“One Woman’s Search for Everything?”… about a woman written by a woman. Hello? I have better novels to read. But my cousin Sprite had lodged this book in my face like a Greek masque asking me to read first and tell her what I can say about the book before she reads…and that…if she will have the time. Hello?
Imagine this as a starter. One cold November night in the opening throes of what would be a traumatic and drawn-out divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert found herself curled up on the bathroom floor, praying. Suspense?
Having lived her life reaching for the kind of success American women are supposed to desire--a husband, a family, a country house, a lucrative career--she suddenly realized that despair was threatening to swallow her whole, and she called out to the Divine for guidance…and was answered, not with a burning bush or a thunder from the heavens, but by a sudden internal silence, a moment of perfect clarity, and her own authentic voice.
From this moment, a long and winding journey began--through the abyss of divorce, then onward through Italy, India, and Indonesia, and at last to herself. Eat, Pray, Love is a memoir of that journey.
Gilbert was lucky enough to have the money and resources to take an entire year to travel and "find herself." In Italy, she sought to learn about pleasure by immersing herself in the language and culture (and food); in India, she lived in an ashram and practiced yoga, mantra, and intensive prayer to learn about devotion; and in Indonesia, she studied with a Balinese shaman and along the way encountered romance, friendship, and her ultimate goal: balance.
Elizabeth said she divided the book into three sections, one for each country, and within each section 36 "chapters," totaling 108, the number of beads in a japa mala as well as her age when the story took place.
The section that stirred me the most, however, was the section in India, for it is in those pages that Gilbert really delved deeply into spiritual exploration and devoted less time to her own day to day experiences than to the experiences of resistance, surrender, and ecstasy that led her to extend her stay at the ashram. I always wanted to embrace the lure of the monastic life first when I once visited two friends- a couturier-turned-monk and one dentist-turned-monk in the Monastery of Transfiguration in Bukidnon, famous for its Monk’s Blend coffee, but that’s beside the point. Though I doubt I will ever dedicate myself to a guru or twist myself into a yogic pretzel, I felt a great resonance with Gilbert's life in India. One passage in particular really spoke to me:
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down…And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you're craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising…If you bring the right earnestness to your ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God.
So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance…This kind of thing--a spontaneous handstand--isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That’s the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.
Throughout the book Gilbert refers to the Divine as "God," rather than any other title, not out of Christian loyalty, but because it is "the name that feels the most warm to me." She considers all names and titles for Deity to be equal, but realizes that people have to relate to God on their own terms--it is in fact absolutely essential that they do so.
Just like any other books, it has its own flaws and I happen to quote this from another review I happen to read in one blog, I felt the same; for all that I appreciated the humor in the character of Richard from Texas, the sections featuring him tended to get a little pious and holier-than-thou and the conversation a bit stilted, as you might expect from Gilbert trying to distill months of interaction with a dynamic character into a few pages.
Overall, however, this is a beautiful book, both hilarious and insightful (often at the same time). I love reading the stories of people's spiritual journeys. Seeing our own stories reflected in those of others reminds us that, though the real work of the spirit is always done alone, we don’t walk alone on our path, even if it is a meandering one through dark and dangerous woods. Others have walked here before, or there would be no path. Others will follow us, and be grateful we went ahead. I would love to see more stories like Gilbert's more than simply a book of spiritual wisdom, Eat, Pray, Love is a journey that Gilbert and the reader take together, and I found myself changed by the time I reached the end, which is the beginning, which ends without ending.
And my favorite quote?
I'm tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.
Okay, no reservations, Spritee read the book. Please…
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