Eat, Pray, Barf. One woman’s search for every fling.

Favorite line for humor:

“All this New Age crapalapotamus makes my ashram hurt.” (particularly love the “makes my ashram hurt”)

Favorite lines for incision and true, gritty snark:

“Minimal effort (look inward), maximum results (you are God)! What’s not to love?”

“How terribly convenient that while making these journeys of ‘self-discovery,’ they’re able to ignore the crushing poverty and horrific oppression around them. It’s just so typical of the rampant vacuity of celebrity faux religion.

If Elizabeth Gilbert’s enlightenment was worth its salt, she’d have come home all fired up to ease the suffering she stepped over on the way to her precious little ashram.”

Somehow I have missed the phenomena. What book is this, and why is it such a current hit?

My niece and I had a spirited discussion on celebrities and their search for faith and usually it comming up short. She was convinced that Jessica Simpson had figured out the faith “thing” and what true inner beauty was all about. To prove it, she wanted me to watch a video with Simpson touring India and how it changed her. The Price of Beauty, if I remember correctly. I watched and well, you took the words right out of my mouth when you said,

“How terribly convenient that while making these journeys of ‘self-discovery,’ they’re able to ignore the crushing poverty and horrific oppression around them. It’s just so typical of the rampant vacuity of celebrity faux religion.”

THis is my favourite post ever! I especially love Naomi’s man-version. Heh heh!

We’re doing this book for my bookclub; I may have to steal some of your lines!

Thanks for the laugh, Elizabeth. Next time, why don’t you tell it like it is?

Valerie

I think I know that Irishman

This is an awesome post. I thought that I was, perhaps, the only person in existence who detested this book.

My karma was ROFLMAO

Very,very well said, Elizabeth! I took away many of the same thoughts about this book and its author.

The things our culture prizes says a lot about us.

The only reason I recognized the title was because I happened to be walking by the TV when a trailer for the movie came on. It was an amusing scene on the difficulties of meditation and caught my attention. You can count me among those who haven’t heard of the book.

I enjoyed the snarky review, but the topic doesn’t generate the same reaction in me. I’ve mentioned that rather than Christian fundamentalist cult, my childhood formation was much more pluralistic. One part of that was certainly grounded in Eastern religions with lots of other things layered onto it. (I don’t recall ever hearing the term “New Age” as a child in the 70s, but some aspects of my formation certainly fit within the things that became lumped under that umbrella name.)

I remember practicing yoga, meditation, and watching and learning tarot readings from as young as six years old. By the time I was in 6th-8th grade (and attending a Catholic school as a non-Catholic, I might mention — I meant the pluralist part) I was practicing transcendental meditation regularly, learning palmistry, studying numerology, and had attended a past life regression seminar. Many of the books I studied came out of my parents small press bookstore. And the past life regression seminar was hosted by them. (I’ll note that much of the above was my mother searching. My father, ever the skeptical scientist, didn’t see any harm in it, but tended to find transcendence himself in nature.) As a young adult in my twenties, I more seriously studied Taoism, Buddhism (which oddly I appreciate more today as a Christian than I did at the time), and the perspectives flowing from Vedic literature. You can throw a zillion other things into the above mix and Christianity was usually present in some significant way as well (well, not so much for about twelve years at the beginning of my adult life), but the above provides enough ground for what I want to say.

Given my background, I had several thoughts pop into my head as I read the above. The first came from this thread of thought.

“Anyway, forget helping others or relieving human suffering. That would require sacrificial love; the kind of love that smacks uncomfortably close to, I dunno, true religion.”

Your phrase “true religion” above brings to mind James’ “pure and undefiled religion.” However, that sort of religion, one that marks your life with sacrificial love for those who are unlike you, is not a universal trait of religions. In fact, it’s fairly uniquely Christian — and is so deeply embedded in our faith that when we fail to practice it, it’s not clear that we can really be called “Christian” at all.

