Elizabeth Gilbert's Blog, page 74
April 15, 2014
Hey, I was a JEOPARDY clue last night! (Or, rather, Bali was. But so nice to see!)
Hey, I was a JEOPARDY clue last night! (Or, rather, Bali was. But so nice to see!)
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April 14, 2014
Dear Ones! Come join Oprah Winfrey, a whole bunch of amazing special guests, an…
Dear Ones!
Come join Oprah Winfrey, a whole bunch of amazing special guests, and ME (one of the amazed guests) this fall for Oprah's THE LIFE YOU WANT tour.
Eight cities, eight weekends, once in a lifetime.
See you there!
Flying with excitement,
LG
Oprah's The Life You Want Weekend
www.oprah.com
Start each day anew. Live your calling. Believe in what you can, and will, become. Begin at Oprah's The Life You Want Weekend. Details here.
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The lovely Jenny Williams has created another beautiful posting about something…
The lovely Jenny Williams has created another beautiful posting about something I said on this page last week. Thanks, Jenny!
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Preach, Brené Brown! PREACH!
Preach, ! PREACH!
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April 13, 2014
SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER! Hello my lovelies! If you’ve not yet signed up for…
SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER!
Hello my lovelies!
If you've not yet signed up for my LizNews Email Newsletter, go ahead and feel welcome to join. All the coolest news goes through that channel first…including (coming up!) the dates and cities of my paperback tour for THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS!
So either click on the LizNews icon at the top of this page, or go to 
Elizabeth Gilbert - The Official Website | ElizabethGilbert.com.
WHY WE MUST SOMETIMES GO… Right now I’m reading for the first time the great…
WHY WE MUST SOMETIMES GO…
Right now I'm reading for the first time the great memoir TRACKS by Robyn Davidson — a classic of both women's and Australian literature. For those of you who aren't familiar with this book, it's wonderful — the chronicle of a woman who, back in the 1970s, rode 1,700 miles all alone across the Australian Outback with three camels.
Why did she do it? What I love about this story is that she does not ever really provide a why. She did it because she needed to do it.
A lot of people told her she was crazy to set out on such a dangerous journey, and that she would probably die during it. But, Davidson recounts, she had one conversation before she left with an older female friend who told her: "I really like what you're doing…Getting off your butt and actually doing something is important for all of us…It's important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it's hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we've learned, even if what we do changes us, and we risk not recognizing each other when we return."
THAT IS WHY WE MUST SOMETIMES GO AWAY.
Not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of each other. To model another way of being. To represent, out there in the wild world. To bring back the treasure of sharing what we have learned.
I remember the week before I went traveling for EAT PRAY LOVE, a neighbor (a mother of two young children) gave me a long hug and said into my ear, "Take me with you in spirit. Take all of us with you, who dream of someday doing this but who right now staying home and taking care of the contracts we have signed with our lives. Tell us what you find. I will follow you later."
And she did — about ten years later. At which point, I gave her that same hug and said the same words into her ear. As I have said those exact same words to countless other people, as they are about to embark on their own journey. Go away now, but take us with you in spirit; tell us what you learned when you return.
If it's time for you to go, go NOW. But take notes. Think of your journey toward self-discovery and adventure as a community service.
You'll make us all better for it,
HEART,
LG
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I love it when people sloooooooow down the reading process. I do the same when I…
I love it when people sloooooooow down the reading process. I do the same when I love a book!
Photos of Elizabeth Gilbert
After months of denying the inevitable, I have decided to finish the book. If anyone needs me tomorrow I will be curled up in the fetal position. Quite possibly drooling. #ihatefinishingbooks #itsdepressing
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April 12, 2014
THE SLOW WISDOM MOVEMENT… I’ve been thinking lately about how long it takes t…
THE SLOW WISDOM MOVEMENT…
I've been thinking lately about how long it takes to become wise.
