Elizabeth Gilbert was 30 years old when she realized her life was headed in the wrong direction. She was married to a man she loved dearly, but they wanted different things. He wanted a family, and she wanted to explore her independence. For the next four years, Gilbert moved through the emotional struggles of ending one life and beginning another. In Eat Pray Love, Gilbert shares her story of survival and transformation when all seemed lost. It is the story of her journey from darkness into the light.
For nearly two months, Gilbert snuck out of bed each night in her home in Upstate New York that she shared with her husband. She hid in the bathroom, feeling ashamed, confused, and guilty about wanting to be free of her marriage. One night, she became so overwhelmed that she cried and prayed for the first time in her life. She asked God for help and a sign of what to do. Suddenly, she heard a voice. It sounded like her voice but also different. The voice told her to go to bed and rest. She would need it for what was to come.
Seven months later, Gilbert separated from her husband. She wanted the divorce to be amicable, but her husband was too hurt. He refused all settlement offers and held her hostage in the marriage for years. Gilbert was confused, alone, and saddened by her husband’s hatred of her, but her spirits were lifted by a new love—David.
Gilbert fell hard and fast for David. Her husband had taken both their house and apartment in the city, so she moved into David’s Manhattan apartment right away. Their love was passionate and playful, but things changed after 9/11. The stress of her divorce and the attack on her city was too much for Gilbert, and she became needy. The more she needed David’s love, the more he withheld it.
After her first breakup with David, Gilbert fell into a deep depression. She became suicidal and started taking antidepressants. The only thing that helped was her newfound interest in an Indian Yogi Guru. She started to learn about meditation and decided she wanted to visit this Guru’s Ashram one day.
During this time, Gilbert also started learning Italian. She’d always wanted to, and now seemed as good a time as ever. She found so much joy speaking the sensual Italian words and phrases, she wondered what immersing herself in the culture might do for her. She also visited Bali during this time on assignment for a magazine. While there, she met a medicine man who read her palm. He said she didn’t need to worry so much. She would lose everything, including all her money, but she would get it all back. He also said she would come back to visit him again and teach him English.
When Gilbert returned home, she hatched a plan. She would visit Italy, India, and Indonesia over the course of a year to find pleasure in life and a spiritual awakening. She saw the common letter “I” as an auspicious sign. Her husband finally agreed to a settlement, in which he took all of her money, but she was free. Her book publisher gave her an advance to write about her year-long journey. The medicine man was right—her life was looking up already.
After her divorce was finalized, Gilbert left everything behind, including her on-again-off-again relationship with David, to go to Italy. She landed in Rome and moved into a studio, where she would stay for four months. She signed up for language classes and started language exchange lessons with a young man named Giovanni.
Life in Rome was beautiful the first couple of weeks. Gilbert’s only desire while in Italy was to experience as much pleasure as possible, and her sole mission was to eat the best food she could find. Gilbert struggled at first to let go of her New England sensibilities that life was about hard work. The beauty of doing nothing, or bel far niente in Italian, went against her natural instincts. But this trip was about learning to enjoy life, so she worked hard to find the simple pleasures and appreciate them thoroughly.
Gilbert’s pleasure-seeking was thwarted, however, after only 10 days. She was walking home, admiring the architecture and open displays of love, when she was hit with the sinking sensations of loneliness and depression. She’d stopped taking her antidepressants because she was finding such joy in Italy, but she realized she was not yet healed from the emotional traumas of her past.
When Gilbert got home, guided by her loneliness and depression, she crawled under her covers in despair. Suddenly, her life seemed frivolous and sad. She didn’t know what she was doing and felt like a failure for her past relationships. She pulled out a small notebook and wrote a message asking for help. This notebook was where she had been communicating with the same voice from that night on the bathroom floor. Like always, the voice guided her to write a response. The message told her that she was loved, that she was not alone, and that she would always be taken care of. Gilbert felt her anxiety slip away and decided not to start her medication again.
While in Italy, Gilbert took many side trips to other regions of the country. She traveled through Parma, Bologna, and Montepulciano to taste the wonderful food and wine famous in those areas. She and a friend traveled to Naples to eat the best pizza in the world. Gilbert couldn’t believe how good the pizza was. Eating it was an other-worldly experience. She caught sight of herself in the window and almost didn’t recognize herself. True, she’d gained weight on her tour of eating. But mostly, the person reflected back looked happy. She hadn’t seen that person in a long time.
On the way back to Rome, Gilbert realized not knowing where she stood with David was threatening her growth. She knew she had to officially end things with him. Part of her still longed for him, but she knew they made each other miserable. It wasn’t the right match. She wrote him a letter breaking things off, and he responded in agreement. It was the right decision, but it still broke her heart.
Gilbert loved Rome, but it never quite felt like her city. When she told a friend about this, he said every city has a word. If you don’t encompass that word, you don’t belong in the city. Rome’s word was “sex,” which explained why Gilbert didn’t fit it. She’d taken a vow of celibacy for the duration of her trip to heal and figure out who she was. She didn’t know what her word was, but she’d experienced so much pleasure and opened up her heart to so much joy in Italy, she was certain it was no longer “depression.” For now, that was enough. She would continue seeking her word once she got to India.
Gilbert arrived at her Guru’s Ashram the night before New Year’s Eve. She was eager to start her journey through meditation and connect with God. Her first day, she meditated with the other residents for hours to welcome in the new year. She chanted and sang all night, finding energy in her prayers, and welcomed a new beginning for the world and herself. Italy became a distant memory.
At first, Gilbert struggled with her meditative practice. She’d always struggled back home and hoped being at the Ashram would help. But she couldn’t turn off her mind enough to concentrate. Every morning while she meditated, she became distracted by thoughts of sorrow, struggle, frustration, and failure. Her thoughts were critical, and she felt trapped in a downward spiral. She’d open her eyes and spend the rest of the hour staring at the other residents meditating successfully, which made her feel worse.
But help was on the way. It took the form of a man named Richard from Texas. Richard and Gilbert became friends quickly. He even nicknamed her “Groceries” for her insatiable appetite. Richard became a spiritual guide for Gilbert. He helped her see that she was allowing her thoughts to rule her. Her ego was afraid of her transformation and was trying to stop her from achieving it. Gilbert took this lesson to heart and was able to stop giving her thoughts emotional power. She was finally able to meditate, and she grew closer to God.
Even though Gilbert found success meditating, she still felt stuck in her sorrow regarding her divorce and David. Richard helped her with David. He told her to give her heart time to heal in this spiritual place without disruption. David was likely her soul mate, but that only meant he was supposed to come into her life to help her grow. If not for David, Gilbert wouldn’t have searched for a transformative experience, and she wouldn’t be at the Ashram. She should thank David for his important role and move on. God would step in and fill the space with love.
Another resident, a poet from New Zealand, helped her with her husband. Gilbert wanted to be forgiven and set free from the guilt of hurting him. She wanted to talk to her ex-husband so he would stop hating her. But her friend showed her that she could find forgiveness and freedom even if her husband wasn’t there. He took her to the roof of one of the buildings and told her to pray. Gilbert prayed that she and her husband could find a way to forgive and move forward with love. She beckoned her ex-husband’s spirit and engaged in a metaphysical conversation with him. When it was over, Gilbert knew the pain and hate had been laid to rest. She was free.
Gilbert still didn’t know who she was on her own or what her word was. She continued to practice meditation and grew stronger in her ability to quiet her mind. Then, one day, she had a deep experience with God. She slipped into turiya, the fourth dimension of consciousness, and realized that God was inside her. God was love, and that love lived in her soul. She didn’t have to fear losing it. As long as she opened her heart to God, she would embody pure love.
By the time Gilbert left the Ashram, she was balanced and at peace in her heart. She’d found a place to put her demons and surrounded them with love. She didn’t need to run from anything anymore. Every ounce of her was part of God’s love. She also found her word while reading a Yogic text. The word was antevasin, which roughly meant someone who lives on the border of two worlds. That was who she was now. She existed on the border of her past and future. There were so many more levels of discovery to encounter, and she would keep moving forward, learning more along the way, and following the path of her heart forever.
Gilbert landed in Bali with no plan or knowledge of how to find the medicine man she met two years before. But Bali was a major tourist destination, so getting around as a Westerner was easy. She found a hotel in a town called Ubud, which she believed was close to where the medicine man lived. The front desk attendant knew Ketut Liyer, the medicine man, and agreed to take her there. Gilbert thought it would take weeks to locate this man. She should have known God would provide.
Ketut didn’t remember Gilbert right away, and she despaired that she’d misjudged the importance of their last meeting. But when she reminded him that she was the writer from New York, he perked up. He didn’t recognize her at first because she looked so different. Before, she was old and sad. Now, she was young and beautiful. He invited her to visit him every day. He would teach her Balinese meditation, and she would teach him English.
Gilbert and Ketut grew close over the next few weeks. He taught her the meditation practice of sitting and smiling, allowing the smile to reach inside and consume her full body. She did her best to teach him English, but she realized that what he wanted most was her company. Ketut spent every day healing or blessing nearly 100 people who came to his compound. He rarely left and enjoyed seeing the world through Gilbert's eyes.
One day, Gilbert was hit by a truck and cut her leg. The wound became infected, but Ketut wouldn’t heal it. He told her to find a doctor. She was surprised, but in hindsight, she saw that there was a larger plan in his refusal. The doctor Gilbert found was a female healer named Wayan, and their lives became intertwined.
Gilbert learned that Wayan was poor and struggling to make a life for her, her daughter, and two orphan children she’d taken in. She’d divorced an abusive husband and was cast out of the compound to fend for herself. Gilbert wanted to do something to help her new friend. She organized a fundraiser among her friends and family in America and raised enough money to help Wayan build a house.
This gesture was significant, but so was the gift Wayan gave Gilbert. Wayan could see that Gilbert was devoid of love and started praying that she would find romance again. Within days, Gilbert met a man named Felipe. Felipe was a 52-year-old Brazilian who’d come to Bali years before to get over his divorce. Gilbert felt an instant connection to him, and they became close.
Gilbert resisted his attempts at affection at first. She’d come this far in her celibacy and spiritual journey and didn’t want to threaten her progress by opening her heart to a man again. But she could see that Felipe was a different kind of man. He was an adventurer like her and already had grown children. He wanted nothing from her other than to love her, and she eventually let him. Their relationship blossomed, and she fell in love with him, as well.
Gilbert’s time in Bali was coming to an end, and there were a few loose strings to tie up. First, Wayan still had not bought land for her house. Gilbert became anxious, knowing the people in America were expecting to hear good news, so she and Felipe threw themselves into the task of helping Wayan secure a property. This process brought them closer together. Wayan finally found a property, and Felipe and Gilbert were free to take a trip before she left.
Gilbert took Felipe to an island she’d visited after meeting Ketut two years before. She’d spent several days on this island in silence trying to gain control of her pain. She learned that she could acknowledge all her sorrow, anger, and shame and send them away with love. That was the first time she understood the capacity of love in her heart and the first time she felt the presence of God.
That night was also the first time she communicated with the voice in her notebook. The voice told her the same thing it did in Rome—she would always be loved and protected. That notebook and voice would save Gilbert’s life many times over the next two years. Now, she knew whose voice it was. It was the voice of who she was now—her new balanced and happy voice calling her forth to her transformation.
