Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I just read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and enjoyed it very much. It's been on my list for awhile now, and my mom happened to read it recently and sent me her copy. It's about a woman in her mid-30s who goes through an awful divorce, a deep depression and really just loses touch with who she is in the process. She is a writer and decides to go spend 4 months in Italy (to eat), 4 months in India (to pray) and 4 months in Bali (yes, to love...though that's not really her plan). I love to eat, I think of myself as fairly spiritual (or perhaps that I would like to be spiritual) and of course I love to love, so this book was right up my alley. I referred to it recently as the mac & cheese of comfort food books. Ms. Gilbert is a great writer and keeps things pretty light throughout the story even though she's writing about a pretty dark time in her life. I felt most in awe of her amazing 4 month stint at an ashram in India and the amazing places she was able to go through meditation. In the same way that I feel really inspired by endurance athletes and the physical places the human body can go when properly trained and nourished, I was truly amazed to read of the mental, emotional and spiritual places Liz went to during her incredibly rigorous and devoted meditation practice. Makes me feel that I could get there too, if I only find it in myself to try.

My only really notable meditation experience took place in July of 2002 when I was on a 5 week post-college graduation trip to Europe with my family. I was sitting in Westminster Abbey in London, alone in the middle of one of the long wooden pews. My mother, grandmother and another friend were exploring the cathedral, but I just wanted to sit for a while. I am not sure what happened, but as I was sitting there, I suddenly felt a profound sense of peace. It was a fairly noisy, bustling afternoon, yet I couldn't hear any of it. I just sat, my mind empty and totally content. I have no idea how it happened and have yet to experience something similar, but I have never forgotten it. It does make me think that if I could only get myself to start, to try, that meditation could be something very powerful for me.

So anyway, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an interesting, fun, quick read, particularly if you are interested in Eastern religions and world travel.  I am going to end with a passage from the book that details a Zen concept that I truly enjoyed (from the last chapter, pages 329 and 330):

"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 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."