Eat, Pray, Love

Over Spring Break, I read Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. She takes a year of her life to travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia. I really enjoyed her writing style. I felt that it was easy to read, and she included a lot of humor into her book. She takes the time to travel because she is searching for happiness in her life. Especially in India, she is searching for a deeper meaning in life, and she describes how she experiences God through meditation. Although her experiences and revelations were deep and full of meaning, she relates them to the audience in a light-hearted way that is easy to understand. I really liked her laid-back style. After reading the book, I felt like I should be on a first name basis with the author because I felt like I knew her so well from the way she communicated her experiences.

I liked the entire book, but I particularly enjoyed the section about her travels in India. At first, she really struggles with meditation. She finds that it is really hard to quiet herself to concentrate on the meditation practices. While she faces many challenges with this form of prayer, she pushes herself to overcome the obstacles. She endures physical pain while trying to sit through the meditation, but by the end of her journey, she comes to actually embrace the meditation practices. I admired her perseverance, and I think it shows an important lesson about how things do not always come easily. There are many things in life that require a struggle before you can reach the good part, and it is important to not give up as soon as something gets hard. I think she comes to love meditation because it was so hard for her in the beginning. Many times, something becomes much greater if you have to endure challenges to reach it.

Another part I liked about the book is that she focuses on experiencing God through her own spirituality and experiences with Him. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about religion. I think that sometimes people get really caught up in the differences in beliefs among different religions or denominations, and I think people need to take a step back to look at the bigger picture. It is not about your religious beliefs; rather, it is about striving to live the best possible life and striving to connect with God or whatever greater being you believe in. In her book, Gilbert does not try to interject anything about her personal beliefs. She simply relates how she reached God through meditation practices, and I really enjoyed the way she discussed the subject. While I do not see myself living at an ashram in India, I do hope that I can one day reach the depth of spirituality that Gilbert found during her stay at the ashram.