Taking Felipe to the island was her way of celebrating her union with that voice. She was ready for whatever life held for her now. And she and Felipe would find a way to be together in that life. Her journey to enlightenment was complete, but her life was just beginning.
In the opening pages of Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert described the structure of her book. She based the chapter organization around the symbol of Hindu and Buddhist prayer beads called japa malas. The japa mala is constructed with 108 beads, and each bead represents a repetition of the meditation mantra to help meditators stay focused. Thus, Gilbert provided 108 chapters in the book.
In addition, the number 108 held other significance for Gilbert. Her year-long spiritual journey took her to three locations: Italy, India, and Indonesia. The number “108” is thought to be positively symbolic because of its relationship with the divine number “3.” There are three digits in “108,” it is a multiple of “3,” and the individual digits add up to a multiple of “3.” Specifically, though, dividing the book into three sections provided 36 beads, or stories, per section. Gilbert was 36 when she wrote this book.
Despite Gilbert’s mystical reasons for organizing her book in this way, the summary is organized differently:
Elizabeth Gilbert found herself on the bathroom floor of the home she shared with her husband four years before starting her spiritual journey. It was three o’clock in the morning. This was the 47th night in a row that she’d slipped out of bed and hid in the bathroom. What thrust her out of bed was the realization that she didn’t want to be married anymore.
Gilbert and her husband had dated for two years and been married for six. They lived along the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York and were working toward a Norman Rockwell existence. They wanted children, dinners around the table, and vegetable gardens in the yard. Gilbert had a wandering spirit, but she and her husband assumed that by 30 years old, she would be ready to settle into real life. She wasn’t.
Year after year, Gilbert waited for the proverbial “ticking clock” to kick in. She believed she should want a baby. That’s what people did—they got married, had kids, and lived happily ever after. But as time stretched on, she realized her idea of happily-ever-after looked very different.
Each time a pregnancy test came back negative, she was relieved. She had friends with new babies and saw the joy they felt. The last time she felt that kind of joy was when she was sent to New Zealand on a writing assignment. She decided she couldn’t have a baby until she felt more joy about it than a free trip to New Zealand.
But she wasn’t unhappy in her marriage simply because of an obligation to have a baby. There were several issues (none of which Gilbert discusses) that made her feel trapped. She and her husband had both noticed something changing in her over the past months. Their relationship had become emotionally volatile and exhausting. Still, she loved him and feared hurting him.
Each night, Gilbert hid in the bathroom because of her confusion, shame, and guilt about wanting to escape her marriage. But on this particular night, something happened that hadn’t before. Down on her knees, sobbing, Gilbert started to pray.
Gilbert prayed to God that night, but not to the God of devout Christians. Gilbert was born Protestant and attended church as a child, but she never believed in one God for everyone. She thought there were many gods with many names and forms for different people. In her mind, God was an all-encompassing indescribable entity.
For Gilbert, God represented a return to the core of existence—the heart. God embodied ultimate love in the universe. She likened the way she thought about God to the way she thought about a rescue dog she had. The dog was a mutt and brown. When someone asked what type of dog it was, Gilbert said, “A brown dog.” Likewise, when someone asked what sort of God she believed in, she said, “a magnificent one.”
Gilbert didn’t know how to start praying that night on the floor, so she started the same way she started any new acquaintance. She introduced herself. Then, she asked God for an answer—guidance to tell her how to manage the despair she felt about her life.
Over and over, Gilbert asked God to tell her what to do. She cried and prayed for hours. Then, like someone turning off a faucet, she stopped crying. The bathroom became silent. She was afraid to breathe. And then she heard a voice. To her great surprise, the voice was hers. It was the kind of voice she might have if she were content and wise.
Gilbert didn’t know what to expect from this voice, but she didn’t expect the answer she received—“go to bed.” It was a simple message, but a divine one. Her life wasn’t going to get figured out that November night on the bathroom floor. There would be time for the hard decisions later. All she could do at that moment was go to bed and rest. She would need it for the emotional journey she was about to embark on.
Gilbert didn’t see this experience as a religious conversion. Rather, this moment encapsulated the beginning of a long conversation with her spiritual heart that eventually brought her closer to God.
Gilbert ended her marriage seven months after that night on the floor. She thought the worst part would be telling her husband the marriage was over, but that was shortsighted. The ensuing divorce proceedings and dissolving relationship were far worse. She and her husband became different people after the separation, and each was equally shocked by the cruelty of the other.
Gilbert wanted the divorce to be amicable and swift. She wanted to sell their house and split everything down the middle. When her husband refused this offer, she suggested he keep all the assets and she keep the blame. Still, he said no. He didn’t provide an alternative scenario. He simply moved to their Manhattan apartment and told her she was a horrible person.
Gilbert felt horrible. She felt so guilty that she didn’t think she deserved anything, not even her salary. She was experiencing an awakening and wanted things to be easy. She didn’t want to be engrossed in a contentious battle. For these reasons, Gilbert didn’t hire a lawyer right away. She put her life on hold that summer while she waited for her husband’s terms. But her life moved forward anyway. She found a new love.
David was an actor in New York City. Gilbert met him after he was cast in a play based on her short stories. In hindsight, Gilbert realized the folly of conflating the real person with the character she created. But at the time, she didn’t see it. She fell hard and fast for David that summer and jumped straight from her marriage bed into David’s.
More than just a lover, David became a safe harbor during Gilbert’s struggles with her divorce. She clung to him as one might a life preserver in choppy waters. She moved into his apartment quickly and lived a blissful, romantic-comedy existence for several months. They traveled, hiked, developed pet names, read together, cooked together, and loved like their lives depended on it. Unfortunately, only one of their lives depended on it. And when Gilbert took an emotional turn downward, David started to retreat.
Her emotional landslide happened for two reasons. First, Gilbert finally met up with her husband again after the long summer. The date was September 9, 2001. They were supposed to hammer out the details of their separation. Instead, her husband focused on Gilbert’s low character and how much he now hated her.
Then, 9/11 happened. Gilbert and her husband talked briefly to make sure the other was safe. But when the whole country was coming together for strength, neither she nor her husband reached out to each other for the same. It was a monumental statement that their marriage was officially over.
The destruction of Gilbert’s life and her city, as well as the loss of the illusion of safety in her country, was too much for her. The happy, assured woman David fell in love with became needy and unhinged. The more she floundered, the more David pulled away. A great divide opened between them, and he became unreachable.
Gilbert felt the only good thing in her life slipping away, so she held on tighter. She started to need David like an addict needs a fix. She experienced withdrawal symptoms, made worse by David’s apparent repulsion of her. All of the losses stacked up to an insurmountable wall of defeat, and Gilbert became suicidal.
There were several saving graces during the period following her break-up with David. In early 2002, Gilbert moved into a one-bedroom apartment, her first single apartment of her life. The rent was a struggle because most of her money was tied up in the house and legal fees. But she found a way to make it work. She saw the apartment as vital to her recovery and made it her sanctuary.
Living on her own opened Gilbert up to an independence she’d never known. She grew stronger, more intuitive to her own needs, and more confident. These qualities made David come running back. They discussed how to move forward again with more knowledge about each other and the relationship. They shared days, sometimes weeks, of joy together again. But inevitably, Gilbert would cling too hard, and David would retreat. This cycle went round and round for months, and each ending took Gilbert back to the bottom of her despair.
In the moments in between the despair, Gilbert focused on who she wanted to become. She asked herself what she wanted to do with her life. She kept the answers small and her actions manageable. She took a yoga class, read more, and made small purchases to accommodate her life.
One idea that kept coming forward was learning Italian. She’d wanted to learn Italian for years but always thought it seemed frivolous. Now, she decided it was okay to be frivolous if it brought her joy. She signed up for an adult continuing education night course, which she affectionately referred to as “Night School for Divorced Ladies.”
Gilbert loved learning Italian. Speaking the language made her feel beautiful and sensual. In addition, her focus on Italian impeded the crushing sensation of heartache. An idea started to sprout. If she felt this much joy simply speaking the language, what would happen if she immersed herself in the culture? She’d never intended to go to Italy, but for the first time, she wondered “why not?”
The second event during this period of time was her introduction to an Indian Guru. Oddly, this introduction came by way of David. The first time she entered his apartment, she noticed a picture of a beautiful Indian woman. When she learned this woman was David’s spiritual teacher, something sparked inside. Without thinking, she said she wanted a spiritual teacher.
Her desire for a spiritual teacher was a surprise. She had never considered any sort of spiritual guidance before. But her metaphysical experience that night on the bathroom floor opened something up inside her. She wanted to explore the spiritual realm more deeply.
To Gilbert’s disappointment, tens of thousands of people felt the same way. Her fantasy of sitting intimately with this Indian Guru sipping tea was quickly dashed by the realization that many who followed her would never meet her. Still, Gilbert attended meditation gatherings with David. The first night she went, her soul rose from her body. She felt as light as a leaf caught in the wind.
She continued attending the gatherings and took to meditating and chanting the Sanskrit mantra at home in the mornings. When she discovered that the Guru had an Ashram in India, she felt an overwhelming need to go there.
Before Gilbert made any definitive travel plans to either Italy or India, she was sent to Indonesia to study yoga vacations in Bali on assignment for a magazine. With nothing at home but heartache and a contentious divorce, Gilbert jumped at the chance.
While in Indonesia, the residents of the retreat visited a ninth-generation medicine man named Ketut Liyer. He was a small, jolly, aging man with more gums than teeth. Each resident was allowed to ask one question. Gilbert’s head flooded with requests about easing the burden of her divorce and making David fall back in love for her. But she knew those requests were low and shameful. This was a real opportunity to gain some mystical guidance, and she didn’t want to waste it on boy trouble.
So when her turn came, she told Ketut she wanted to devote her life to God without losing the comforts and joys she’d grown accustomed to. Ketut drew her a picture of a figure standing on four legs in prayer. The figure was headless. A bouquet of wild plants and flowers sprouted from the neck. A smiley face replaced the heart.
Ketut said Gilbert must become that figure to find the balance between God and life. She must find grounded stability, as if she stood on four legs. She must stop looking for God with her mind but feel Him with her heart. After this, he read Gilbert’s palm.
He told her she was very lucky and would travel the world. She would meet many friends and have wonderful experiences. But she had to stop worrying so much. There was no reason for her to worry about anything. She was going to lose all her money soon, but she would get it all back. She would be successful in her creative endeavors and be married twice.
At that moment, Ketut looked deeply into her palm and paused. He then looked up and said she would be back in Bali soon. She would stay with him for a few months and teach him English. In return, he would teach her all he knew about Balinese meditation. When he was finished, he stood up, as though a deal had transpired, and said, “See you later, alligator.”
Gilbert had decided on a plan for her future by the time she returned home. She couldn’t ignore the premonition of the Balinese medicine man and needed to find a way to get to Indonesia again. The trouble was she also wanted to visit Italy and India. The other trouble was she wasn’t yet free to travel.
The first problem was simpler to figure out. The appeal of Italy was its cultural focus on beauty and pleasure. The appeal of India was spiritual guidance from her Guru. The conundrum was the same one she’d posed to Ketut. How can she balance her desire for earthly pleasures and that for internal awakening? She remembered the drawing of the headless figure and decided she didn’t have to choose. She would find a way to do both.
