Elizabeth Gilbert: PRAY

Yoga in Sanskrit can be translated as "union." It oringinally comes from the root word yuj which means "to yoke," to attach yourself to a task at hand with ox-like discipline. And the task at hand in Yoga is to find union- between mind and body, between the individual and her God, between out thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student, and even between ourselves and our sometimes hard-to-bend neighbors.



The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simplify here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanations for man's apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call it imbalance, Buddism calls it ignorance, Islams blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization's needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: "Desire is the design flaw.") The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't recognize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: "You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not."

Our whole business there in this life, wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.

My Guru always says that only one thing will happen when you come to the Ashram-- that you will discover who you really are. So if you're hovering on the brink of madness already, she'd really rather you didn't come at all. Because, frankly, nobody wants to have to carry you out of this place with a wooden spoon clenched between your teeth.

We are singing in Sanskrit, as always, and I'm trying to become a vocal mirror for the voices of the lead singers, picking up their inflections like little strings of blue light. They pass the words back and this is how we are able to sing for miles and miles of time without tiring. All of us are swaying like kelp in the dark sea current of night.

I was full of hot powerful sadness and would have loved to burst into the comfort of tears, but tried hard not to, remember something my Guru once said-- that you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because when you do it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.

A: All I seem to do is argue with myself when I try to meditate.
B: That's just your ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge. This is what your ego DOES. It keeps you feeling separate, keeps you with a sense of duality, tries to convince you that you're flawed and broken and alone instead of whole.
A: But how does that serve me?
B: It DOESN'T serve you. Your ego's job isn't to serve you. It's only job is to keep itself in power. And right now, your ego's scared to death cuz it's about to get downsized. You keep up this spiritual path, baby, and that bad boy's days are numbered. Pretty soon your ego will be out of work and your heart'll be making all the decisions. So your ego's fighting for its life, playing with your mind, trying to assert its authority, trying to keep you cornered off in a holding pen away from the rest of the universe. Don't listen to it.
A: How do you not listen to it?
B: Ever try to take a toy away from a toddler? They don't like that, do they? They start kicking and screaming. Best way to take a toy away from a toddler is distract the kid, give him something else to play with. Divert his attention. Instead of trying to forcefully take thoughts out of your mind, give your mind something better to play with. Something healtier.
A: Like what?
B: Like love, Groceries. Like pure divine love.

God occurs in a meditative state, and is delivered through an energy source that fills the entire body with euphoric, electric light. The Japanese call this energy KI, the Chinese Buddhists call it CHI, the Balinese call it TAKSU, the Christians call it the HOLY SPIRIT, the Kalahari Bushmen call it N/UM. The Islamic Sufis poets called that God-energy "The Beloved" and wrote devotional poetry to it. The Australian aborigines describe a serpent in the sky that descends into the medicine man and give him intense, other worldly powers. In the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah this union with the divine is said to occur through stages of spiritual ascension, with energy that runs up the spine along a series of invisible meridians. Saint Teresa of Avila described her union with God as a physical ascension of light through sever inner "mansions" of her being, after which she burst into God's presence. The most difficult challenge, the saint wrote in her memoirs, was to not stir up the intellect during meditation, for anythougts of the mind-- even the most fervent prayers--will extinguish the fire of God. "It is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired." Teresa cried out in her autobiography that, if these divine experiences were mere madness, then "I beseech you, Father, let us all be mad!"

Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. Once, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true.

B: Groceries, listen to me. Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were changing and you were in the best possible place in the world for it-- in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out here in India.
A: But I really loved him.
B: Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don't you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching. I mean you got ZAPPED, kiddo. But that love you felt, that's just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That's just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries-- you have the capability to somedoy love the whole world. It's your destiny. Don't laugh.
A: I'm not laughing. (I was acutally crying) And please don't laugh at me now, but I think the reason it's so hard for me to get over this guy because I seriously believed David was my soul mate.
B: He probably was. Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everybody wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who bring you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soulmates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform you life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and BEAT IT. That was his job and he did great, but not it's over. Problem is, you can't accopt that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You're like a dog at the dump, baby-- you're just lickin' at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you're not careful, that can's gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.
A: But I love him.
B: So love him.
A: But I miss him.
B: So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it. You're just afraid to let go of the last bits of David because then you'll really be alone, and Liz Gilbert is scared to death of what will happen if she's really alone. But here's what you gotta understand, Groceries. If you clear out all that space in your mind that you're using right now to obsess about this guym you'll have a vacuum there, an open spot-- a DOORWAY. And guess what the universe will do that that doorway? It will rush in-- God will rush in-- and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed. So stop using David to block that door. Let it go.

The chattering, negative thoughts in my mind scattered in the wind like birds and jackrabbits and antelopes-- they hightailed it out of there, terrified. Silence followed. An intense, vibrating, awed silence. The lion in the giant savannah of my heart surveyed his newly quiet kingdom with satisfaction. He licked his great chops once, closed his yellow eyes and went back to sleep.

B: You're not here as a tourist or a journalist, you're here as a seeker. So explore it.
A: So you're not letting me off the hook?
B: You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That's the divine contract of a little something we call FREE WILL.

Repression and denial set up elaborate games to pretend that negative thoughts and feelings are not occuring. ... It's not a teaching that you can hear once and then expect to master immediately. It's constant vigilance and I want to do it. I need to do it, for my strength. DEVO FARMI LE OSSA is how they say it in Italian. "I need to make my bones."

You may not come here anymore with your hard and abusive thoughts, with your plague ships of thoughts, with your slave ships of thoughts, with your warships of thoughts-- all these will be turned away. Likewise, any thoughts that are filled with angry or starving exiles, with malcontents and pamphleteers, mutineers and violent assassins, desperate prostitutes, pimps and seditious stowaways-- you may not come here anymore, either. Cannibalistic thoughts, for obvious reasons, will no longer be recieved. Even missionaries will be screened carefully, for sincerity. This is a peaceful harbor, the entryway to a fine and proud island that is only now beginning to cultivate tranquility. If you can abide by these new laws, my dear thoughts, then you are welcome in my mind-- otherwise, I shall turn you all back toward the sea from whence you came. This is my mission, and it will never end.

Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.

This search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of a human life...

Hafiz said that he and God had become like two fat me living in a small boat-- "we keep bumping into each other and laughing."

Imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when you could experience your infinitude instead...

The antevasin was an in-betweener. He was a border-dweller. He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar. I'm just a slippery antevasin-- betwixt and between-- a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new.

I believe that all religions of the world share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. Find your metaphor, whatever it is. You are free to search for it.

Imagine that the Universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of things-- right in the hub of the wheel-- not out at the edges were all the wild whirling takes place, where you get can frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness-- that's your heart. There's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.