Travelogue a rendezvous with the soul

Sarah Peasley, Special to the News

Friday, February 24, 2006

Liz Gilbert is a wreck. At the beginning of her story, she is suffering, suffering through a nasty divorce. Exhausted by a lifetime of bad choices in men, she is losing weight, crying all the time.

But learning Italian makes her feel better. So does meditating. She yearns to find a way to enjoy earthly delights while also devoting herself to God.

So she conjures a book proposal. She'll allow herself a year of thoughtful self-examination against the backdrop of three countries: Italy, to hone her language skills over bowls of pasta and gelato; then India, to meditate; and finally Indonesia, to learn to balance these seemingly incompatible desires for pleasure and service.

Amazingly, this wreck of a woman figures it out in that year and gives us one fine - sometimes startling - book: Eat, Pray, Love. It is foremost an intimate account of a spiritual journey. But it's also a zippy travelogue with rich, likable characters and laugh-out-loud humor. Gilbert sticks to her vow to be celibate, but does have lots of flirty fun.

Her search begins with the sadly all-too-common story of today's American woman: in a marriage that should make her happy, but really makes her miserable. Sobbing on the bathroom floor yet again one night, she hears a voice. It's her inner voice, but also God's voice. It tells her to go back to bed and get stronger, then deal with her marriage.

"In a way, this little episode had all the hallmarks of a typical Christian conversion experience - the dark night of the soul, the call for help, the responding voice, the sense of transformation. But I would not say that this was a religious conversion (but rather a) religious conversation. The first words of an open and exploratory dialogue that would, ultimately, bring me very close to God, indeed."

Gilbert doesn't wear spirituality like a fresh frock she hopes will make her pretty, but nurtures the spiritual seed within herself to find the beauty and love in everything. In one hysterical example, before her overseas trip, she makes a cross-country drive with her friend Iva, "in my normal state of sweaty disarray," complaining that her husband will not sign the divorce papers and moaning that she cannot endure another year in court. She wishes she could petition the universe for help.

Iva urges her to do just that. Gilbert writes a petition right there, asking God to intervene and complete the divorce. Iva, behind the wheel, says she signs it with her heart and asks Gilbert who else would sign it. "After each name, Iva would say with assurance, 'Yep. He just signed it,' or 'She just signed it.'...I closed my eyes and waited for more names to come to me. 'I think Bill and Hillary Clinton just signed it,' I said.

"The names spilled from me. They didn't stop spilling for almost an hour...and I became filled with a grand sense of protection, surrounded by the collective goodwill of so many mighty souls." Then Gilbert napped. Her ringing cell phone woke her: It was her attorney saying her husband had signed the papers.

Gilbert recognizes that there are many paths to God, and yoga is hers. After regaining her lost weight (and then some) in Italy, she travels to her teacher's ashram in India. She chants, meditates, scrubs floors - all the things she is supposed to do. But the transcendent experience she seeks eludes her.

Then, during a weeklong retreat for visitors on the topic of turiya, the fourth level of human consciousness, it happens. "One Thursday afternoon in the back of the temple, right in the midst of my Key Hostess duties, wearing my nametag and everything - I am suddenly transported through the portal of the universe and taken to the center of God's palm.

"It was the deepest love I'd ever experienced, beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn't euphoric. It wasn't exciting."

But it's very exciting for her readers, a satisfying climax, gently described. She wonders, "Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the whole time?" And soon she is on to Bali, for further personal growth.

Years before, on a writing assignment, Gilbert had met a toothless healer who told her she would return and study with him.

"Now, I'm the kind of person who, when a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man tells you that you're destined to move to Bali and live with him for four months, thinks you should make every effort to do that."

Ketut Liyer turns out to be all she hoped he would be. He helps her find her balance and teaches her about the Four Brothers Meditation, relating to the invisible brothers who come into the world with each one of us and protect us all our lives.

But her brothers don't protect her the next day when she is riding her bike through town: A bus knocks her to the ground, where she sustains a nasty cut. Ketut Liyer sends Gilbert and her throbbing knee to a traditional Balinese healing center, where Gilbert meets the 30-something woman healer, Wayan. Not only does Wayan mix an herbal concoction to heal the infection, but she can tell Gilbert has not had sex for a long time by Gilbert's knees ("...the cartilage. Very dry. Hormones from sex lubricate the joints.") and promises to find her a good man.

Sure enough, a friend of Wayan's invites Gilbert to a party, where she meets a handsome older Brazilian, Felipe. Felipe is recovering from a painful divorce, too, and the two dance slowly toward each other for weeks, forging a friendship, and finally lubricating the cartilage in Gilbert's dry, dry joints.

That close friendship, even more than the romance - which still endures at book's end - is testament to the inner health and stability Gilbert earns for herself in that year.

This deeply personal story is fun and inspiring. Join Gilbert as she eats, prays and loves. You will laugh, cry and love with a more open heart.

Sarah Peasley is a freelance writer living in Littleton.