Gilbert decided to spend four months in each location. She would write about her experiences succumbing to rapture in Italy, to spiritual devotion in India, and to the confluence of both in Indonesia. The fact that each country started with “I” was mere coincidence, albeit an auspicious one.
The second problem was beyond the scope of her decision-making abilities. Her husband held the power in their divorce, and a year and a half later, he was still holding her hostage in their marriage. Gilbert finally hired a lawyer and applied legal pressure. They accused her husband of mental cruelty. Gilbert had already agreed to turn over all their joint assets, but her husband wanted more.
In spring 2003, Gilbert’s husband requested royalties from her book sales and future earnings, as well as part of her retirement fund. All of this was added to a cash settlement and ownership of both properties. Gilbert saw the line in the sand. She could lose everything and be contractually attached to this man for the rest of her life or stand up for herself and fight. She chose the latter.
Month after month passed with no agreement. If her husband didn’t agree to a reduced settlement, they’d fight it out in court. This would cost both dearly financially and emotionally. It would also mean Gilbert would be stuck in New York for another year.
Gilbert grew depressed and anxious. Around this time, she was sent on a tour for the release of a paperback edition of one of her books. A friend joined her on the cross-country road trip. It was exactly the escape she needed. Still, the divorce hung heavy over her head. On one of their long drives, her friend told her she should petition God for help.
Gilbert wrote a petition asking God to help end her marriage and finalize the divorce. She said it was a matter of health for the universe to allow two souls to finally be free from this dark battle. She and her friend imagined hundreds of people, including family, friends, the Clintons, and other celebrities, signing the petition. When she couldn’t think of any more names, she went to sleep. Hours later, she woke up to her phone ringing. Her husband had signed the papers. She was free.
A few weeks after Gilbert’s divorce was finalized, she landed in Rome. She left everything behind—her job, her life, her on-again-off-again relationship with David, and the few possessions she had left. The divorce settlement and legal fees had cleaned her out. But when she pitched her travel idea to her publishers, they provided an advance that was just enough to cover a year abroad. Ketut was right. She lost all her money and got it back right away.
Gilbert rented a studio apartment in the posh district of Rome surrounding the Spanish Steps. Once in Rome, she wasted no time diving into the pleasures of Italy. Her first night, she ate spaghetti carbonara with spinach and garlic. She followed the handmade pasta with an artichoke, fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with cheese, veal, plenty of bread, and tiramisu. A bottle of red topped everything off.
After this meal, she walked back to her new home. She entered her studio, turned off the light, and laid down. She thought she would spend the rest of the night the same way she’d spent each night for almost two years—crying. Instead, she realized she was okay, even bordering on content. Before she could question it, she fell asleep.
Gilbert was introduced to the grandness and beauty of Rome over the next few days. It was September 2003, and the weather was warm but pleasant. She marveled at the many fountains and the couples expressing love on the streets. She flushed at the many men who called her beautiful. She visited the same gelato shop three times in one day.
Gilbert thought that Rome was a magical place. She was surrounded by the language she loved and practiced it in several ways. She read one newspaper article a day, bought poetry books in Italian with English translations, and practiced with people on the street.
Wherever she looked, sweeping architecture dazzled. She found a library with a lush courtyard and fountain that reminded her of the foliage head of Ketut’s drawing. She sat near the fountain and read a poem by Louise Glück. A great wave of relief washed over her when she came across the line, Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana. “From the center of my life, there came a great fountain.”
One of the first things Gilbert did in Rome was sign up for Italian school at the Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Language Studies. She would attend the beginner class for four hours a day, five days a week. The night before her first class, she was giddy like a first-grader before the first day of school.
Ten days after Gilbert arrived in Rome, she experienced a relapse of depression. She was walking home from school and stopped to admire the beautiful sunset over St. Peter’s Basilica. One second she was content, and the next, depression and loneliness showed up like prison wardens. They each took hold of one arm and led her back to solitary confinement.
Back at her studio, Gilbert’s mind raced with questions. What was she doing in Italy alone? Why had she ruined her marriage? Why couldn’t she make a relationship work? Why didn’t she have children? What would become of her if she kept living this way? She didn’t have the answers, so she curled up in bed with her clothes on and buried herself in the covers.
Gilbert was surprised to see these two oppressive emotions in this beautiful city. She’d been feeling happy and at peace in Rome, so much so that she’d stopped taking her antidepressants. This action wasn’t hard for her. She’d never wanted to be on medication in the first place. She had personal objections to psychosomatic drugs and was afraid of the side effects on her creativity and libido. But after two years of uncontrollable crying and suicidal thoughts, including a close call between a chopping knife and her wrist, she finally called a friend for help. The friend set her up with a therapist, and she agreed to be medicated.
This decision went against everything she was brought up to believe. The Gilberts didn’t believe in sickness as a principle and viewed poor physical health as a sign of weakness. This belief was why Gilbert saw her treatment as temporary and stopped the antidepressants in Rome. But the resurgence of depression and loneliness meant her healing was not over yet.
Gilbert had more pills with her, but she didn’t want to take them. Instead, she opened her journal and wrote one line—she asked for help. A moment later, she wrote another. This time, the line was a response from within her. The same voice from the night in the bathroom asked what she could do to help.
This notebook was where Gilbert had conversations with the voice. Since that night, the voice had returned during dire moments. It sounded like her voice, but she didn’t know where it came from. She didn’t know if it was her subconscious or something more divine, but whenever she was spiraling, the voice always answered back. Tonight was no different. Through written communication, the voice assured Gilbert that she was loved and not alone. Whether she took the medication or not, she was going to be protected.
The next morning, Gilbert woke up clutching the notebook. The whiff of depression lingered in the air, but it was gone. And her loneliness was gone as well.
Gilbert wasn’t a great traveler like others she’d seen along her journeys. Those people knew how to blend in and emit a casual authority. Gilbert could do neither. She was tall, blonde, and pale, and when she was lost, she looked lost. But one thing she did well was make friends wherever she went.
Sometimes these friendships were happenstance—a train companion or a run-in at a restaurant. But often, Gilbert orchestrated friendships by way of acquaintances of people she knew from home. Before she left for Rome, she asked her friends for a few names of people she might look up.
Two of those people were a married couple named Maria and Giulio. Maria was American, and Giulio was from Southern Italy. The couple had Gilbert over for dinner several times, and the husband met with her separately to work on his English.
Another friend she met in this way was Luca Spaghetti. Luca and Gilbert became quick friends. He spoke English and enjoyed food as much as she did. He was a tax accountant, which she thought was a strange job for him considering his easy-going manner. Likewise, Luca didn’t understand her desire to study spirituality in India. He said it didn’t match her appetite for pleasure and Italian food.
Gilbert made other friends through different means, as well. She grew close with her language partner, Giovanni. Their conversations centered mostly on politics and philosophy, and they knew little about each other’s personal lives. But they enjoyed each other’s company.
Gilbert also made a close friend from her language course, a Swedish woman named Sofie. Sofie had also left her life behind for 4 months for the simple purpose of studying Italian in Rome.
Although Gilbert went to Italy to immerse herself in a life of pleasure and beauty, she found the first difficult to attain. Her working-class upbringing and American idealism made pleasure-seeking behaviors uncomfortable. Like many Americans, she was unable to fully relax and enjoy doing nothing.
In America, we seek ways to stay entertained or busy. We work long hours and enjoy small moments of downtime in between. Italians, on the other hand, work to be able to experience pleasure. The Italian expression bel far niente translates to “the beauty of doing nothing.” They see leisure time as their reward for hard work, not something to fill with activities until it’s time to be busy again.
This difference in perspective was hard for Gilbert to get past. For weeks, she questioned whether she’d earned the pleasure she sought. She wondered how to maximize her pleasure experiences and considered researching the best ways to achieve pleasure. Then, one day, she realized the only question she needed to ask was what pleasure meant to her.
Each day, she asked herself what would bring her the most pleasure. In a country full of art and history, the obvious choices were museums, musical performances, or exploring the landscape. But Gilbert wasn’t interested in those activities. To her surprise and delight, she found she only desired to eat and speak the language. She focused on those pursuits and experienced a sense of freedom never felt before.
Gilbert had many opportunities to enjoy the pleasure of speaking Italian. She learned almost 20 words a day and worked hard to converse properly. She wasn’t fluent like she wanted to be, but she was getting better and understanding more. Her friends were also great sources of information.
She and Giovanni had many conversations about idiomatic expressions in both languages. She taught him the American expression “I’ve been there” in response to emotional struggles. He was confused, wondering where “there” was. Gilbert explained that sadness is like a place you have to find your way out of. Giovanni offered the Italian version, which roughly translated to “I’ve experienced the same on my skin.” The phrase signified being scarred in a similar way.
Luca was also instrumental in teaching Gilbert new phrases. He took her to a soccer match and translated the curse words and expressions the fans shouted. Learning Italian slang helped Gilbert feel more ingrained in the culture. It also helped her converse more intelligibly with others. This skill helped her find more pleasure with the language. Still, the pleasure she got from food was hard to beat.
One of Gilbert’s happiest memories from Rome was finding a farm stand down the street from her studio. She purchased fresh asparagus and paired it with poached eggs, olives, goat cheese, and salmon for lunch. She took her plate to a sunny spot on the studio floor and ate every bit with her fingers. With her Italian paper and her beautiful lunch, she felt happiness oozing from every poor. Her instinct to feel guilty about doing nothing kicked in. But she brushed it off. She’d finally learned bel far niente.
Food was a constant source of pleasure for Gilbert in Rome. Another friend, an American food writer living in Italy, took her to all the best restaurants in Rome. Luca introduced her to an Italian delicacy—lamb intestines. And pastries, gelato, and cappuccino were daily favorites. However, one of the most memorable meals Gilbert had was pizza in Naples.
After meeting a young Australian woman backpacking through Europe, Gilbert found she was jealous of this woman’s adventures. True, she was on her own adventure, but the energy of visiting a new place and living in a new place was different. Since she was in Rome for four months, she felt more like a resident than a traveler. To feed her wandering spirit, she and her Swedish friend Sofie took the train to Naples, the birthplace of pizza and ice cream.
Giovanni was from Naples and made Gilbert promise she’d go to the best pizzeria in town. To Gilbert, the best pizza in the city that invented pizza meant it would be the best in the world. She couldn’t wait.
Pizzeria de Michele did not disappoint. Both Sofie and Gilbert had other-worldly experiences eating this pizza. The crust was thin but soft. The cheese dripped off the sides, and the tomato sauce was tart, salty, and sweet. Each ate a whole pie themselves and ordered another.
At some point during the meal, Gilbert caught a reflection of herself in the window. She was heavier because of all the eating, but it wasn’t the weight she saw. Instead, she saw a vibrant, healthy, and happy woman, someone she hadn’t seen in years.
One pleasure Gilbert removed from contention was sex. Before arriving, she’d made the decision to practice celibacy during her year-long journey. The Italian men challenged this decision often. They were dark, handsome, and immaculately groomed and dressed. But she needed this time away from men and relationships. She’d never taken this kind of break before.
