Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat, Pray, Love – Review

So why did I read this book, what attracted me to it. To be honest, what caught my eye was the 10 best spiritual reads recommended by Oprah Winfrey, Eat, Pray, Love was on that list. Always been a fan of Oprah. My wife Fabian had already read it and liked it so I thought I would give it a read. I love to delve into other peoples search for fulfilment in life. From the synopsis of the book, I was especially interested in why she wanted to go to India to find peace and joy when she already achieved much of what we westerners regard as success in New York.

If we are honest with ourselves we must ask, how much peace do we have in our lives, and if little or zero what are the barriers blocking that goal? could that be Money, health, love, fame? So if you had it all, if you were healthy, beautiful looks and body, financially and artistically successful would you be unhappy like Elizabeth. She was dreadfully unhappy with all her success but didn’t have peace of mind.

“We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.”

Elizabeth Gilbert

And when I read a book like this I too am searching. I’m Looking for where others find peace and joy in their lives, what’s their story. From my humble experience, it starts with a thorough examination of our own persona. Do I like myself or not? Now that’s a great question. For a long time I thought I did, I thought I was an OK bloke, but then I started to wonder why I was not a happy camper all the time. Yes, I have experienced peace at times but then something unexpected happens kicks me up the ass and peace flies out the window. Like all of us, we naturally experience stress and anxiety when we are have failures, disappointments, or plainly unhappy for whatever reason.

“Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.”

Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat 🍰

So let’s get back to the book and what I liked about it. Number one is that it flows beautifully, all 472 pages. This a very helpful for this dyslexic reader. The first part of the book is about her miserable life in New York, to her, yes, but most people would disagree, she has it all, beauty, talent and money. So after the turmoil of NY, she jumps on a plane and heads to Italy where she wants to learn to speak the language she loves. Italy is the eat section of the book where she meanders the streets of Rome, eats lots of lovely Italian food and learns the language from two handsome and very much younger Italian twins.

“God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies…”

Elizabeth Gilbert

Pray 🙏🏼

The path to spiritual growth is a long road and there are lots of potholes on the way, her Pray part of the book. My favourite part of this section is her experiences in the Ashram in India. The Ashram follows the teachings of Swami Kuvalayananda a yoga Guru. During the initial stages she explains her difficulties with yoga meditation, oh yes and the chanting (The Gurugita is 182 verses long) which takes 90 minutes to recite. It also covers her relationships with fellow disciples and how they each help each other in their individual search for enlightenment. They follow a strict routine each day of meditation, chanting, scrubbing floors, more meditation and chanting, then sleep. Only to be repeated the following day, again and again, and again.

Love ❤️

The final part of the book covers her time in Bali, Indonesia. This is where she renews a relationship with a medicine man she had met before on an earlier visit to the country. She rents a small house in Ubad in the centre of Bali and works with the medicine man every afternoon to find his key to enlightenment. There is also her relationship with a spiritual healer and become best friends, and finally her relationship with Felipe, a tall handsome Brazilian, the Love part of the book.

Suffering is Part of Life

There is a lot of crying in this book, and really is not suffering just self-inflicted misery. Problems and Pain. What pops up here is the ‘Four Noble Truths’ which Buddha taught was ‘Life is suffering’, recognise that. Once recognised it is easier to deal with. Buddhism’s famed ‘four truths’ are called noble because they liberate us from suffering. They are the Buddha’s basic teaching, encapsulating the entire Buddhist path.

1. Suffering

Life always involves suffering, in obvious and subtle forms. Even when things seem good, we always feel an undercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty inside.

2. The Cause of Suffering

The cause of suffering is craving and fundamental ignorance. We suffer because of our mistaken belief that we are a separate, independent, solid “I”. The painful and futile struggle to maintain this delusion of ego is known as samsara or cyclic existence.

3. The End of Suffering

The good news is that this is temporary. They are like passing clouds that obscure the sun of our enlightened nature, which is always present. Therefore, suffering can end because our obscurations can be purified and an awakened mind is always available to us.

4. The Path

By living ethically, practising meditation, and developing wisdom, we can take exactly the same journey to enlightenment and freedom from suffering that the Buddha does. We too can wake up.

Publisher Synopsis

It’s 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. After a bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.