To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
1
Apr
2022
Thursday March 31, 2022
In her semi-memoir Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert describes being taught Balinese meditation. She had just spent four months in India learning -- sometimes painfully -- Yoga meditation. It involved physical postures that had to be practiced. And memorized texts that must be repeated precisely. Over and over.
But her guru in Bali simply said, “Smile.”
It was the Balinese attitude -- Smile. Always smile. Always face the world cheerfully.
It seems to me there’s an underlying truth there. We receive what we’re tuned to.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Eat Pray Love, resonance, Bali, smile
14
Aug
2019
I didn’t read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat Pray Lovewhen it was a bestseller. I waited ten years.
When I finally read the book this summer, I was interested in the conversations Gilbert had with God -- or something -- by writing out her pain, anger, depression. And something told her hand what to write in reply.
Psychics might call it “automatic writing”; charismatic Christians might call it “writing in the Spirit.” Whatever it is, it gave Gilbert the assurance that she was okay, she was loved, she mattered.
One day, I didn’t want to do anything. I had a “to-do” list about a page long. But I felt utterly unmotivated.
I wondered what would happen if I applied Gilbert’s process myself. I started by typing, “I’ve wasted the whole day.”
Almost immediately my alter ego, or something, interrupted: “ What do you mean, wasted?”
Tags: Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, inner voice