Since the age of fifteen, when Gilbert had her first boyfriend, she’d been jumping from one guy to another. Sometimes they’d overlap, and there was never more than a week’s break between partners. This scenario was made worse because of who she became in her relationships.
Gilbert didn’t have boundaries with men. When she was with someone, she was with them completely. She morphed into whoever they wanted her to be and gave every ounce of love, attention, and money to ensure their happiness—often at the expense of her own. She lost herself completely to the extent that a friend once told her she looked like her men, like a dog that resembles their owner.
Gilbert always felt lost and unsure of who she was due to this cycle of changing herself to suit her lovers. A year of celibacy would allow her to learn who she was without a man. She also saw it as a public service, likening her celibacy to the law taking away someone’s driver’s license after a string of accidents. Loneliness was sometimes a consequence of this decision. But when she started to feel lonely, she’d tell herself to sit back and enjoy life without making someone else responsible for her happiness.
There was another reason Gilbert wanted to be celibate. She was still in love with David and knew it would be unfair to start something with someone else with those feelings. Plus, she and David were still on-again-off-again before she left, and she wasn’t sure where they stood. Each had expressed a similar hope that one day they might figure out how to be together. Before she could be with anyone else, she had to understand where she stood with David.
On her way back to Rome from Naples, Gilbert was hit with the realization that she had to officially end things with David. She knew they loved each other, but they made each other miserable. And it wasn’t realistic to hope that one of them would change and they’d find a way to live harmoniously.
Her happiness in Naples showed Gilbert that she might be able to live without David. Other happiness waited for her somewhere else. And even if it didn’t, she needed to cut the string tying them together before she could know for sure.
That night, she wrote David an email, the first communication they’d had since she left. She told him it was time to accept that their love was special but not sustainable. It was time for them to go their own ways. She also gave her blessing for him to find a new love. She hit send, knowing it was the right thing to do. But it still hurt.
The next day, Gilbert checked her email at the Internet cafe multiple times. Despite her conviction, there was still a part of her that hoped he would promise to change and ask her to stay. Late that evening, she received his response. He agreed that it was time for an official ending. He ended by saying he knew she would find another love that would make her happy.
Gilbert sat at the computer for a long time after reading the letter. She knew she was better off without the pain their relationship caused, but she still grieved the loss of her love. She met up with Giovanni later for their language lesson, but she was too upset. Instead of conversing, she and Giovanni shared their first interaction about their private lives. He sat patiently while she cried and told her he understood. He’d been there, too.
Gilbert’s older sister came to Rome shortly after the interaction with David. Whatever sadness remained vanished in the whirlwind of her sister, Catherine. Gilbert and her sister were very different. Where Gilbert was a loose planner, Catherine was precise. She brought 5 guidebooks, all of which she’d read and memorized before arriving. Gilbert had embraced Rome from a wanderer’s perspective, but Catherine embraced it like an organized tour guide.
As they toured the city, Catherine explained the history of the buildings and the different architectural periods. Gilbert saw all the churches and tourist sites she’d neglected and learned more about how this beautiful city came to be.
This visit was a bit of a milestone for the sisters. They’d grown up isolated on their parents’ tree farm, but they weren’t always close. Gilbert was always intimidated by her sister. In fact, the first time she ever stood up to Catherine was when she was 28 years old. There was also an undertone of resentment in their relationship. Gilbert had been everyone’s favorite, and except for relationships, life had been relatively easy for her. Catherine was smart, athletic, and fearless, but she’d had less luck in life than Gilbert and had worked hard for everything she had.
Gilbert and her sister had just reconnected and started building a relationship again when Gilbert separated from her husband. Catherine could have rubbed Gilbert’s nose in her failure. Catherine was married and a mother. But she didn’t. Instead, Catherine was there for every phone call and helped her through her depression. Before Gilbert left for Italy, they spoke on the phone daily. And when it was time for Catherine to go home, they made sure to tell each other how much they loved one another—a ritual they did before either got on a plane... just in case.
After Catherine’s visit, Gilbert was struck by the irony of how their lives had worked out. Gilbert was always the social one with relationships, and Catherine was independent and self-sufficient. But they’d ended up swapping lives. Catherine’s visit also made Gilbert wonder about the role of children in her life.
That night in the bathroom, Gilbert knew she didn’t want to have children yet. But how much of that had been not wanting to have children at all versus not wanting to have them with her husband? She wondered whether it wasn’t her responsibility as a woman to have children. And if she didn’t want them, what did that say about her?
Gilbert didn’t know if wanting your own life was selfish or not. But her desire to have one was a major issue in her marriage. Her husband made her feel selfish for wanting to work and travel. He often accused her in a way that suggested she was a bad mother of children that didn’t exist.
The guilt she took from those conversations was heightened one night when they attended an art opening of a friend who’d had a baby. Gilbert watched the woman try to balance hosting a party, speaking professionally about her work, and tending to a baby all at once. Where others may have seen a superwoman and envied her, Gilbert went into a panic. She knew this would be her life if she had a child. At that moment, she knew she didn’t want that life.
Gilbert wondered who she would be without children. The flake? The batty spinster aunt? How would her success as a human be measured if she didn’t leave generations of offspring behind? Her life was unstable and she had no plans beyond traveling for another 9 months. She would eventually have to decide. But she found comfort in her writing and the fact that today was not that day.
For six weeks, Gilbert left Rome to explore more of the country. She traveled by train to Bologna, Florence, Venice, Sicily, Sardinia, and Calabria. Sometimes, she stayed for a week, and other times, she stayed for just a few days. Her ability to move freely and successfully from one place to another increased her confidence in herself.
She was living the type of life she enjoyed the most—fast-paced, whirlwind, spontaneous travel. She had no plan, no itinerary. She dashed from one train station to the next and reveled in this lack of accountability and responsibility. It was the most freeing time of her life. In fact, one night in a town along the Mediterranean, she woke herself up in the middle of the night laughing. She looked around for the source of the noise, and when she realized the laughter was hers, she laughed harder.
Gilbert also gained confidence in her speaking abilities. She’d dropped out of her language class because she didn’t want to be trapped in a classroom all day. She wanted to experience the language organically and through interactions with the wonderful people of Italy.
Her decision seemed to pay off on one train ride. A young Italian man sleeping in a train car awoke to find her in the opposite seat. He said something in Italian, believing she didn’t understand. He was surprised when she responded in Italian, and Gilbert was, too. For more than 20 minutes, she held a conversation with this man. And although her knowledge of grammar and syntax was small, she was speaking with ease. She realized she was no longer translating in her mind. She was finally able to understand and speak the language freely.
Gilbert’s journeys were mostly alone and revolved around her favorite pastime—eating. She went through cities and towns famous for the food and wine created in the region. She traveled through Parma, Bologna, and Montepulciano. She drank in the beauty of the landscape and architecture, but she continued to bypass tourist attractions for restaurants.
In Lucca, a region known for its charcuterie, she dined on sausages and hams. She discovered that Puccini was born there, but she was more interested in the restaurant across the street from his home-turned-museum. A grocer had told her the best mushrooms in the city were served there. After one kind stranger led her to Puccini’s birthplace, she thanked him and quickly turned to cross to the restaurant.
In Bologna, Gilbert found some of the most exquisite food she’d ever eaten. The mushrooms were like steaks, the prosciutto was like thin lace, and the Bolognese sauce rivaled any ragu she’d ever tasted.
Gilbert had one visitor during this adventure. Her friend Linda from Seattle, whom she’d met at the yoga retreat in Indonesia, joined her in Venice. Linda was similar in age but had dreadlocks and piercings. She was a firecracker and had a rock-solid sense of self. She was exactly the companion Gilbert needed. Venice was a city for lovers, and Gilbert didn’t want to be there alone.
Together, they walked the streets of the old sinking city on the water. The gloomy and decaying atmosphere of the city was fairly depressing. But with Linda by her side, Gilbert didn’t take it in as a negative. She was delighted to find she could separate the environment from her own emotional state, a difficult task in the past. She knew it was a sign of growth and healing. And she knew it meant she was becoming a spiritually healthy person.
Gilbert returned to Rome and was happy to be back among the eclectic and independent Romans after the dark conservative tone of Venice. But she also found she was eager to get to India. She thought Rome was a beautiful city, but she knew it wasn’t her city.
Giulio, her American friend Maria’s husband, helped her realize why she didn’t truly feel connected to the city she’d called home for almost four months. He said each city had a word that described its essence and the essence of the people. In Rome, the word was “sex.” Gilbert argued that not all people were thinking about sex, but Giulio disagreed. Sex oozed through the atmosphere of the city—in the clothes, in the attitudes, in the nightlife, in the food. Whether people were seeking it, refusing it, or trying to ignore it, everything revolved around sex.
Gilbert now understood why Rome was not her city. Her celibacy vow had turned the sex part of her off, so she could never connect with that heart of the culture. She started to wonder what word described her essence. She believed New York’s word was “achieve,” which described her in her twenties. Her family word was somewhere between “frugal” and “irreverent,” but neither of those described her.
Gilbert started to seriously consider what her word was. She knew it wasn’t “marriage” or “family,” which explained why she was miserable in her nuclear community Upstate with her husband. It wasn’t the ambitious tone of “achieve” anymore, but it also wasn’t pure “pleasure.” She realized her journey was likely more about finding her word than anything else.
Gilbert came close to understanding her word at a dinner party on Thanksgiving. The American holiday that year fell on Luca Spaghetti’s birthday, and he wanted to celebrate his 33rd year around the sun with a Thanksgiving turkey. Gilbert decided to help him with his wish.
The party was held at a large home in the Roman countryside owned by Luca’s friends. The guests included several of Luca’s friends and two of Gilbert’s. Around the table that night, there were three languages represented: Italian, English, and Swedish. But to Gilbert’s surprise, the barriers didn’t hinder their ability to connect and feel like they belonged.
Late in the evening, after many bottles of wine, they decided to practice the American tradition of stating what they were thankful for. Each person took their turn, becoming emotional and weeping when they spoke openly about gratitude for their lives. When it was Gilbert’s turn, she didn’t know what to say.
What she did know was that she was grateful her word was no longer “depression.” Just a few months before, she was so entangled in the grips of despair, she wouldn’t have been able to enjoy a lovely evening like this. She still couldn’t articulate what her word was yet, but she knew it had something to do with the way the people in her life were changing her. She said how grateful she was for old friends and new friends, and how lucky she felt to know such wonderful people. It was the truth in that moment, and that was enough.
After four months eating her way through Italy, Gilbert gained 23 pounds. Most of this weight was good weight. She’d become frail and thin during her divorce and depression. The rest of the weight was merely a happy consequence of living a life of pleasure. There was one problem. Her clothes from home stopped fitting a long time ago, and she’d grown out of the new clothes she’s bought to replace them.
She expected to lose most of the weight once in India, but she still needed something to wear during her last week of eating. She broke down and bought a pair of jeans with a waistband size she could barely believe.
Instead of spending her final days in Rome, Gilbert decided to travel to Sicily. Her reasoning was varied. After the decadence of Rome, Sicily was a more impoverished region. She may have subconsciously been preparing for the poverty she would encounter in India. But she also remembered what the great German writer Goethe said about his Italian travels—you cannot know Italy if you do not know Sicily.
