Eat, Pray, Love

It's a book. By Elizabeth Gilbert. And this post sounds a lot like a book review.

I wasn't interested in reading Eat, Pray, Love for a long time, pretty much as an adverse reaction to all the hype it got when it first came out. I figured it was either going to be not a good book, or a good book but full of the trendy kind of self-help stuff I'd already read more than my fill of. Or that by gosh, I was just too darn alternative to be grabbing for a book that was on every best seller list for some unholy number of weeks in a row.
To be honest, I don't really remember why I decided to read it... it wasn't a whim; I had to put it on hold at my library, so I definitely put some thought into wanting to read it. Maybe it came up in some random conversation. Maybe the universe just knew it was finally time for me to read it, 'cause DAMN that was a good book!
Basically it's the story of a woman who is at a totally sucky place in life, and decides to go on like... an adventure to find herself. So she spends 4 months in Italy, where she learns to enjoy life, and to stop feeling shame in material pleasures. Then she spends 4 months at an Ashram in India, where she learns to be comfortable with God and the God within others and within herself.Finally she spends 4 months in Bali, where she learns to be comfortable with herself, whoever and where ever she is in the moment. She learns to forgive herself and to love herself and to accept herself. I guess that was what made the book so good to me (other than, she's a really good and amusing writer): she is so clear about how she learned to do this pretty major thing that it was kind of easy to get caught up in the possibility and it renewed my hope in myself.
Here's some of my favorite bits.

He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart.
"To find the balance you want," Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way you will know God."


The Balinese don't let their children touch the ground for the first six months of life, because new born babies are considered to be gods sent straight from heaven, and you wouldn't let a god crawl around on the floor with all the toenail clippings and cigarette butts. So Balinese babies are carried for those first six months, revered as minor deities. If a baby dies before it is six months old, it is given a special cremation ceremony and the ashes are not placed in a human cemetery because this being was never human; it was only ever a god. But if the baby lives to six months, then a big ceremony is held and the child's feet are allowed to touch the earth at last and Junior is welcomed to the human race.


People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in...

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.




This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.


Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.


Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.




You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.


Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water. (Very Majnun and Layli, eh?)


When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and its time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you dont even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.


There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.




You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.


As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you.




I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.