In the ancient world, there were those who looked for the key to turn lead into gold,
to make an elixir of immortality, and to connect with the divine. Often working in secrecy,
they tried to purify and transform metal. They were called alchemists. These figures would be
the subject of one of our most popular stories: the Alchemist. A book loved by millions around
the world, it's received praise from celebrities like Julia Roberts, Will Smith, and Oprah Winfrey.
Before he wrote the Alchemist, Paulo Coelho always dreamed of being a writer, but he didn't have the
courage. Until one day while on vacation in Europe, he visited a concentration camp where
he had a strange vision that would completely change his life. A vision of a mysterious man
who spoke to him, telling him that they would meet in person. This terrified Paulo to the core.
Two months later as Paulo sat in a cafe in Amsterdam, he saw the same man again. He was real.
And so he went over to talk to him. This led to a very long conversation between them, and this
mysterious man would eventually become Paulo's spiritual mentor and guide. It's an astonishing
synchronicity, and to this day, Paulo won't reveal who this man is or anything about his identity.
Paulo decided that he would write a symbolic book;
a metaphor for his life. And that book would become "the Alchemist."
One of my managers Caron Veazey, she suggested I read the book "the Alchemist" and it changed my
whole life. You really can make what you want, one of my favorite books is "the Alchemist" by Paulo
Coelho and that's just, I just believe that. Oh i love "the Alchemist." Man that book is...
The Alchemist is a fable for life's journey and the hard choices we have to make when we decide
to follow our dreams. It follows the story of a young Spanish shepherd named Santiago.
He has the same dream over and over again, about a hidden treasure buried near the Egyptian pyramids.
Filled with symbols and metaphors, one of the major themes of the book is the idea that signs
and synchronicities are central to our lives. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung referred to
synchronicity as a meaningful coincidence where two events aren't connected by cause and effect,
but are connected by meaning. It has a way of joining our inner and outer experience
and even if you're a very rationally minded person, synchronicity still
strikes us in powerful ways this is something the ancients had an instinctive understanding of,
a recognition that all life is interconnected, that an infinite number of things are happening
instantaneously in any single moment. And once that moment is gone, it never happens again
in quite the same way. Synchronicity can't be understood purely through logic alone; it must
be felt intuitively. For example one of the ways the ancient Greeks would get signs and messages
to their questions, was to go to a marketplace, pass through the gate, and walk up to a statue.
They would whisper a question into the statue's ear, then they would cover their ears shutting
out all outside sounds as they walked back to the gate. At the exact moment they reached the gate,
they uncovered their ears. The first sounds they heard, whether it was a piece of conversation,
the singing of a bird, or the sound of leaves, this was the oracle's answer. It was believed that
once you set a clear intention and put yourself in a frame of mind to receive its message,
the universe would speak to you directly through the everyday noise of the world. In other words
it would speak to you through synchronicity. In "the Alchemist" synchronicity plays a very
important role in Santiago's journey. Let's look at a few of the synchronicities in this story.
There's a scene early on in the story where Santiago thinks about giving up on his dream.
Just then he meets an old man named Melchizedek who says that he always
shows up at crucial life moments and especially whenever someone is about to abandon a dream.
Melchizedek tells a story about how he once appeared in front of a miner in the form of a
stone. For five years the miner looked at hundreds of thousands of stones in search of an emerald. He
was about to give up right at the point where if he just looked at one more stone, he would
find his emerald. Melchizedek transformed himself into a stone that rolled onto the miner's foot.
Noticing this, the miner with all the anger and frustration of the five years he felt he wasted,
picked up the stone and threw it aside. He threw it with such force that it broke another stone,
and embedded within that stone was the most beautiful emerald in the world.
Melchizedek is a metaphor for the synchronicities that happen in our lives. He's the personification
of the signs that are all around us. If we have the patience and open-mindedness to look,
these signs are subtle clues that we're on the right path, and sometimes it has
a way of communicating things to us which by all logic, we couldn't possibly know.
A few days later, Santiago meets with Melchizedek again, this time to say goodbye. And he tells
Santiago to follow the signs that appear around him. Just then a butterfly flutters between them.
It's another synchronicity. But what does it mean? Butterflies are symbols of transformation.
They begin life as eggs. They hatch and become caterpillars. They grow bigger and bigger,
until eventually, they form a cocoon. It's an uncomfortable time of transition, but they emerge
completely changed with the ability to fly. For Santiago, seeing the butterfly hints at
the powerful transformation he's about to begin in his life, and it hints at his attempt to transcend
his upbringing, and his life as a shepherd. That transformation will be painful, but that
is often the price of growth. You can't become a butterfly without first going into the cocoon.