After a long trip, including a train, a bus, a ferry, and a taxi, Gilbert finally landed in the town of Taormina. As always, the first question she asked was where the best food was in town. A policeman directed her to a small trattoria run by an old woman and her older mother. The woman was pleased when Gilbert asked her to bring the best food in the place. After a few minutes, Gilbert was feasting on the best meal she’d eaten thus far in Italy. There were crustaceans, pasta, seafood broth, vegetables, and stewed rabbit. She didn’t know if this meal could be beat, but she found it could the next day in the town of Syracuse.
Syracuse was a very old and historic part of the country. Gilbert described it as making Rome look like Dallas in comparison. Myths of Hercules staying there lived next to the known stories of Plato and other great artistic minds and scientists inhabiting the region. Historians believed that the concepts of rhetoric and plot were developed in Syracuse. Gilbert could feel the history beneath her feet, but she saw the hardship of life there in the faces of the people.
There was something different about how Gilbert thought about her pleasure-seeking behaviors in Sicily. The oppressive influence of the mafia left crumbling streets and buildings, and the political strife had dampened part of the spirit of the place. She wondered if what she was doing was just. Was it right to have no greater purpose but to find the next best meal in a place with this many problems?
She realized in that moment what Goethe meant. In a place filled with so much historical and current pain, sometimes you must experience beauty to feel alive. In Italian culture, the arts are heralded above anything else. There may be corruption or inadequacies within the political and business spheres, but the culture was held to a higher standard. Nowhere else was this dichotomy more evident than in Sicily. To devote time to creating and experiencing pleasures of the senses was to hold on to something real and human.
Gilbert knew she’d been doing the same thing. She came to Italy a broken and torn down woman, but through the act of feeding her senses, she’d nourished her soul. She’d grown physically and emotionally. She’d followed her own path of beauty and ended up finding something real in herself. She was ready to see what came next.
Gilbert landed in Mumbai at 1:30 am, and two hours later, she stood at the opening of the Ashram. Through the front gates, Gilbert could hear the morning prayer, the arati, which began each day at 3:30 am. This Sanskrit hymn was her favorite, and she couldn’t wait to join it. She stashed her bag behind a tree and slipped into the temple to pray.
After the prayer, Gilbert followed the worshippers into a smaller temple, where Indians and Westerners were seated in meditation. She hadn’t meditated since before she went to Italy. She sat down, closed her eyes, and began saying the mantra. Om. Na. Mah. Shi. Va. Ya. Om Namah Shivaya.
She started slowly, articulating each syllable. She repeated the mantra over and over, carefully unpacking each word. The next thing she knew, the sun was rising. She opened her eyes, looked around, and felt as though she’d been at the Ashram forever. Italy was suddenly a distant memory.
For Gilbert and the other worshippers, the practice of Yoga was not about exercise—the Hatha Yoga that so many in the West practice. The practice was about finding union between mind and body and preparing the body for the long periods of meditation. Through meditation, a union between the individual and God could be formed.
True followers believe that each person has a supreme Self in which your true identity and divinity exist. Through Yoga, the attention is focused on finding this divine Self and becoming content in the world.
Finding this Self is an easier task than having the discipline to live as that Self for eternity. This is why people seek out Gurus. The word Guru is created through two Sanskrit syllables that translate to “darkness” and “light.” The Guru shows their worshippers the way out of the dark and into the light. They also pass their state of enlightenment to their students. You don’t have to actually be in the presence of a Guru to receive these teachings and grace. By visiting the Ashram and being disciplined in your practice, you can communicate through meditation.
There is also the belief that if you put the call out for a Guru in your life, the universe will conspire to bring you one. For Gilbert, she put the call out for a spiritual guide that night on the bathroom floor. A month later, she saw the picture of her Guru at David’s house and felt a connection. Her Western mentality sometimes made her feel silly using a term like Guru, but she knew that she asked for guidance and it showed up. This was enough for her to believe, regardless of what anyone else thought.
Residence at the Ashram was based on an application and strict rules governing who could come and when. The Ashram was closed to the public except for one temple. The property sat far in the country among small impoverished villages. The workers were mostly residents, and each resident was expected to contribute five hours of labor a day. Entry required evidence of previous disciplined study of Yoga, and students were required to stay at least a month. Gilbert would stay for six weeks and then travel.
Each student had to submit an essay, references, and statements regarding their mental, physical, and financial health. The Ashram was not a place for people to escape from their problems at home. The Guru wanted the students to be free of barriers to enlightenment, and any type of suffering or family disapproval could disrupt their practice and that of others.
Another caveat was that students were requested to postpone their visit if they’d experienced a serious emotional trauma within the previous 6 months. Gilbert was grateful for her time in Italy because it helped her heal from the grief of her divorce. She knew if she had come straight here, she would’ve been an emotional burden on the community.
The physical and emotional work at the Ashram was difficult. The rigorous way of life was meant to help the students learn who they really were inside.
The day after Gilbert’s arrival was New Year’s Eve, an auspicious moment for a spiritual awakening. The residents gathered in the courtyard and prepared for the ceremony. The Indian women were dressed in bright silk saris and jewelry. Everyone sat on the ground, and the chanting began. They would chant until midnight, when the new year began.
Gilbert struggled with the word “chanting,” again influenced by her New England discomfort with the metaphysical. But she loved the practice, and the chanting at the Ashram was more like singing. To chant was to meditate. You gave your attention to the song’s progression and blended your voice into one with the others.
The long days of traveling were hard on Gilbert, and she feared she was too jet-lagged to stay up until the new year. But as the chanting began—a lullaby of gratitude and devotion—she found energy in holding the words passed from the leaders and mirroring them back. Before she knew it, there were only 30 minutes left before midnight. The beat picked up, and people started to clap and dance. The rhythm of the drums increased, and Gilbert began to feel like they were collectively pulling the new year toward them.
The energy heightened, and suddenly the time passed from 2003 to 2004. Whatever the year contained was not known, but they were all underneath the power of it in that moment together. Gilbert was without anyone she knew or loved that night, but she felt anything but alone.
Gilbert was given the job of scrubbing the temple floors. For hours each day, she knelt on the marble floor with several Indian teenagers. The work was hard, but it was meant to be. The repetitive arduous work of cleaning the floor every day emulated the arduous task of attending to the purification of her soul. For Gilbert, the former effort was much easier than the latter.
Gilbert did not take to meditation well. Even at home, it was not easy for her to shut down her mind. Meditation and prayer are the two essential components of Yoga practice. Prayer is the act of talking to God, and meditation is the act of listening. She knew why prayer came so much more easily to her. She never had any problems lamenting her feelings to God. But the listening was a different story.
When she meditated, Gilbert had what is known as “monkey mind”—the endless swinging of thoughts down an endless row of branches. She became bored quickly, then angry that she was bored. This feeling was followed by depression because she couldn’t find stillness, and she would quickly dissolve into anxiety. This cycle of thoughts was not the main problem, however. The problem was the emotional response she attached to each thought.
When she became caught in the emotions of her thoughts, she wasn’t able to be present. She was either in the past with her sadness and anger or in the future with her worries and fears. The mantra was meant to create something tangible to focus your attention on to stay present, but Gilbert still struggled.
During her first days at the Ashram, Gilbert asked her roommate, Corella, a black Baptist meditation teacher from South Carolina, how she was able to find a transformative place with the mantra. Corella said she just chanted and felt transported. Gilbert tried to hammer down the details. How did she breathe? How did she divide the words between breaths? What was the trick? To demonstrate, Corella spoke the mantra. Gilbert listened as the words were spoken normally and without flourish or rhythmic intention. She became frustrated and interrupted Corella to ask if she wasn’t bored. Corella smiled and looked at her watch. Only 10 seconds had passed.
At the morning prayer the next day, Gilbert again struggled with her meditation practice. They were meant to meditate for an hour, but she felt each minute like a mile in her mind. After fourteen minutes of arguing with her mind, she opened her eyes and quit. She cried from the pressure and her failure. She stared at the others content in their practice. Their stillness and fortitude felt like an affront to her inability to find the same. She wondered how she was ever going to quiet her mind enough to reach a truly enlightened place.
Later that night, Gilbert sat alone at a table in the cafeteria eating dinner. She was focused on eating with intention. Digestive disruption can lead to meditative disruption, so eating slowly and taking small bites was encouraged. Considering how Gilbert spent the last four months and the buffet of delicious Indian food available, this task was harder than it seemed.
While trying not to shovel food into her mouth, Gilbert noticed a tall and foreboding-looking man searching for a table. She hadn’t seen him before but gestured for him to join her. The man walked over in a calm and confident way and sat down. When he spoke, it was with a southern drawl. This was Richard from Texas, and Gilbert had just met her new best friend.
Richard had lived a multifaceted life before arriving at the Ashram. Among his many jobs were truck driver, used-car salesman, Vietnam soldier, drug dealer, and home renovator. He was a recovering addict and alcoholic and had found the Guru by way of an ex-girlfriend. He called Gilbert “Groceries” because of her impressive ability to consume food.
After discovering the Guru, Richard started praying daily. Each prayer was the same—he asked God to open his heart. And he asked for a sign for when it happened. A few months later, Richard had open-heart surgery. He learned from that experience to be more careful about what he prayed for and to ask God to be gentle with him.
Gilbert saw how comfortable Richard was with his practice and asked for his advice about how to tackle her meditation problems. Richard reminded her that meditation was simply the act of sitting down with intention. Whatever happened after that was out of her control. But that wasn’t enough for Gilbert. She wanted to feel transcended. Richard told her that her intruding thoughts were her ego trying not to lose control of her mind. She just needed to recognize what was happening and let it go without judgment. That was how she could distract the ego with divine love.
Gilbert’s conversation with Richard gave her a new perspective on her practice. Before she started her mantra, she told her mind not to worry. She wasn’t trying to kill it, just open it to love. She also decided to try a new mantra that felt less frustrating. This new mantra was a repetition of the words Ham-sa, or “I am That.” In the Yogi traditions, this mantra is the most natural one given to all by God at birth. It simply means that God is within every breath. If you are breathing, you are one with God.
During her practice, whenever thoughts came into her mind, Gilbert politely asked them to go play somewhere else. After a while, she fell asleep. (Gilbert notes that “falling asleep” may not actually mean falling asleep. She isn’t sure what happens in those moments, whether it is true sleep or a different state of consciousness.)
After some time, Gilbert “woke up” and felt a blue pulsing energy inside. It was strong and overwhelming, but it was also wonderful. She acknowledged the power of the feeling and felt it magnify. She closed her eyes and tried to sit with it, but it grew with such force, she couldn’t handle it. She opened her eyes and said she wasn’t ready for that kind of power yet. The energy left within seconds.
This sort of energetic experience has different names in different religious and spiritual realms. For instance, in Christianity, it’s referred to as the Holy Spirit. In Yogic tradition, it’s called kundalini shakti and is imagined as a snake coiled at the base of the spine that is released by your Guru. The snake transcends through the seven chakras until it opens the skull to receive God. It’s a dangerous force to play with on your own, which is why a Guru is suggested for deep practice.