In fact, as I consider religions, past and present, the only one that comes immediately to mind as one that would promote any form of sacrificially caring for any and all poor (not just your own) is Buddhism. However, the goal in that sacrifice would not really be love as much as detachment. In fact, while love is certainly not seen as a bad thing in Buddhism, the sort of deep, self-emptying, immanent love we find in Christ could be perceived as a hindrance on the path in at least some forms of Buddhism. So at least to some extent, your criticism — while valid — amounts to little more than a statement that the religion is not Christian.

Your next comment that really snagged my attention was this one. “Humans are searching for transcendence, for God.” I was having a conversation with a minister of mine on this topic. I would go further. I would agree that people are searching for transcendence. However, I would point out that they are searching for transcendence in other places because the American cultural form of Christianity is almost utterly devoid of any sense of transcendence or real meaning. We’ve stripped Christianity of virtually everything that ever gave it any meaning or depth. This is not a criticism of any particular tradition, denomination, non-denomination, or sect. To my eyes, it’s a cultural reduction that spans them all to one degree or another.

Christianity offers a deeply mystical and transcendent faith, but it’s one that is utterly rooted in its physicality. Our transcendent God is everywhere present and filling all things. In him we live and move and have our being. We connect mystically to him through his icons — our neighbors, through water, through oil, through bread and wine (all “common” matter), and through the spoken word of prayer. We could not know him, so he became one of us, joining his nature to ours. Our disciplines are deeply rooted in the physical. There is no duality or opposition between material and spiritual in Christianity. The eternal Logos (Word) became sarx (flesh) and that destroys any barrier or division between the two. We love any and every other human being who intersects our life because only when we do so do we truly love God. (Sadly, most days it seems I don’t love God very much at all.)

The far Eastern religions have a very different perspective on the nature of reality. They are certainly mystical and transcendent, but it’s an entirely different sort of mysticism and transcendence.

Now, I will agree that our culture takes those religions and renders them just as banal for our consumption as our culture has long since rendered Christianity. We get “religion-lite” in any and every form because that’s what we want. We largely don’t want a religion that makes real demands on us or costs us in any way. We want something smooth and easy to swallow that provides just the right touch of “meaning” without interfering with our comfort to any significant degree.

But that’s hardly confined to the Americanization of Eastern religions or “New Age” spirituality. I can walk into virtually any American Christian Church and find a “Christianized” variation of the same thing. I don’t have any answers, but let’s not pretend that’s not our present reality.

Yes, I know. A boring, serious response to a funny, snarky post. I’ll try to be snarkier (is that even a word?) next time.

I loved Eat Pray Love. I loved it so much I’ve read it about five times and given away at least two copies of the book. Three? I can’t remember. I just keep telling everyone to read it. I think I grasp why you didn’t like it, but to say it’s worse than Twilight really gets my hackles up, LOL.

Two things I’d say in response to this post: 1. If Gilbert had written a magnum opus to how she was selflessly helping the poor, she’d be attacked for being so full of herself and tooting her own horn. We don’t know what she does with ALL her time and her money – so don’t be so sure that she hasn’t found “true” religion. And 2. as someone who was jammed into an unforgiving box of a what a woman “should” be by cultish fundamentalism, I totally related to Gilbert’s “midlife crisis,” and I’m frankly surprised you can’t relate yourself. After many years of being told that good, godly women look like X and sinful, selfish whores look like Y, I woke up one day and realized that I was sick and tired of being judged because I didn’t fit someone’s cardboard cutout idea of what a “true” Christian woman is. I wasn’t exactly X and I wasn’t exactly Y, but I was – I am – who God made me. I loved Gilbert’s first book (have yet to read her second) because it was the first expression I encountered of something I had been feeling deep inside: maybe I’m not inherently wrong and terrible just because I don’t want the life that someone else laid out for me. Maybe it’s okay for me to want the life I want.

Elizabeth, your blog is all about bucking against the oppressive expectations of fundamentalism and being able to say, “hey, I’m not superwoman, I’m flawed, and that’s okay.” I find it sad that you’re so hateful toward another woman who has tried to do the same thing – figure out where she fits if she’s not fitting into the box that someone else has created for her. And why? Because the conclusions she reached and the God she found are different from yours?

