Daniel Blakely Outside Reading 1

This class has reminded me, time and time again, of a novel I read in high school, The Alchemist. In the story, Santiago wonders from place to place searching for his treasure in life. The part of the story that truly connects in my mind to the class is the very end of the story. At the end of the book, Santiago finds himself back where he began, under a tree. The tree is where he decided he needed to go find his personal treasure, and by making that decision he blinded himself from the sacred experience he could have had. The end of the novel finds him with the tree again, only this time he is open to the unmediated communication necessary to share the sacred, and sure enough, the treasure for which he searched the world for was literally in front of him from the beginning. This story so easily demonstrates Lane’s axioms and I found it easy to connect to in my mind to make the class a little easier to understand.