Eat, Pray, Love

Ok. I said I wasn't going to post anything in a while but I am reading a wonderful book and I feel the urge to share it with everyone. The book is called "Eat, Pray, Love" and is written by Elizabeth Gilbert.

This book follows Elizabeth's travels across Italy, India, and Indonesia on her search for God and meaning as she tries to forgive her past and look towards the future.

Even as a professed Christian, she writes for all audiences. She invites readers with her on her journey to become closer to God. Both believers and non-believers will gain wisdom and understanding from Elizabeth's insights on love, forgiveness, and faith. Although I could not relate to many of her circumstances, I feel that I can relate to her understanding of life.

Stepping back from my own religious convictions, I would like to quote an excerpt from a section in her book while she is in India.

"The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in he Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as not to disturb anyone. This became a habit -tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God -but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day the cat died. The saint's followers were panic-stricken. It was a major religious crisis -how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.
Be very careful, warns this tale, not to get too obsessed with the repetition of religious ritual just for its own sake. Especially in this divided world, where the Taliban and the Christian Coalition continue to fight out their international trademark war over who owns the rights to the word God and who has the proper rituals to reach that God, it may be useful to remember that it is not the tying of the cat to the pole that has ever brought anyone transcendence, but only the constant desire of an individual seeker to experience the eternal compassion of the divine. Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline."