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Elizabeth Gilbert

" So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I‚Äôve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I‚Äôm scared they will never leave. I say that I don‚Äôt want to take the drugs anymore, but I‚Äôm frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together. In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page:I‚Äôm here. I love you. I don‚Äôt care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it‚ÄîI will love you through that, as well. If you don‚Äôt need the medication, I will love you, too. There‚Äôs nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship‚Äîthe lending of a hand fromme to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace‚Äîreminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror‚Äôs reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing‚Äîit fired off this split-second message: ‚ÄúHey! You know her! That‚Äôs a friend of yours!‚Äù And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page. Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a FRIEND‚Ä¶ I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression‚Äôs lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Inspirational

related quotes

" Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

whispers

" Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon? "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Time

" My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: "I want a spiritual teacher. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Funny

" I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Funny , Food

" The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Spirituality

" You have been to hell, Ketut?"He smiled. Of course he's been there.What's it like in hell?" Same like in heaven," he said.He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."He said. "To up, to down -- all same, at end."I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below. I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. " Love, too," he said. Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this! "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Spirituality

" At that moment of realization (that union with God is always present), that's when God let me go, let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken message:You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Spirituality

" So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. 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. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Spirituality

" Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. 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. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile.(From Ketut Liyer, the Balinese healer) "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Energy , Spirituality

" Every religion in the world has had a subset of devotees who seek a direct, transcendent experience with God, excusing themselves from fundamentalist scriptural or dogmatic study in order to personally encounter the divine. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Experience , Divine

" Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline. Your job, then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Divinity , Spirituality

" As the saying goes, "Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them." Why would I want to keep my limitations? "

Elizabeth Gilbert

Fear

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