An example:
A few weeks ago, I was driving around with a friend, and we were talking — as friends do — about our troubles. I was talking about a rift I'd had recently with another friend, and how this split had been causing me to suffer for many months. I am a person who likes to fix things and who hates losing people, and I was forced to face the truth that there was nothing I could do could fix this relationship — in fact, all my attempted fixes had only made things worse…and that level of interpersonal failure just kills me. And I couldn't let it go — kept spinning the story in my head at all hours of the day. Anger, sorrow, confusion, regret…you know the ingredients of that stew. I couldn't fix the situation, but I couldn't drop my thoughts about the situation, either, so I was stuck in the seventh circle of brain-hell about it, with no way out.
My friend said, very simply, "Have you tried using your meditation practice to focus loving thoughts on that person?"
Well, uh, no.
Actually: Hell no.
The last thing I wanted to do during my daily meditation practice was think about this person. In fact, a lot of my daily meditation practice had become fixated on trying NOT to think about this person, because those thoughts were so distracting and upsetting. I was trying my level best to forget this person, so why would I want to focus loving thoughts on him? (Plus, don't you know what he DID????!!!! How OUTRAGEOUS the behavior was???!!)
My friend went on: "Try it, Liz. Try sitting for 30 minutes a day and really focusing on the happiest memories the two of you ever shared. Think about times when you two had real joy together. Let your heart fill with love. And then focus on all your love on him. Repeat prayers for his well-being. Send him all your light. I guarentee it will change things. It will definitely change you, because right now this relationship is only existent in your head, so it will cure the anger and sorrow that dwell there. But it might even — on some distant molecular level — change him. You may never know it, but it might work on him from afar. But at the very least, it will bring you relief."
Not very likely, thought I.
All I could imagine was that it would make me even sadder, focusing on happy memories and love. Why would I want to focus on happy memories of somebody who is no longer in my life? Why would I want to remember that I loved someone who had hurt me? What a bummer that would be! Just a hard reminder of what has been lost…
But I made a decision to try it for a week.
I thought it would be hard and painful. But strangely, it wasn't. It was, actually. immediately relieving. First of all, it wasn't hard to find happy and loving memories of this person; I had always adored him. (If I hadn't adored him, I wouldn't have been so sad and angry about losing the friendship, after all.) And focusing all my attention on those good memories brought a sense of sweetness, not sorrow. Whenever my thoughts turned to my loss or anger, I would just return to the beautiful memory and say, "We are going to focus on this now." And then I actively sent him the warmest and most loving thoughts I could, along with hopes for his happiness and peace.
You guys, it worked. It started working in, like, two days.
Did it save the relationship? No. My friend and I are still estranged, and there is absolutely no action for me to take at this time to fix that reality. Sometimes there is no action to be taken in the physical world. Instead, I am working on fixing my heart and my head — changing my interior relationship toward him (which is the only one I can control, after all.) And the sad, obsessive thoughts that were haunting me all day have subsided, replaced with a sense of peace and good will.
Loving-kindness meditation: It works.
Who knew?
But here's the crazy thing is…I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN! I should have know all this already. I've spent years and years and years studying heart-opening meditation practices, and trying to become a student of ahimsa and compassion. I went all the way to India to study this stuff in an ashram under the tutelage of a great master. I meditate every day. I practice gratitude and try to keep my spirits positive. I go to bed literally every single night listening to Pema Chodron talk about heart-opening meditation practices. I wrote a book about this stuff!
But when I really needed all those teachings — really needed to put them into living practice — I had completely forgotten them. And it took my civilian friend (who is not a monk, or a teacher, or a saint) to gently remind me of what I should already have known how to do. When she said it ("practice love") I finally heard it…or remembered it.
Which makes me think — in conclusion — about how slowly wisdom seeps into us. How many times we have to hear the same lessons again and again until slowly, slowly, slowly we finally are ready to absorb them.
Wisdom is like water dripping on the stone that is our heart, working on it every day, patiently wearing it down, patiently trying to get through. It might not get through to us today, or tomorrow, or this decade…but it keeps working on us.
Slowly we get there.
Keep letting it in.
Heart,
LG
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