EAT, PRAY, LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert

READING GUIDE

My book club recently discussed EPL. Based on our conversation and my own study of the book, I have compiled the following Reading Guide. Rather than discussing the details of a book, I prefer to explore the universal themes that organically arise from the "telling of the story." I hope these discussion prompts are helpful in facilitating your discussion. Addressing all the points would be too lengthy for a book club meeting, so choose a few that will "speak" to your members.

Following are examples of two "just for fun" activities you may want to incorporate into your book club meeting.

Italian Men & Cream Puffs

√Book club Idea: In "celebration" of Italian men, I prepared homemade "cream puffs" for our book club meeting!

That's what sports fans in American would do if their team had just lost. They'd go to a bar and get good and drunk. And not just Americans would do this-so would the English, the Australians, the Germans...everyone, right? But Luca and his friends didn't go out to a bar to cheer themselves up. They went to a bakery...eating cream puffs. I love Italy. (p. 70)

Or, you may want to have an Italian meal or hors d'oeuvres in honor of Elizabeth Gilbert's search for pleasure in Italy. The Oprah Show website selection on EPL has some recipe suggestions that sound divine!

What is YOUR Word?

√Book club Idea: Hand out name tags as each member arrives and have her write the single "word" that best identifies herself and put it on. Then have a discussion about this, perhaps also talking about "words" for members' families, communities, neighborhoods, etc.

Then he went on to explain...that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. ... But Giulio was on to the next and most obvious question: "what's your word?" ... My word might be SEEK. (p. 104)

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

* 1.* Theme: * The following passage states the theme for Elizabeth Gilbert's spiritual journey:

It wasn't so much that I wanted to thoroughly explore the countries themselves; this has been done. It was more that I wanted to thoroughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. (p. 29-30)

!Discussion Prompt: What do you think of Elizabeth Gilbert's decision to make a literal journey as a means of reaching her spiritual destination? Her choice would obviously not be practical for most of us. How can you translate her journey into something that would work for you?

* 2.* Religion:* Gilbert challenges the one-mindedness of the* "straight and narrow path"* insisted upon by so many religions.

People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or more appropriate-and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean. (p. 206)

God may be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us... The ways of Providence are infinite. (p. 208)

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 to transcendence... (p. 205)

I can't swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking then, I cannot call myself a Christian. (p. 14)

!Discussion Prompt: How do Gilbert's beliefs challenge or support those of your church or of your own personal faith?

* 3.* Spiritual:* Gilbert delves into "man's search for God" * coming to the conclusion that our relationship with God is indeed an "inside job."

God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are. God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. (p. 192)

Then I started meditating every morning on the ancient Sanskrit mantra, the Guru gives to all her students (the regal Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, "I honor the divinity that resides within me"). (p. 25)

"Our whole business therefore in this life, wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen." (p. 123)

...a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: "you bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not." (p. 122)

In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born. (p. 329)

!Discussion Prompt: Gilbert seems to be making the case for the premise that when we really know ourselves, we know God. How does this support her spiritual journey in EPL? By finally getting to know herself well, did she ultimately find God? Have you had a similar experience? Or, do you view God as a Supreme Being, separate from yourself?

* 4.* Spiritual:* Gilbert says we, as human beings, need God...and that God, needs us.

We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. ... If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God. (p. 187)

This kind of thing-a spontaneous handstand-isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands. (p. 188)

!Discussion Prompt: Do you think our relationship with God follows the rule that the best relationships are always mutual? In what ways is your relationship with God mutual?

* 5.* Growth:* Gilbert is all about the exploration of ideas and the resulting growth in knowledge and understanding.

But what about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? (p. 29)

You can still live on that shimmering line between your old thinking and your new understanding, always in a state of learning. (p. 204)

!Discussion Prompt: What are some things you do to keep your mind open to new understanding? How do you keep the judgments, dogmas, and prejudices of old thinking from slamming the door on new understanding? Is a worldview that excludes nothing too lofty of a goal? Or, is it even a desirable goal?

* 6.* Pleasure:* We can all relate to Gilbert's commentary on the busy, stressed lives we lead as Americans.

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment. ... Americans don't really know how to do nothing. This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype-the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax. (p. 61)

Gilbert personifies "time" by saying it is always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. She suggests we must sometimes sit quietly, cease relentless participation, and allow contentment to come. (p. 155)

!Discussion Prompt: What is the difference between "entertainment" and "pleasure?" What are some things you do for pleasure? What are the inherent rewards of doing nothing? While the work ethic inherited from our Puritanical roots as a country has certainly served us well in many regards, it has also been damaging. How has it been detrimental to our culture and our personal lives?

* 7.* Co-dependence:* No pun intended, but Elizabeth Gilbert "wrote the book" on co-dependence. Her comments on this all-too-common malady in our society are insightful.

I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else. (p. 65)

"You know, you seem like a completely different person, now that you're with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men." (p. 65)

!Discussion Prompt: In what ways do you "look" like your husband, or significant other? How do we as women project upon our men all sorts of good qualities that they never actually cultivated in themselves? Why do we do this? How is this disrespectful to us and to our men?

If I am to truly become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian. Famously, Gloria Steinem once advised women that they should strive to become like the men they had always wanted to marry. What I've only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too. (p. 286)

!Discussion Prompt: In what ways have we progressed since Gloria Steinem was leading the women's rights movement? And, now Elizabeth Gilbert is saying we not only have to become our own husbands but also our own fathers? What does she mean? What are some of the benefits of becoming your own husband and your own father?