There's another scene where Santiago sits in a desert oasis and watches two hawks as they glide
through the sky. Suddenly one of the hawks makes a quick dive attacking the other hawk.
As this happens, Santiago has a vision an army of men on horses, holding swords,
all riding towards the oasis. The vision vanishes immediately
but it leaves Santiago shaken. Using his intuition, Santiago senses that his vision
is actually a premonition of a real attack that will happen soon. He remembers how Melchizedek
told him to always pay attention to the signs. Santiago decides to warn others about the attack.
One man takes the vision very seriously. Why? He says that any given thing on the face of
this earth can reveal the history of all things. For instance, one could open a book to any page,
or look at a person's hand, one could turn a card, or watch the flight of birds. Whatever it is,
you can find a connection with the experience of the moment; a way to penetrate into what he called
"the Soul of the World." The man doesn't use the word synchronicity, but what he recognizes is the
power of meaningful coincidence to reveal hidden insights and understandings wherever we find them.
And the Soul of the World is very similar to Carl Jung's use of the term Unus Mundus which
means "one world." Jung believed that life isn't a series of random events, but rather there's a deep
underlying order from which everything emerges and to which everything returns. It connects all of us
in unseen and mysterious ways. And every part of the universe is reflected in every other part. For
Jung, our sense of isolation and disconnectedness from the world is an illusion. When we experience
synchronicity, what we're seeing is a momentary flash of these deep underlying connections that
are always there. It's like a chain of islands on the ocean that seem disconnected on the surface
but if we could look underwater, we'd find that they're all connected like a giant mountain range.
There's a moment in the story where Santiago meets the Alchemist. By this point, Santiago has already
fallen in love with a woman he meets in the desert oasis named Fatima. He has enough money to build a
life with her. He begins to wonder if he really needs to follow through with his dream to go to
the pyramids. He asks the alchemist: "what would happen if I just stayed here?" The Alchemist
tells him that he could give up his dream. If he did that, Santiago and Fatima would marry,
and they'd both be very happy for one year. But sometime in the second year, he'd remember
the hidden treasure near the pyramids. Signs, omens, and synchronicities would keep reminding
him of his dream to go there. In the third year, the signs would speak even more loudly of that
same treasure. Santiago would become restless, and Fatima would become unhappy, because she
would feel like she was the one who interrupted Santiago's dream. But then he'll remember that
she never asked him to stay, so he won't blame her. Even still, resentment would begin to grow.
He'd wonder if maybe he could have left. Maybe he could have trusted more in his love for Fatima.
Because what really kept him at the oasis, was his own fear that he might never come back.
And at that point the signs would begin to tell him that the treasure was buried forever.
Because if you wait too long and if you stop listening to the signs, they stop appearing.
By then you might be living a comfortable life, but it's a life that doesn't really excite you.
And you'd spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn't chase your dream,
and the only person who stopped you, was you. This is a common dilemma in our modern world. How can
we learn to balance survival and making a living with pursuing our dreams? The Alchemist tells
Santiago, that there's only one way to learn, and that's through action. Everything you need to know
you will learn after you begin your journey. And that action doesn't have to be a huge and dramatic
step towards your dream; it can be a tiny one. But what's crucial is figuring out what that next step
is for you. What's clear is that the real treasure Santiago searches for isn't money or coins;
these are metaphors. At the heart of it, each of us is completely unique. Each of us has things
that naturally excite us, things that give us joy and enthusiasm. And each of us has a unique set
of gifts and talents that belong only to us. To search for your treasure, to develop these
gifts to their highest expression is what Paulo Coelho calls pursuing your "Personal Legend." This
Personal Legend is a lifelong process by which we become who we really are. Bringing with it
a new sense of wholeness. Real alchemy isn't about turning lead into gold, it's about taking
the elements of your life to transcend your past and to transform your current situation.
It's about using it to build the life that you're meant to live. You are the alchemist of your life.
Santiago says to himself that "when I've truly been searching for my treasure,
every day is luminous, because I've known that every hour was a part of the dream
that I would find it, I've discovered things along the way that i never would have seen
had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve."
And this is the message that Paulo Coelho reminds us of throughout the story.
"When you really and truly want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it."
How do we become fluent in the Language of the World? By daring,
by daring. If you don't fear the unknown, the unknown will be kind to you.
Did you notice any other synchronicities in the Alchemist? Let me know in the comments.
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