eat pray love

friday evening, i received a call from a telling me to read this book. saturday afternoon, i went out and bought it at kepler's. until noon today, i ate, prayed, and loved this book. and now, i am finally done. it may not be the best book i've ever read (it still may), but i definitely understand the place the author came from, and many of her lessons learned resonated within. the book is about her journey through italy, india, and indonesia - representative of her inner evolution as she transitions from her worldly ties to a spiritual awakening, and then effects a balance between the two. if you've been reading my blog, you know. i'm going to include some excerpts here to remind myself of what i took away from this read.

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 a few feet 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 it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.

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

Oh, Lord - responsibility. That word worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond.

"This is perfect, that is perfect, if you take the perfect from the perfect, the perfect remains."

[A conversation between her and her mind.]
Me: OK, we're going to meditate now. Let's draw our attention to our breath and focus on the mantra. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shiv-
Mind: I can help you out with this, you know!
Me: OK, good, because I need your help. Let's go. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shi-
Mind: I can help you think of nice meditative images. Like - hey, here's a good one. Imagine you are a temple. A temple on an island! And the island is in the ocean!
Me: Oh that is a nice image.
Mind: Thanks. I thought of it myself.
Me: But what ocean are we picturing here?
Mind: The Mediterranean. Imagine you're one of those Greek islands, with an old Greek temple on it. No, never mind, that's too touristy. You know what? Forget the ocean. Oceans are too dangerous. Here's a better idea - imagine you're an island in a lake, instead.
Me: Can we meditate now, please? Om Namah Shiv-
Mind: Yes! Definitely! But try not to picture that the lake is covered with ... what are those things called-
Me: Jet Skis?
Mind: Yes! Jet Skis! Those things consume so much fuel! They're really a menace to the environment. Do you know what else uses a lot of fuel? Leaf blowers. You wouldn't think so, but-
[and so it continues...]

So I did it. In stillness, I watched myself get eaten by mosquitoes. To be honest, part of me was wondering what this little macho experiment was meant to prove, but another part of me well knew - it was a beginner's attempt at self-mastery. If I could sit through this nonlethal physical discomfort, then what other discomforts might I someday be able to sit through? What about emotional discomforts, which are even harder for me to endure? What about jealousy, anger, fear, disappointment, loneliness, shame, boredom? [...] When it was all over, I stood up, walked to my room and assessed the damage. I counted about twenty mosquito bites. But within half an hour, all the bites had diminished. It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.

I'm not interested in the insurance industry. 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.

Of course God already knows what I need. The question is - do I know? Casting yourself at God's feet in helpless desperation is all well and good - heaven knows, I've done it myself plenty of times - but ultimately you're more likely to get more out of the experience if you can take some action on your end. [...] Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention.

I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore. You may not come here anymore with your hard and abusive thoughts, with your plague ships of thoughts, with your slave ships of thoughts, with your warships of thoughts - all these will be turned away. Likewise, any thoughts that are filled with angry or starving exiles, with malcontents and pamphleteers, mutineers and violent assassins, desperate prostitutes, pimps and seditious stowaways - you may not come here anymore, either. Cannibalistic thoughts, for obvious reasons, will no longer be received. Even missionaries will be screened carefully, for sincerity. This is a peaceful harbor, the entryway to a fine and proud island that is only now beginning to cultivate tranquility. If you can abide by these new laws, my dear thoughts, then you are welcome in my mind - otherwise, I shall turn you all back toward the sea from whence you came. That is my mission, and it will never end.

God dwells within you, as you. If there is one holy truth of this Yoga, that line encapsulates it. God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are. God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality. This is a classic example of what they call in the East "wrong-thinking." Swamiji used to say that every day renunciants find something new to renounce, but it is usually depression, not peace, that they attain. Constantly he was teaching that austerity and renunciation - just for their own sake - are not what you need. To know God, you need only to renounce one thing - your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.

Please give these wonderful people any blessings you might have originally set aside for me.

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.

...my friends say that the changes appear only later. You may find that lifelong obsessions are gone, or that nasty, indissoluble patterns have finally shifted. Petty irritations that once maddened you are no longer problems, whereas abysmal old miseries you once endured out of habit will no longer be tolerated now for even five minutes. Poisonous relationships get aired out or disposed of, and brighter, more beneficial people start arriving into your world.

"Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver."

Oddly I don't mind this. I don't mind anything these days. I can't imagine or remember discontent.

The Four Brothers Meditation: The child is taught from earliest consciousness that she has these four brothers with her in the world wherever she goes, and that they will always look after her. The brothers inhabit the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry. The brothers can be called upon in any critical situation for rescue and assistance. When you die, your four spirit brothers collect your soul and bring you to heaven.

The task in Indonesia was to search for balance, but I don't feel like I'm searching for anything right now because the balance has somehow naturally come into place. It's not that I'm becoming Balinese but only this - I can feel my own peace, and I love the swing of my days between easeful devotional practices and the pleasures of beautiful landscape, dear friends, and good food. I've been praying a lot lately, comfortably, and frequently. Most of the time, I find that I want to pray when I'm on my bicycle, riding home from Ketut's house through the monkey forest and rice terraces in the dusky late afternoons. I pray, of course, not to be hit by another bus, or jumped by a monkey or bit by a dog, but that's just superfluous; most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment. I have never felt less burdened by myself or by the world.

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. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.

... I keep making my prayers that are really vows, presenting my state of harmony to God and saying, "This is what I would like to hold on to. Please help me memorize this feeling of contentment and help me always support it." I'm putting this happiness in a bank somewhere, not merely FDIC protected but guarded by my four spirit brothers, held there as insurance against future trials in life. This is a practice I've come to call "Diligent Joy."

... all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself, but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

... That some vital transformation is happening in my life, and this transformation needs time and room in order to finish its process undisturbed. That basically, I'm the cake that just came out of the oven, and it still needs some more time to cool before it can be frosted.

He [Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times, he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. If you are appalled, he said, then it was a devil who had visited you. If you feel lightened, it was an angel.

My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well - the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.

I think about the woman I have become lately, about the life that I am now living, and about how much I always wanted to be this person and live this life, liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself. I think of everything I endured before getting here and wondered if it was me - I mean, this happy and balanced me, who is now dozing on the deck of this small Indonesian fishing boat - who pulled the other, younger, confused and more struggling me forward during all those hard years. The younger me was the acorn full of potential, but it was the older me, the already-existent oak, who was saying the whole time: "Yes - grow! Change! Evolve! Come and meet me here, where I already exist in wholeness and maturity! I need you to grow into me!" And maybe it was this present and fully actualized me who was hovering four years ago over that young sobbing girl on the bathroom floor, and maybe it was this me who whispered lovingly into that desperate girl's ear, "Go back to bed, Liz..." Knowing already that everything would be OK, that everything would eventually bring us together here. Right here, right to this moment. Where I was always waiting in peace and contentment, always waiting for her to arrive and join me.

I say: "Attraversiamo."
Let's cross over.