For two nights following her experience with kundalini shakti, Gilbert dreamed of snakes. She woke up in a sweat, and her mind flew into a fit of anxiety. Her thoughts traveled back to her divorce and the pain experienced with David. And once again, she ached from her broken heart. She was angry to be experiencing this unraveling again.
After this dream one night, she fell back asleep and dreamed of a dog threatening to kill her. She woke with a start, shaking and crying. She was afraid of waking her roommates, so she hid in the bathroom. The irony didn’t escape her. Once again, she was on a bathroom floor praying for help. When that didn’t work, she pulled out her notebook and asked for help. Like before, the voice guided her hand to write a response. The voice reminded her that she was not alone and was loved. A long exhale of relief followed.
Despite the reassurance of the voice the night before, Gilbert struggled the next day. She couldn’t stop the anguished thoughts about David. And she couldn’t get over her anger at having to relive those feelings again. Meditating was nearly impossible. She was angsty and snippy with everyone who crossed her path.
Gilbert tried to avoid everyone that day, but Richard caught up to her at dinner. He could tell something was wrong. Gilbert tried to ignore his questions, but before she knew it, she was opening up. She confessed about the dreams, her nights in the bathroom, and her lingering and detrimental feelings for David. She’d been working to get over him for almost a year, and she thought she had. So why this relapse?
Richard suggested she give it six more months. And if that didn’t work, she should give it another six months and continue doing so until she was truly healed. She was in a beautiful place full of God and grace, and she wasn’t there by accident. He counseled her to try to let go and let her emotions work themselves out. One day, she would look back on this time and realize that she was lucky to be there during her time of mourning. And she would be able to understand how her life had changed.
Gilbert didn’t want to hear any of that. She kept insisting that David was her soul mate. That she really loved him. That she missed him. That she still wished they could be together. To this, Richard responded that David may have been her soul mate, but that didn’t mean what she thought. Soul mates were people who held your life up and helped you understand what you wanted and how to change. They came into your life for a reason. When that reason was fulfilled, it was time for them to go.
Richard told her that David was needed to help her leave her marriage. His purpose was to diminish her ego and break her heart wide open. And he was her pathway to her finding her Guru. Without David, she wouldn’t have been desperate enough to seek help. She wouldn’t have recognized a need for transcendence. He did his job, and it was time for him to go. Her need to cling to hope for reconciliation was fear of being alone and facing her truths. If she let the space David filled become empty, God would fill it with light and love.
Gilbert heard every word, but it didn’t help. She wanted an exact date for when her pain would end. She wanted to circle it on her calendar. Richard laughed and said she was a control freak. Gilbert raged against this categorization at first, but then she realized he was right. She just never realized it was so obvious to the outside world.
While reflecting on her conversation with Richard, Gilbert remembered a moment when she was 9 years old. She had a true existential crisis about turning 10. Something about transitioning from single digits to double digits exposed the reality of mortality to her young mind. She was taken by the realization that time moved too fast, and soon, she and everyone she knew would be dead.
Nothing had happened to spawn that realization. No one had died or said anything about death to her. She just felt panicked and helpless about aging and what that meant for her life. She believed that moment was what caused her to seek adventure in life. To try to have as many loves as possible. To visit as many places as possible. To eat as much pasta as possible. To take complete control over her life so that no moment was wasted.
If she could have lived eight lives at once, she would have so she could experience everything there was in the world. But trying to live eight lives as one person spun her life into a frenzy. The only way this pace of life could end was in destruction. For her, that destruction came in the form of crying out for help on a bathroom floor at 30 years old.
Gilbert realized she couldn’t take any of her past actions back. The only thing she could do now was try to find peace and contentment in life. That was why she’d come to the Ashram. She’d been chasing time her whole life and struggling because she could never catch it. Time was always a step ahead of her. But she started to understand that the purpose of life was not to catch time. Her mission was to sit, be patient, and let life unfold as it would. The only place she needed to put the energy used to micromanage life was in her pursuit of God.
The next morning, Gilbert sat in meditation and took in the usual thoughts. What she found alarmed her. The intruding thoughts she believed were so powerful and oppressive were really not that interesting. They ping-ponged between longing for love and remaining in control. These mundane thoughts held her back from finding God, so she asked for a different lens by which to see her thoughts. Rather than seeing them as failures, could she not see them as human?
At first, she tried not to judge her thoughts. But her mind wouldn’t relent. She kept thinking about all of her mistakes and how she was no good at meditating. Then, from some deep unknown place inside, a different voice arose. It roared like a lion in the jungle. It bared its teeth and stood tall, showing how much more powerful her love was than all the hate. Gilbert’s mind settled, and she heard nothing but a powerful, grounding silence. For the first time since arriving, she felt she could talk to God.
The meditation hurdle was a big one for Gilbert, but it wasn’t the biggest. There was an ancient Yoga scripture called the Gurugita, or “Geet,” as Richard called it. The chant was 182 verses long and took an hour and a half to recite. It’s a conversation between Parvati, a divine goddess of creativity, and Shiva, a god and embodiment of consciousness. Their conversation revolves around the universe and its divine manifestation.
This Geet was Gilbert’s true nemesis. She’d hated it in New York and thought reciting it in India would help, but it didn’t. A moderate dislike of the words, tune, and length of the chant turned into a dreadful disgust. The residents were meant to sing the Geet each morning following the morning prayer and meditation. That it came before breakfast didn’t help matters. Gilbert often skipped the Geet. Instead, she meditated, wrote, or called her sister.
One of the main issues for Gilbert was that the Geet was considered a vital practice by her Guru. Everyone understood its power and significance. But she didn’t know how to get on board, so she asked for help from a resident monk. This monk was from New York and had been a professor of theater at NYU. He’d been a monk for 30 years and told things like they were. Gilbert asked to be let off the hook from reciting the Geet. The monk told her she was not required to participate. She had free will and could decide for herself. But he also said her Guru believed it was the most important Yoga text. There was the expectation that she would do it.
The monk reminded her that the Geet was not meant to be easy. It was a powerful scripture that dug deep within and burned your ego and demons down to ash. The fact that she was so uncomfortable meant something beneficial was happening. He challenged her to sing the Geet every morning of her last days at the Ashram.
For the next two days, Gilbert showed up for the Geet. Each day, she felt like she’d been run over by a truck. She was angry and uncomfortable and spewed her disdain to Swamiji, her Guru’s master, who was responsible for this ritual. She’d seen his picture and found him too powerful and intimidating. She tried to avoid looking at him or thinking about him, but she soon started to understand that his power was exactly what she needed. His presence challenged her to work harder, and she felt closest to him when she was brooding during the Geet. This realization is what caused her to risk injury the next morning to make it to the Geet.
Gilbert’s roommate had inadvertently locked her in their room. The Geet was about to start. For a second, Gilbert realized she had the perfect excuse to skip it. But a second later, she was dangling from her two-story window. She jumped, scraping her leg on the way down, and ran to the Geet. She took her seat, still bleeding, and tried to focus. A thought hit her. The Geet was a chant of love, and maybe she struggled because she didn’t have a direction to point that love.
When she reached the 20th verse, she decided to focus the words and meaning on her nephew Nick. Nick was eight years old and very bright and sensitive. He didn’t sleep well because he couldn’t shut down his mind. She loved him dearly, and that morning, she sang the Geet as a lullaby to help him sleep halfway around the world.
Gilbert put all her love and wishes for her nephew in life into the verses. Then, she started to weep. Gilbert reached up to wipe away her tears at the same moment the Geet ended. She’d made it through, and it had seemed like minutes. After that experience, Gilbert attended the Geet every day. She called her sister and learned that Nick was now sleeping without issues. No one knew what had changed, but Gilbert knew.
The next time Gilbert saw her roommate, she told her what had happened with the lock. The roommate was astonished that she’d done such a thing, especially because she’d had a dream about Gilbert that night. Gilbert was on fire in her bed. The roommate tried to help, but before she could, she saw that there was nothing left but ashes.
The breakthrough with the Geet caused Gilbert to wonder whether her plans for India needed to change. She was coming to the end of her six weeks at the Ashram and had big plans for her journey. She wanted to discover other temples, other holy guides, and other ways of finding God. She wanted to do touristy things like visit the Ganges, the Himalayas, Calcutta, and Mumbai. She wanted to visit the Dali Lama and ask him for help finding God. But all of that changed.
She remembered what she’d learned from the Zen teachings—it’s harder to catch sight of yourself in moving water than still water. Was she really going to find God jumping from one train car to the next and one location to another? Everything at the Ashram was designed to support her spiritual transformation. Richard said she’d been invited by God to jump on her personal train of awakening in a beautiful and safe place. Could she really pass that invitation up by stopping the trip halfway? After that, she made the decision to stay.
Gilbert understood the truth in Richard’s words. Even though she’d had some breakthroughs in her ability to communicate with God, she still hadn’t mastered the art of intentional thought.
Not long after, Gilbert caught herself thinking about her future during mediation. Where would she live after her trip? New York? Somewhere else? If she lived somewhere cheaper, she could afford a two-bedroom apartment. The second room could be dedicated to meditation. What color should it be?
This thought brought her up short. She wasn’t present in the moment. She was meditating on where she would be meditating eight months from now. She tried to bring her focus back to the present, but it was no use. So she decided to try a different type of meditative practice she heard about from another resident—Vipassana.
Vipassana is the practice of silent meditation for two to three hours at a time. You’re not permitted to move, not even to shift position. The point is to sit with the discomfort, assess it, and let it go. This practice aims to help you sit with discomfort in real life. Gilbert wondered how it might serve her life to be able to sit unmoving for more than a few minutes. She was the type of person who was constantly bouncing from here to there, making quick and rash decisions to avoid pain and discomfort. Was she even capable of being still?
She found a bench in the Ashram’s garden and decided she would practice her own version of Vipassana for one hour. Unfortunately, she chose the time of night when the mosquitoes came out of hiding. They started to assault her, and she questioned whether she shouldn’t try another time. But then it hit her—the buzzing and discomfort of being stung emulated the constant disruptions of daily life. If she could make it through this hour, what else could she make it through?
Rather than focus on the pain, she merely acknowledged it and let it go. She slipped into a meditative state for two hours. When she was finished, she counted 20 bites. They itched, but she just rode with it. After another 30 minutes, she didn’t feel any discomfort at all. For once, she hadn’t rushed to react. It was a small moment of fortitude, but one she’d never experienced before. And she was thrilled.
Gilbert continued to grow stronger in her practice. She’d often prayed in a vague way to God, sometimes even putting the ball in His court to figure out what she needed. But now, she was being more intentional in her prayers. She tried to be as specific as possible in what she asked.
She had grown to see that prayer was a two-way street. God knows what you need, but you must also know. That’s the point. If you don’t know what you want or need, how can you ever hope to achieve it?
Gilbert started to realize that destiny and fate were partly under her purview of responsibility. There were things she couldn’t control in life. But she could control certain things—what she ate, who she let into her life, how she spent her time, and how she used her words. But it was Richard who added her thoughts to the list. He told her that choosing her thoughts was the same as choosing what to have for breakfast.
With this new understanding, Gilbert saw that negative thoughts were part of reality, but what she did with them was her free will. If she was willing to let go of emotional attachments to negative events, she could receive the negative thoughts and send them on their way.
