Quotes

Quotes from Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert.
"To find the balance you want," Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become.  You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two.  That way you can stay in the world.  But you must stop looking at the world through your head.  You must look through your heart instead.  That way you know God." p.27
"Moreover, I couldn't stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breastfeeding her first born: Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face.  You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit." p.10
"True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to be bed was the only possible answer. Go back to bed, said this omniscient interior voice, because you don't need to know the final answer right now, at three o'clock in the morning on a Thursday in November.  ...Go back to bed so that, when the tempest comes, you'll be strong enough to deal with it." p. 16
"The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life.  If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single -pointed focus, he taught. p.29
"Depression and Loneliness track me down after about ten days in Italy. ... They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me-- Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right.  They don't need to show me their badges.  I know these guys very well.  We've been playing a cat-and-mouse games for years now.  Though I admit that I am surprised to meet them in this elegant Italian garden at dusk.  ... Then they frisk me.  They empty my pockets of any job I had been carrying there.  Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that.  Then loneliness starts interrogating me, which I dread because it always goes on for hours.  He's polite but relentless, and he always trips me up eventually." p. 46-47
"There were a few years there, lost in borderless despair, when I used to experience all the world's sadness as my own.  Everything sad leaked through me and left damp traces behind." p.101
"But I felt a glimmer of happiness when I started studying Italian, and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face first out of the dirt-- this is not selfishness but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight." p.115


"There's a reason they call God a presence-- because God is right  here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time." p. 132
"...remembering 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." p.137
"All I seem to do is argue with myself when I try to meditate."
"That's just your ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge.  This is what your edo 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." p.140
"Ham-sa.
In Sanskrit it means "I am That."
The Yogis say that Ham-sa is the most natural mantra, the one we are all given by God before birth.  It is the sound of our own breath.  Ham on the inhale,  sa on the exhale." p.141
"I am That.  I am divine, I am with God, I am an expression of God, I am not separate, I am not alone, I am not this limited illusion of an individual. " p.141-142
"Sean said, "Da-- this meditation stuff, it's crucial for teaching serenity.  It can really save your life.  It teaches you how to quiet your mind." His father turned to him and said kindly, "I have a quiet mind already," p. 154
"My prayers are becoming more deliberate and specific.  It has occurred to me that it's not much use to send prayers out to the universe that are lazy." p. 176
"So now I take the time every morning to search myself for specificity about what I am truly asking for." p.177
"He said, "Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day.  This is a power you can cultivate.  If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.  Drop everything else but that.  Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever." p. 178

"To meditate, only you must smile.  Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver." p.231
"he says, by mediating every night before sleep and by pulling the healthy energy of the universe into his core." p. 242  Ketut 9th generation medicine man
"So what can we do about the craziness of the world?"
"Nothing." Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. "This is nature of world.  This is destiny.  Worry about your craziness only-- make you in peace."... "Purpose of meditation is only happiness and peace-- very easy." p. 251
"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teaching about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough.  But that's not how happiness works.  happiness is the consequence of personal effor.  You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, .... You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your won blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it..." p. 260
"For some reason, I feel the same way about you that I felt about my kids when they were small--that is wasn't their job to love me, it was my job to love them." p.311
"Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy0tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue." p329