very most holy place hidden inside our heart from where the true Light shines.
It is painful to live there. The glories of
Life are won only through Death. This is not a popular a place in which to live!
So books written to help us prosper in
the spiritual realm (where it seems
that light/knowledge is being taken from us before it is given,) are not going
to be in this world, terribly popular! But that is changing. The times are changing.
We live on the brink of an entirely new world view. Materialism is giving way to
something greater. The riches and wealth thinking people are seeking are no longer
temporal and transitory satisfying the outer-man, but eternal and everlasting satisfying
the inner-man. We cannot take material wealth with us. It doesn't fit where we are
headed!
And that is why I was inspired to write IN THE LIGHT OF INNOCENCE, which although it is a very different type of story, was at baseline an attempt to carry on the lighted torch and add
depth to the insights and wisdom of THE ALCHEMIST,
which though delightful don’t always take us where we really want to go; which is
why perhaps, Paulo Coelho wrote for us this wonderful and very beautiful SPIRIT truth
. . . to point the way to the true riches
it was best to run after:
“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”
Continued/
This
post is continued in Amethyst Poetry/Writing Saga #17, Part Two/IN THE LIGHT OF INNOCENCE / A Novel
These
are the titles of the next four
‘ragged writings’ of Amethyst Poetry:
Whispered
Phases of the Moon
Innovation’s Needed Magic
Immediacy
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