I didn’t read the book. I jumped to the conclusion (whether warranted or not) that it was a story about finding fulfillment through sexual experiences. I wasn’t really interested since that is a pretty standard topic in modern Western culture. Also I didn’t watch the show with Julia Roberts so I don’t know how she is connected with the book.

All that to say that I am mostly going by the review in this post. If the author’s religion is one of feeling good, I can understand why people would be drawn to the book and the idea. The Christian churches I have attended (and for the past 25 yrs. they have been evangelical churches) present a religion in which feeling good is a bad, bad thing. Only a fool feels good. The truly religious know that they are foul, filthy slime that is more disgusting than garbage and they should be filled with godly sorrow when contemplating their loathsome selves.

The brain research that is being done exploring people’s “wiring” for religion or spirituality is really interesting. (See Fingerprints of God by Hagerty. for a popular overview of the subject.)
Some people seem to be more “wired” than others for transcendence. If those who are so oriented are looking for a spiritual structure and they come across Gilbert’s religion or the American evangelical church option, I don’t find it at all surprising that many would land in Gilbert’s camp.

Sadly, I have not seen anyone in church feeding orphans, including me. I have rarely even seen people extend a kind word to the person next to them in the pew.

After my years in an abusive church, where my “absolute truth” was “absolutely wrong”, I don’t think I could ever say with any certainty that I know what it is.

I believe that there is a God. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Beyond that I can proclaim nothing.

Thanks for calling on the incarnational aspect of Christianity–dare I say its hallmark feature?–as a way to distinguish its mysticism from the mysticism found in other religions.

Hmmm…I have to say I did enjoy reading the book – not that I agree 100% with her worldview, but I was actually able to glean some insight into my own life from the “pray” section of the book.

**shrug**

I don’t know – maybe I’ll read it in a year and think it’s all a bunch of crap, but I read it at a time in my life when I needed to learn some of the same lessons that Elizabeth Gilbert learned. Granted, my spirituality is vastly different than hers, but God still reached me.

Incidentally, I read it at the same time as I was reading “Tired of Trying to Measure Up,” which is written from a Christian point of view – and some of the principles that stood out to me in both books were similar.

Who knows? I read “Captivating” by the Eldredges and it was exactly what I needed at the time, but when I went back a year or two later and read it, it came across as a bunch of misogynistic crap!!!

I did love your review, though – and I do agree with the general idea of touchy-feely “Hollywood” spirituality .

I read this post as hateful towards Gilbert herself, but I believe you didn’t mean it that way. And I can understand being fed up with spirituality or self-help mumbo-jumbo that doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of substance. Goodness knows I’ve had my share of eye-rolling, “Oh, PLEASE” moments in response to spiritual trends. I think that any time an author garners a huge following after writing a “life-changing” book, there are going to be just as many people who think the entire thing is a bunch of baloney. (About a year ago someone told me they were completely unimpressed by The Handmaid’s Tale. I was floored. I wanted to scream, “What do you MEAN, you think it was completely overrated??? Do you even have a pulse? Can you READ?”)

I still maintain that Eat Pray Love is a million times better than Twilight, though. That is a literary phenomen whose draw I understand even though I personally find the books… um, TERRIBLE.

When I say I believe in absolute truth I mean that I believe it exists. I don’t claim to have a corner on it. I certainly don’t know how to explain it. Like you, it boggles my mind.

Quid est veritas?

Jesus is truth. That’s pretty much the only thing I know for sure.

