Eat! Pray! Love! Center!!

Very idyllic morning here at home. Rained last night after a day in the upper 90's. Very cleansing and as far as I know no forest fires were started from the lightning. Today, after attending Grace, I'm going to go see the new movie "Eat Pray Love". Borrowed the book from Veronica and just finished reading it. The first third was a bit hard to get into and I suppose the whole thing is kind of a "chick" book and probably the same could be said about the movie. There are some well stated parts of the book and thought I'd share a few of them here before I return it to my daughter. The poles in our lives still seem to be such a hurdle in the path toward understanding. Why must it always be "male or female", "liberal or conservative", "republican or democrat", "this religion or that", "my way or the hi way"? A man should be able to read and glean from Elizabeth Gilbert as a woman from Clive Cussler. Anyway the parts of Gilbert's book which I appreciated were mostly centered in the spiritual realm of understanding who and where God was, and how to most authentically be in touch with the divine. No surprise there I should think. I need to return the book to Veronica so I will post some excerpts on this site. One very important point to be made however is the disclaimer Elizabeth made regarding the nature of Paradise. She calls Bali a Paradise and then proceeds to explain the history of that country as being anything but Paradise. The point is that regardless of the blessings nature has given us to live in we as human beings, in our early stage of transcendence, can really mess up God's Will. The same point can be well stated about the bounty and blessing which we as Americans have squandered so much of the time. Just watched a PBS special on 1968 and the assassinations of Martin and Bobby. I know we are, as a society, better than the world of the 60's but is is sobering and tearful to realize how little we've come and how far we have to go. Suppose it's only going to happen one person at a time. How many more martyrs will it take?

So the first excerpt from the book in question was not noted until she was in India and concerned the nature of God. Most other faiths, the monotheistic ones, refer to the Hindu faith as a polytheistic pagan religion. This passage kind of sheds another light on the subject. "...Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise. Only from that point of even-mindedness will the true nature of the world (and yourself) be revealed to you. True Yogis, from their seat of equipoise,man see all this world as an equal manifestation of God's creative energy- men, woman, turnips, bedbugs, coral: it's all God in disguise. But the Yogis believe a human life is a very special opportunity, because only in human form and only with a human mind can God-realization ever occur...."Our whole business therefore in this life," wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.""

I saved this post before finishing. It's now Monday and I have seen the movie. As I expected it was a very pretty love story set in a very pretty part of the world. After reading the book I know that this "Love" story should be capitalized due to the transformational journey Ms Gilbert took that year. However the movie kind of left me as a little "l" love story. Very Hollywood. Anyway there were some important parts to the book I'd like to relate to a bit. In the Indian Ashram Liz is still tormented with her "failed" marriage and subsequent love affair. Her new friend Richard seems to give her some wise council regarding mortal love and its role in our transformational journey. He calls a "Soul Mate" (which Liz considers her love affair, and maybe her husband at some point, to be) a "mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life." I'm not sure I agree with his definition entirely but I would agree that you do see yourself more clearly in the eyes of your soulmate and this may very well be of help in transforming your life. The most interesting part of this chapter is how he equates our physical, mortal Loves in this life, soul mate or otherwise, with being doors and sometime blockages to experiencing a greater level of Love, even to "someday love the whole world. It's your destiny." How I see it is that the capacity of Love is limitless, boundless, and our realization of that vastness is very much a progression. Love is divine and as such is not finite. I believe that a "soulmate" can be a channel to this realization, even beyond this dimension.

One of the better parts of the movie, sophomorically deals with Liz's episode of forgiveness on the roof of the ashram. "The rules of transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you cling to even one last seductive thread of blame. As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; " In separation/divorce counseling we say that forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. Liz puts it this way. "From that place of meditation, I found the answer - you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It's not only possible, it's essential"

I have said and done many things in my life which I would reverse if possible. We as human animals tend to overuse this gift of speech and one of the suggestions of "mystics" in many persuasions tout the benefits of silence as a practice. Ms Gilbert puts it "Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace, and bliss." As Liz is leaving India she laments the departure and is presented with the following phrase, from God, which restates the fact that the answers are within us. "You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here." Pax Chrisi! Roberto Vincenti