In speaking to herself Gilbert says: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings. (p. 65)

!Discussion Prompt: What does it mean to use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings? In what ways does this damage a relationship? Or, do you think that a relationship should serve as a scratching post---a place where you are safe to work out your unfinished "inside" business?

* 8.* Happiness:* Gilbert feels it is our obligation as human beings to seek and find happiness and to rid our lives of the miseries that get in the way of self fulfillment and even the fulfillment of others. She speaks of the* glimmer of happiness* she felt when she began studying Italian. She encourages us to* grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt.* (p. 115) She reminds us that* clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way* (p. 261) and prevents you from being an obstacle to yourself and others.

!Discussion Prompt: What makes you feel that glimmer of happiness? How are you pursing your passions? Is your life bogged down with miseries that you need to clear out? How will clearing out these miseries help, not only you, but others?

* 9.* Soul mates:* Gilbert says you cannot live with a soul mate forever--the purpose of soul mates is to* tear down your walls and smack you awake.* S* oul mates come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.* (p. 149)

!Discussion Prompt: Gilbert's premise defies a dream most of us hold dearly-finding our "prince on a white horse" and living happily ever after. Is the romantic notion of soul mates a fairy tale? Why or why not?

* 10.* Emotional Stumbling Blocks:* Gilbert attributes her life's problems to two dilemmas: longing and control. She writes:

I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human being have every fought over, all through history, How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?" (p. 157)

Gilbert then goes on to say:

When I sit in my silence and look at my bind, it is only questions of longing and control that emerge to agitate me, and this agitation is what keeps me from evolving forward. (p. 157)

!Discussion Prompt: Gilbert identifies longing and control as the two things that have kept her from moving in a positive direction. What are your roadblocks? Do they evolve from the issues of how much do you love me and who's in charge?

* 11.* Divorce:* Many of us relate to Gilbert's angst over the end of her marriage. Gilbert compares divorce to an amputation. She says:* The longer you were married, or the rougher the amputation, the harder it is to recover. Which would explain the postdivorce, postamputation sensations I've had for a few years now, of still swinging that phantom limb around, constantly knocking stuff off the shelves...* (p. 183)

!Discussion Prompt: In what ways have those of your who are divorced been swinging that phantom limb around? What have you been constantly knocking off the shelves in your life?

Gilbert says that she really hates that her marriage ended in a way that was so unresolved. But she learns from her meditations that she can resolve the end of her marriage herself and she advises us: you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It's not only possible, it's essential. (p. 186)

!Discussion Prompt: For those of you who have experienced a difficult divorce or end to a relationship-how have you been successful or unsuccessful in finishing the business yourself?

* 12.* Resentment:* Gilbert compares resentment to smoking-* one puff of it is bad for you.* She admonishes that* you might just as well hang it up and kiss God good-bye if you really need to keep blaming somebody else for your own limitations.* (p. 186)

Gilbert seems to be saying, "the best revenge is to live a good life." Why is this so hard to do? What has worked for you in banishing the resentment and welcoming the good life?

* 13.* Instructions for Freedom:* Gilbert's "instructions for freedom" are a positive, summarizing way to end your book club discussion of* EPL* . These guidelines are easier said than done but are certainly goals worth striving towards.

•1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.

•2. You have just climbed up and above the roof. There is nothing between you and the Infinite. Now, let go.

•3. The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.

•4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. Your being here is God's response. Let go, and watch the stars come out-on the outside and on the inside.

•5. With all your heart, ask for grace, and let go.

•6. With all your heart, forgive him, FORGIVE YOURSELF, and let him go.

•7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering. Then, let go.

•8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cool night. Let go.

•9. When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It's safe. Let go.

When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy. (p. 184-185)

You mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert was going to be in Rochester yesterday (October 3rd). Did you attend? If so, let us know how it went. I am looking forward to her being on the Oprah Show tomorrow! If you use the Guide I posted for your bookclub next week, please let me know how it works for your discussion. Also, if anyone else reading this post uses it, please give me feedback.

Thanks so much for replying to my post! I am hosting bookclub this Tuesday - what wonderful ideas you have shared with me - I plan to use many of them and will let you know how it worked out:-) Yes, Liz Gilbert did visit Rohcester yesterday. She is even more beautiful in person, seemed extremely down-to-earth and spoke as well as she writes! It was an honor to meet her. I also look forward to watching her on Oprah tomorrow. Again, thank you and I will be in touch to let you know how bookclub goes. Jeanne

I used the bookclub guide you provided and it went great! My bookclub especially enjoyed the "choose your own word to describe yourself" idea. We spent a long time discussing what we thought our words should be. Everyone also appreciated the cream puffs. Thanks so much for compiling the bookclub guide. It was great! Jeanne

Jeanne, I was so excited to see your post today! I am glad your book club discussion went great and that the guide I prepared was helpful! Are you reading Oprah's new choice, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLOREA? I have gotten the book but have not started reading it yet. What is your book club's next reading choice? My book club meets later this month for a discussion of WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. I highly recommend it--it is a good read--no real messages--but great storytelling! ~Becky

I'd love to see this developed into an O group when we get them back. Please think about it.
DJ