Hmmm. Our wealth and comfort have more to do with having 5% of the world’s population and something like 20% of the world’s resources than any inherent advantages in western civilization over eastern civilization. I’ll also note that looking down on India for its “caste system”, “abuse of women and children”, and “persecution of the other” seems a bit odd considering our own recent history. After all, we’re the country who practiced slavery and segregation. We’re the ones who once had strong anti-catholic and anti-semitic streaks (including a number of incidents I’m sure we would prefer to forget). We’re the country who forced children to work long hours in abusive conditions in sweatshops, mines, and similar conditions for very little pay. We’re the country where women couldn’t vote, own property, or work in most professions and were often little more than the property of her father or husband. (I’ll note that we inherited that directly from ancient Rome, the font of Western civilization.) There is, in fact, very little negative that could be said about India that could not also be applied to us in some form.

We are doing better now, but it’s a very recent change and as our tendency to embrace and approve things like aggressive war, torture, and other forms of overt ‘othering’ demonstrates, those same proclivities have not gone away by any means. And unlike India, we still have not had a female head of state.

We can criticize, certainly. But we must do so from a place of humility, not pride. If we do not acknowledge our own tendencies and our own history, we sound as bombastic and arrogant as much of the rest of the world considers us.

I will also say that there is certainly good to be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. And the Christian approach has traditionally been to acknowledge the good everywhere we find it, for all that is good comes from God. We should not seek to replace what is present where it is good, but redeem and complete it. Yes, we will also encounter evil. But in truth, we don’t have to look to India or China to find evil. We have more than enough in our own hearts and in our own Christianized American version of the modern, western secular religion.

Although it’s a little silly to speak of “India” as though it were at all homogeneous, it is safe to say that the way you define the problem and nature of reality will influence the answer you find.

Not directly related, but I do find it strange that modern Western Christianity has become almost as pluralistic in its own way as “Hinduism” has always been. To someone looking into both from the outside, I think they might look more similar today than they would have in the past. Historically, “christian pluralism” would have been an oxymoron. With 30K+ flavors today and growing, that is no longer true.

I favor vampires, too, of the “Buffy” variety. Which makes me old school compared to the Twilight crowd but a young whippersnapper to the Bram Stoker fangirls!

The part about Italy just made me hungry, and the other two parts were unrelatable. Even my good friend who teaches yoga couldn’t find anything to take away from the India experience. (In fact, she later went to Bali and came home totally depressed by the poverty and filth they found. I wonder how much of that EG saw and… ignored?)

The weird thing about it, to me, was that it billed itself as a “universal” book–like we could all use her journey to help find ourselves–but her journey was very self-specific. The food part, I got–but the other parts were outside of my sphere, and failed to evoke any universal themes (in my opinion).

What bugs me the most about celebrity pseudo-discovery is that once they find “the answer,” they usually don’t hesitate to use their considerable public influence to evangelize to the rest of us.

I also dislike EG’s enormously popular Ted speech about creativity and muses, where we each have a muse called a genius who is there to help us create and take the blame when what we create isn’t well-received. How about just embracing the idea that maybe you aren’t “owed” multiple gigantic financial successes in your life?

Oooh. Buffy! Me like. (And have all seven seasons on DVD.) My brother the actor, stuntman, stunt coordinator, fight coordinator also helped out on Buffy. (A friend of his was the head stunt coordinator.) One of my daughter’s “flat stanley” pictures in kindergarten was with James Marsters. (Not Buffy related, but another was also Jennifer Garner. My brother was the Alias fight coordinator for its entire run. Presently he’s fight coordinator on Chuck.)

The scene from Buffy with him that always sticks in my mind was from Season 5 as they are in the RV trying to run away and are being chased by the knights on horseback. My brother is the one who jumps on top of the RV and fights Buffy.

Ah. You brought Buffy goodness to mind. I’ll have to go watch the musical episode now.

Agreed about the narcissism. I think that’s what put me off finishing the book, much more so than anything to do with poverty, pseudo-spirituality, etc. Just felt like I was reading a self-indulgent and ‘rich Western’ mindset, in a way that made me very uncomfortable. Too close to home? Who knows, but I couldn’t stomach that aspect of the book.

My sister read this book….she loved it. Now she has two children out of wedlock, on wel-fare, lost her job, and is fighting to keep her “boyfriend” in America.

Read the first chapter…(to see where my sister was coming from) and thought it was crap too.