She now saw her mind as a safe harbor and started a new mantra. She would no longer give refuge to unhealthy thoughts. She sent a call out to the universe that the rules surrounding which thoughts would be pulled ashore had changed. There was a new sheriff in town, and he didn’t stand for mayhem.
The topic of Gilbert’s marriage and divorce came up again during her second month at the Ashram. Richard had also been married and spoke of his ex-wife with affection, which made Gilbert jealous. Her relationship with her ex-husband was the antithesis of affection. Then, she learned that Richard’s relationship with his ex wasn’t friendly. In fact, his ex-wife hated him. So how could he be so content?
Gilbert felt her ex-husband’s hatred like an anvil around her neck. The guilt and feeling of confinement because of his hatred was constantly broadcast in her soul. She told this much to her friends at the Ashram, which now included a plumber/poet from New Zealand. Ever her sharp mirror, Richard asked how long she was going to let her ex-husband control her happiness. Gilbert didn’t know what to say except she wanted his forgiveness so she could be free to move forward with peace.
That night, the New Zealand poet took her to the top of one of the buildings. He gave her a note and told her to climb to the highest part of the building. At the top, there would be nothing standing between her and God. He told her not to come down until her feelings were resolved.
When Gilbert got to the top, she looked at the note. It was a list of 10 recommendations for how to let go and forgive herself and her husband. Gilbert lay on her back and stared up at the stars. She whispered a prayer and asked God to show her what she needed to see.
What Gilbert had always wanted was closure. If she and her husband could talk, they could come to real truths about their marriage and why it ended. They could both forgive and move on with their lives. But Gilbert knew that conversation was never going to happen in this world. Could she make it happen another way? She asked God to help her talk to her husband.
Gilbert fell into a meditative state and waited for a message. The message she received was to do what she wanted to do to find closure. If she wanted to talk to her husband, she should talk to him. If she wanted forgiveness, she should offer up her own. She could find closure within. At that moment, Gilbert asked her husband to join her on the roof. And he did.
She watched herself and her husband communicate as two blue souls of energy. Without the attachment to the body or the world, they each understood the other completely. Gilbert didn’t try to interfere but merely observed. Her soul was doing the work, and her physical body was not necessary. The two souls circled each other and parted. Forgiveness was granted, and when she opened her eyes, she was released.
Richard’s stay at the Ashram ended, and Gilbert accompanied him to the airport. They were both sorry to say goodbye. He said he could tell she was having a good experience. She looked different, lighter. But he reminded her that all of her pain and suffering would be packed and ready to go at the gates when she left. Then, he gave her one last piece of advice—fall in love again. When she was done healing, she needed to find a way to open her heart up again to someone else. Gilbert said she would, and she knew she meant it.
With Richard gone, Gilbert thought about what she was losing. She was losing a friend and the person she shared her feelings with. Then, she realized she’d been sharing her feelings with everyone. She suddenly became aware of how much talking about herself she’d done at the Ashram. She’d become a “Chatty Cathy,” even going to extremes of scheduling her social time like a New York socialite.
None of this surprised her. She’d always been a talker. And often, she was the kind of talker who interrupted people. When she thought about why that was, she saw the unhappy truth. She thought her life was more important than that of others. She made a decision to stop the attention- and affection-seeking behaviors and spend her final two months at the Ashram in silence.
The next morning, she scrubbed the floors of the temple in silence. Her mission was to be the best silent person there was. People would marvel at her silence. She’d become known as the “Quiet Girl.” But her best-laid plans were waylaid when she was called to the administration office. The administrator told her she would have a new job. This job required a personable, bubbly character who always smiled. Her new role was that of Key Hostess.
Gilbert laughed. Of course, as soon as she made this grand plan to become something she wasn’t, God stepped in. She remembered her teachings that God lived inside you. Renouncing behaviors or material items in the physical world didn’t change how God saw you. The only thing you needed to do was let go of the barriers and feel your union with God. Who you were would be divine.
Gilbert saw that who she was as a person was not the problem. Knowing how to be her best self was. She could still be a talker. She could just be a more conscientious and patient talker. She shook the administrator’s hand and happily accepted her new position.
The Key Hostess was the shepherd and support system for the attendees of a week-long silent retreat at the Ashram. One hundred people descended from around the world to immerse themselves in meditative practice. Gilbert was the one who greeted them, answered their questions, and addressed their concerns. She was the only person they were allowed to speak to. She likened it to being an activity director on a cruise ship.
Gilbert loved her new role. Everything in her life seemed to have culminated in her ability to do this job perfectly. She was intuitive and sensitive from her childhood. She was a good listener from days of bartending and working as a journalist. She was a good caretaker after years of twisting herself in knots to care for the men she’d loved. And she understood where these people were coming from emotionally and spiritually. Many of them were likely afraid of the journey they were about to take. Having just traversed this unknown territory herself, Gilbert could be empathetic and patient with them.
This intuition into their fears helped her see how brave the attendees were for making themselves so vulnerable. She found love for them and watched over them with care each day when they sat in silent meditation, seeking to achieve turiya.
Turiya is considered the fourth level of consciousness. The other three levels—waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep—are experienced by everyone. But this fourth level is the purest form of awareness. In this state, you are present with God and full of bliss. Many people have experienced this state at fleeting moments. They may not have recognized it, but for one second, everything in life seemed beautiful and perfect. The goal of life, according to the Yoga tradition, is to learn to live within this state contentedly.
Gilbert wasn’t meant to meditate with the attendees. But one day, while watching over their silent meditation, she accidentally fell into a meditative state. Without even trying, she’d slipped into turiya.
Gilbert had a difficult time describing what this state felt like. It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t a major event replete with fanfare and bells and whistles. She described it as a simple occurrence in which she felt the deepest sensation of love in her life. She wasn’t thinking or acting. She was just feeling.
In this state, her heart was wide open and filled with compassion. She felt bonded to everyone and everything. Her thoughts were still there, but she heard them as background noise from a radio. They now seemed inconsequential, as did all of her previous ideas of who she was. Her whole life had been designed around the search for happiness. But here it was all along, inside her.
Then, Gilbert vocalized her desire to stay in this state forever, and as soon as she did, she felt herself being pulled out of it. She started to scramble, not wanting to lose the sensation. But each thought of “I want” or “I don’t want” brought her closer to reality until she was fully back. Her ego had returned, and she looked around and saw the regular world and her regular self.
Gilbert felt sad and anxious about losing that state of grace. But she also felt a different feeling. There was a new presence next to her. This presence was her witness, or the transcended form of herself. She understood that her belief that the state of turiya could disappear meant she wasn’t ready to exist there yet. Her journey wasn’t over. She still had more to learn.
Other retreat groups came and went during Gilbert’s last weeks at the Ashram. She continued her duties diligently and experienced turiya a few more times. These experiences changed her to the point that the retreat attendants said she was a stabilizing, peaceful, and spiritual force for them. She had to laugh. In accepting herself as a talker, she’d become the quiet girl.
The scorching summer months were approaching quickly, and the Ashram would soon empty out. Each day, Gilbert said goodbye to friends she’d made during her months there. There was a melancholy feeling in the air, but it was also bittersweet.
During her last week, she found more time to be alone. She was okay with being alone now and could sit in silence for many hours. Her meditative sessions swung between the overwhelming energy of the blue light and quiet calm. Either was fine. She no longer fought the sensations. Now, when thoughts came, she accepted them and moved on. She was so used to the ways of her mind now, there was no need to be confused or affected by it.
On one of her last nights, Gilbert couldn’t sleep. She crawled out of bed and went for a walk. In the garden, she could smell the sweetness of nature. She felt the warm breeze on her skin. It hit her so completely in that moment where she was—India! Like a fledgling learning to fly, she took off through the meadow and frolicked in the moonlight. She hugged a eucalyptus tree and kissed it with love. She saw God in everything around her and knew her prayers had been answered. She was pure joy.
It was likely no coincidence, then, that Gilbert found her word shortly before she left the Ashram. She was reading a Yoga text and came across the word antevasin. Translated, this word means “someone who lives on the border of two worlds.”
In ancient times, it was a literal translation regarding someone leaving the city to dwell at the boundary of the unknown forest. In modern times, it describes the figurative border between your old self and your new self. You never fully cross-over into the new self. You stay at the boundary, learning and moving forward. But there is always more to learn, so the new self keeps moving too. The journey never ends.
As soon as Gilbert saw this word, she knew it was hers. She’d always questioned who she was or who she was supposed to be. What was her role? A wife? A lover? An overeater of pasta? A lost soul? Now she knew she was all of those things and none of them completely. She was a student of life. And she would remain at the boundary of learning as she moved forward through the unknown.
Soon after landing in Bali, Gilbert realized she was woefully unprepared for this portion of her trip. In all her years of traveling, she’d never landed in a country with no plan whatsoever. But there she was in Indonesia because of a 10-minute conversation with a medicine man two years ago. She had no knowledge about the customs, no friends waiting for her, and no idea of where she was heading. She also didn’t know about the one-month tourist time limit. She politely asked the customs officer if she could stay for four months. He politely replied no.
Now that she was there, Gilbert couldn’t fully recall what the medicine man had said to her. Did he say she would come back or should come back? And worse, she had no idea how to contact him or where he lived. She had his name and the name of a neighboring town—Ubud. It was as good a place as any to start.
One saving grace was that Bali was a popular tourist destination. It’s a small island, and the people speak English well. For a Westerner with money, Bali was easy to travel through. Gilbert took a taxi to Ubud and found a small hotel for $10 a night.
Gilbert likened Ubud to a Sante Fe-type community with monkeys walking around. The town was surrounded by temples and known for its artistic and cultural traditions. There were shops and restaurants and a myriad of local custom classes for tourists. If she never found the medicine man, she could sign up for batik, cooking, drumming, or dance class. There was even a meditation center across the street from the hotel. Things could be worse.
Gilbert unpacked and decided to go exploring. She assumed it would take a few days or weeks to find the medicine man, so she wanted to become comfortable in her new town. The front desk attendant was a young man named Mario. Mario wasn’t his real name, but since the Balinese are named one of four names depending on their order of birth, a nickname was often necessary.
Mario chose his name because of his love for Italian culture. When Gilbert told him she’d recently been in Italy, he stopped what he was doing and sat down to hear all about it. Gilbert decided to see whether Mario might know the medicine man. At first, he didn’t recognize the name. But after she wrote Ketut Liyer on a piece of paper, his face lit up. He was very familiar with Ketut and offered to take her to him. That was how Gilbert found herself on the back of a motorbike flying through the countryside on her first day in Bali.
Ketut’s compound was traditional for Balinese families. Stone walls, a courtyard, a temple, and various small homes scattered about. As soon as Gilbert and Mario entered the compound, they saw Ketut sitting on his front porch. Mario introduced her as a “girl from America,” to which Ketut reached out his hand and said it was nice to meet her. Gilbert was crushed.
She knew that 2 years was a long time to remember someone you met once. But Ketut had been so influential in her life, she felt they had an unforgettable connection. She was heartbroken that he had no idea who she was.
Like the first time, Ketut gave her a palm reading. She was relieved to see her prophesied future was more or less the same as before. Still, she didn’t come to him for another palm reading. She came to learn the secrets of Balinese meditation. So she decided to jog Ketut’s memory.
