Book Report - Eat, Love, Pray

I only read this book because my (psychic) mother suggested it. I hated the title and thought it was lame, but I started it anyway - and lemme tell you - it's been a 'lil slice of Happy Pie every night I've read it for the last couple of weeks! I was awake until nearly 3:30am this morning finishing the dang thing! What a powerful, romantic, spiritual, realistic, soul-stretching experience this book has been!

I can relate to the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, in every single way - her depression, her tremulous romantic, mental, professional and physical challenges, and the constant anger, resentment, doubt, and fear she inwardly stews on! The constant feeling of unworthiness, incapability, repression, lack of traditional values and lifestyle, which she feels is chaotic emotional misdirection and quietly lets mount and build. I just "get it" because I am SO THERE.

I admire her ability to call it quits on the behaviors, lifestyle, relationships, and circumstances that she recognizes are leaving her unfulfilled. She says, "I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue." I wish I too had the ability to get paid to travel the world for a year, writing a book and soul-searching in Italy, India, and Indonesia! It was wonderful living vicariously through her travels, through the meditations and prayers, experiencing, second-hand, the great relief that comes from the release of giving yourself permission to believe in happiness again. And moreso, believing that you are divine creator of your own Happiness. And - to take it one step father - it's wonderful to have your heart opened to the belief that it's OK to "ask" the Greater Power for assistance FINDING a way to create happiness for yourself again. All three of these things have been so far removed from my thinking for the last year or so, it's like a river of opportunity running through my heart again.

Like many others, I've been groomed and raised in a conservative family and taught the religious dogma that has made many people happy - it just never "did it" for me. This book, however, had reinforced a very important principle that is best captured in this quote:

"Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship-just so long as those prayers are sincere." The Upanishad says, "People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best or most appropriate-and all reach [God], just as rivers enter the ocean."

This book has gently re-surfaced a desire to be independently happy - to create my own happiness in whatever spiritual way I feel is best for me, and to find happiness in all the circumstances I find myself in. More than that- I find my interest in believing in God has been re-ignited and, yes, I've been regularly praying for the first time a long time. I've been going to the meditations and classes taught at that Zen Center in SLC a lot more too - and every time I leave there, coupled with the later reading of this book and my praying, I feel like I've taken a spiritual shower after a year of camping in the desert without a bath! I am falling in-love with Zen, like I've been waiting for it my whole life.

"Zen Buddhist believe 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 all 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." Maybe I am currently traveling down a spiritual path created by a Greater Me, being pulled into the Truth that will make me the bigger/healthier/happier Me I will soon be.... wow! Deep....

I have to admit - I feel lightly enveloped by a shimmery layer of optimism that I haven't felt in a long time; I feel (as cliche as this is) "at peace" with my slightly (shitty) circumstances, because I feel CAPABLE of genuinely loving life, loving the people in my life, and earnestly wanting to share life/love/the pursuit of happiness with other people - again! I feel like I want to find my life's purpose and go help starving children in Africa again. I feel like "life" isn't all about what I GET from it, but what I can GIVE and SHARE with other people! And yes, that includes a big fat dose of giving forgiveness to myself and to others as well.

Oh I could go on and on and on!

[end of tangent.]

Just read this book- you'll either love it or hate it. But I thought it was delicious!