I gave him the test that I was accustomed to giving people I would meet on the journey. There were two books, The Alchemist and Mastery of Love. I didn’t want to continue making the same mistakes in relationships. I knew right away when something didn’t align. There were chapters in both books that were very significant for me in knowing if the person I was dealing with was on my level spiritually.
One was the story about Fatima meeting Santiago. There is a point in the Alchemist where Fatima encourages him to leave the desert and continue in pursuit of his treasure. Fatima told him that she would wait for him. Santiago didn’t want to leave her. He was madly in love with Fatima but she didn’t want him to look back at his life and have regrets.
The second story was from, Mastery of Love, about a man who didn’t believe in love. The man who didn’t believe in love spent his entire life studying and speaking on his theory that love doesn’t exist. One day he was walking down the street and saw a woman crying on a bench. He stopped to ask her what was wrong? She said crying, “I don’t believe in love.”
He thought he met the woman of his dreams. They became best friends. They believed in the same things. They made a pact that they would be together as long as it was clear that neither of them believed in love.
One night the man was walking and the most beautiful thing happened. A star came down from the sky and landed in his hands. He started feeling something amazing. He believed that it was love. He was so excited that he rushed home to tell her about his discovery. When he arrived he said to her, “Look! Look at what I brought back for you.”
He went to place the star in her hands and it dropped and shattered into a million pieces.
I asked Michael to share with me his interpretation of both stories. He called Fatima a bitch for pushing Santiago away, “Didn’t she see how much he loved her. How could she do that? What if she was his treasure?”
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