nyny

eat, pray, love

When it comes to New York Times Bestsellers, I usually run the other way screaming. So naturally, I had no intention of reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love -- even if it meant I was the only female under age 35 in all of New York City who hadn't read it. The book's popularity went nuts about a year ago, and by this past spring it seemed the entire city had read it. My plan was to lay low and wait it out, hoping that eventually everyone would stop talking about it.

However, a friend of mine would not get off my back about this book. I finally caved in just so that I'd stop having to hear about it from her. To my absolute shock (and sort of horror) I didn't totally hate it. To be clear, I mostly hated it... but not completely. While Gilbert's tone was annoying and sometimes teetered on grating, a couple of the thoughts and ideas she fleshed out on her journey really resonated with ones I have found growing in my heart and mind.

If you've been living under a rock and are not familiar with the basic premise, here it is: this journalist with a seemingly perfect life leaves her crummy marriage and embarks on a year-long journey around the world to connect with her spiritual side and explore who she is.

Here's a couple of the more appealing snippets:

Her description of what it's like to truly merge with the infinite: "I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely . . . I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was inside the void, but also was the void and I was looking at the void, all at the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom. The void was conscious and it was intelligent. The void was God, which means that I was inside God. . . I was just a part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of the universe and exactly the same size as the universe."

I get what she's saying with that, and she gets 2 points for the wormhole reference.

I get this one too: ". . . bowed flat on my face in gratitude to my God, to the revolutionary power of love, to myself, to my Guru and to my nephew --briefly understanding on a molecular level (not an intellectual level) that there was no difference whatsoever between any of these words or any of these ideas or any of these people."

30 pages later she writes: "God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are. (emphasis in original). God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion that you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred . . . we have to renounce our individuality . . . To know God, you need only to renounce one thing -- your sense of division from God."

I'm pretty much on board with that she says about getting rid of division from God to know God, but I'm not sure if I totally agree with what she is saying about individuality. I wonder if it's possible that, in God, a person both completely finds and completely loses his individuality. Can both of those be simultaneously realized without eliminating either or reducing either to the other? As a Western person, the concept of the individual is ingrained to the point where I don't really question it without a concerted effort. I guess it could be said that individuality is one of the most significant bi-products of capitalism. In contrast, I recently learned that the Japanese language didn't even have a word for "individual" until the late 19th century. I'm going to have to think some more on this one.

Although there would be tons of better choices, this wouldn't be the worst book to pick up if you're looking for a quick, pool/beach side, sorta-deep-but-not-really-heavy summer read. I can't believe I just said that. But don't expect me to be reading Water for Elephants or The Alchemist anytime soon. :)

posted by becka @ 11:05 PM