Gilbert reminded him that they’d met before. She told him she’d asked to find a way to be closer to God. She described the picture he’d drawn her in detail. She mentioned the name of the Yoga instructor who’d brought her there. She even reminded him of his prophecy that she would return to study with him and teach him English. All Ketut did was smile. He still didn’t remember.
Gilbert was about to give up. But she’d come too far. She tried one more time. She told him she was the writer from New York. Suddenly, all of his confusion disappeared. His eyes brightened. He remembered her. In fact, Ketut remembered her so well he almost danced a jig that she’d returned. He screamed, “YOU came BACK!” Gilbert cried with relief.
Ketut explained that he didn’t recognize her because she looked like a different person. She was a sad, ugly person before. But now, she was happy and beautiful. He remembered that she was in a bad divorce and had too much worry and sorrow. She was old then. He was so happy to see her looking young again.
The English lesson started immediately. He pulled out a series of letters from art collectors around the world, people who were fans of his drawings and paintings. She read each one to him, feeling purposeful and validated. Ketut then told her that he’d remarried. He was happy, but he was also drained of his spiritual light. Shortly after Gilbert’s first visit, there was a terrorist bombing. Western tourists stopped visiting Bali as a result, which meant they stopped visiting Ketut.
Before Gilbert left, he told her to come every day for their lessons. He said 3 months should be enough time to teach her everything he knew about reaching God through meditation. He also predicted that she would get married in Bali soon. It was a passing thought, and Gilbert didn’t pay it much attention. She promised to come.
The next day, Gilbert bought a bicycle so she’d be able to ride to the compound on her own. She didn’t know what to expect from her visits with Ketut, but she didn’t care. She was just happy to have found him.
Gilbert arrived at the compound to find Ketut in session with a Balinese family. Their baby was teething and crying uncontrollably. Those kinds of visits made up most of Ketut’s business. He helped heal the sick and blessed marital unions and newborn babies. On any given day, he could have 100 visitors. He did this work for a fee, but he also did it for free. It was his duty as a healer to help whoever needed it.
Gilbert watched as Ketut prescribed a solution to rub on the baby’s gums and another to dispel the demon tormenting the child. He said a prayer over a bowl of water, infusing it with his mystical powers, and gave some to the baby to drink. He gave the rest of the water to the parents before they left. For his service, he received the equivalent of a quarter.
Ketut and Gilbert sat on his porch talking after the family was gone. A few more visitors came and went. Then, they were finally alone and able to start the lessons. His first lesson in Balinese meditation was simple—sit silently and smile.
Gilbert thought the task sounded too easy, but after the difficulty she’d encountered during her Yoga meditation, she was ready for easy. Ketut said she needed to smile with her face and mind to clear out the bad energy and bring in the good. He said to let the smile reach deep inside her and to stay relaxed. Being too serious about this practice could make her sick.
Gilbert learned about Ketut and how he became a medicine man. Ketut was the ninth generation of medicine men in his family. But when he was a young man, he didn’t want to be one. He didn’t want to study that hard and had dreams of being a painter.
A wealthy American commissioned a large painting from Ketut. The pay would be enough to lift Ketut out of poverty. He worked day and night on the painting, often by oil lamp. During one night session, the oil lamp exploded and started a fire. Ketut burned his arm and developed an infection. The doctors wanted to amputate the arm to save his life. Before the procedure, Ketut went back home for a night.
That night, Ketut had a dream. His father and ancestors spoke to him through this dream and gave him the remedy for his arm. The remedy worked and healed his arm completely. That experience helped him realize the power of medicine men. He started his studies and became the man Gilbert knew. He still painted, but only in his spare time or as a remedy for his patients.
Gilbert doesn’t know how old Ketut is. Neither does Ketut. He thought he was maybe 65, but he wasn’t sure. He mentioned being an adult during WWII, and he said he burned his arm sometime around 1920. Gilbert reasoned he was somewhere between 65 and 105 years old.
Gilbert saw Ketut as an eccentric old king. He ate one modest meal and drank one cup of coffee with sugar a day. He exuded patience and calm, which seemed to linger throughout the compound. None of the people Gilbert witnessed waiting to see him showed any signs of despair regardless of how long they had to wait, not even the children.
Gilbert wasn’t sure how she fit into this man’s life. She wasn’t helping him with his English that much, and she felt guilty for taking up his time after a long day of healing people. But she soon realized he liked having her around as company. He’d never left Bali and rarely left his compound. Gilbert’s stories of her travels and the state of the world fascinated him.
Gilbert’s time in Bali was one of complete freedom and leisure. She practiced Yogic meditation in the mornings and Balinese meditation at night. In between, she rode her bike around town and into the hills and rice fields. She went to the library and read about the Balinese culture. She spent hours in the hotel garden soaking up the beauty around her.
On one of her bike rides, Gilbert found a sign advertising an artist’s retreat. The retreat was a stand-alone home in the country owned by an Englishwoman, and Gilbert moved in after 3 days. The cottage was peaceful and gorgeous. It had a bright red kitchen, a terrace, an outdoor shower, a garden, and fruit trees in the yard. It was her very own Eden.
The caretaker of the property was a 27-year-old Indonesian man named Yudhi (pronounced You-Day). He wasn’t Balinese. He was from Java and a Christian, not Muslim like most Indonesians. He was a talented musician and spoke perfect English. He’d lived in Brooklyn for almost a decade and thought New York City was a place of pure love.
Yudhi married a woman from Connecticut, and they lived happily with an eclectic group of friends. But after 9/11, the Patriot Act required all people from Muslim countries to register. He and his wife thought he’d be fine, since they were married. But when they went in for the interview, Yudhi was deported. He and his wife still communicated through email, but the marriage was suffering. There was no indication of whether he’d be able to return to America.
Gilbert often invited Yudhi to her cottage, and they drank beer and discussed their favorite places in New York. He played guitar, and she thought he was the most talented musician she’d ever heard. She wished there was a world in which he could be famous.
Ketut taught Gilbert that each person was born both a demon and god inside. Whether or not they turned toward the darkness or light was an individual decision, but all had the capacity for either. He said the purpose of meditation was to find a harmonious balance that led to happiness.
After a few weeks, Ketut taught her the Four Brothers Meditation. The Balinese believed that everyone was born with four brothers who protected them throughout life. The brothers symbolize strength, knowledge, friendship, and language. You could call upon these brothers at any time for assistance. They even protected you in your dreams.
Gilbert told Ketut about a recurring nightmare that often hindered sleep. In this nightmare, a man stood by her bed with a knife. Ketut explained that the man was probably the brother of strength. He was likely fighting off demons, which was why she became aware of him. He told her not to be afraid and to sleep in peace. He also said most people don’t ever see their brothers, so she was lucky.
Gilbert liked the idea of the four brothers. She also liked the name she was meant to use when she spoke to them. She was to introduce herself as Lagoh Prano, which meant “Happy Body.”
Gilbert started talking to her brothers and asked for their protection. She was surprised, then, when she was hit by a bus on her bike. Her injuries were minor, and her bike was fairly unscathed. But she had a nasty cut on her knee that became infected.
Another surprise was Ketut’s reaction when she showed him her injury. Instead of offering to heal her, he suggested she see a doctor. She thought maybe he didn’t treat Westerners. But in hindsight, she wondered if he and the brothers didn’t know what they were doing after all. The doctor she found to help her changed her life in ways she never saw coming.
Wayan Nuriyasih was another Balinese healer. She worked out of a small shop in the center of Ubud that doubled as a restaurant. She was an attractive woman with long dark hair. Gilbert had passed the shop every day on her way to Ketut’s, but she never stopped until that day. She showed Wayan her knee, and the medicine woman went to work.
Wayan made Gilbert a tea of herbs and placed a green goo and leaves on her wound. Gilbert’s pain lessened instantly. Wayan spoke excellent English, and she and Gilbert struck up a conversation. Gilbert was surprised to learn that Wayan was also divorced. Divorce in Balinese culture was considered very distressing. The women found common ground, and Wayan told Gilbert her story.
Wayan had been married to an abusive alcoholic who beat her severely. If not for her healing powers, she likely would have suffered permanent physical damage. When she miscarried her second child after a beating, she left him. In Balinese customs, all generations of families live in compounds, like Ketut’s. If you divorce, you must leave the compound and are set adrift with no resources or connections. If you are a woman, you automatically lose custody of your children.
Wayan sold all her possessions and used her savings to hire a lawyer. After two years of fighting, she was granted custody of her small daughter, Tutti. The two moved often to search for new business, but they were happy to be together.
Gilbert fell in love with both Wayan and 8-year-old Tutti right away. She felt a strong powerful sensation from Wayan that infected her own energy. She changed her daily routine to now include visits with Wayan. Wayan was sassy and quick-witted, and she could tell Gilbert hadn’t had sex in a long time. She said she would go to the temple and pray for Gilbert to find a lover.
Gilbert had come to Indonesia to find balance in her life, which she had asked for two years ago. With her life now structured around meditation and connecting with wonderful and powerful people, she felt accomplished. She’d found balance and was no longer seeking anything. During that time, her prayers mostly expressed gratitude for the peace she’d found.
Her lessons in India taught her that happiness was not an accident. It was the result of diligence in seeking joy and harmony. You had to work every day to maintain happiness and pray while happy to cement it in your soul. This understanding was likely what led Gilbert to open her life to further joy after meeting a woman named Armenia in Wayan’s shop.
Armenia was a Brazilian expat, physically striking, and empirically sexy. After joining Gilbert and Wayan in conversation one day, Armenia invited Gilbert to a party at another Brazilian’s house. There would be expats from around the world in attendance. Gilbert jumped at the chance.
Gilbert hadn’t worn anything but jeans or Yoga attire in a long time. She dug out the one dress she’d packed, put on lipstick, and borrowed jewelry and perfume from Armenia. The ritual of dressing up felt strange and new. She felt like a real woman again.
The party was wonderful, with wonderful food made by Felipe, the Brazillian host. Gilbert got tipsy quickly after months of clean living. She was surprised to see that she could still flirt or even wanted to. She thought Felipe was handsome and interesting and flirted with him throughout the night. She was surprised by her forwardness, but it felt good, too.
After the party, everyone went dancing at a local nightclub. There was a reggae band and people of all ages from all over the world. Gilbert let loose on the dance floor. She realized she hadn’t danced since she was happily married.
Gilbert stuck close to Felipe all night, but then she met Ian, and her focus shifted. Ian was Welsh, tall, attractive, and intelligent. They talked and laughed until almost 4 am. Gilbert knew she liked him in a way she hadn’t liked anyone since before David. But when it was time to leave, they didn’t exchange contact information. Ian said they would meet again when the gods saw fit to make it happen.
Gilbert couldn’t believe she’d met a man she actually liked. Even more, she couldn’t believe she was up at dawn for something other than meditation. She was still flying high when Felipe drove her home. He said he could tell she was going to have a wonderful time in Bali. Gilbert made a joke about owning only one dress, but Felipe laughed. She was young and beautiful, he said. Another dress wasn’t required.
Gilbert woke up the next day missing the clarity she usually had after morning meditation. She was too restless to meditate, figuratively and literally. Why was she feeling this way? She’d had fun. Met nice people. Flirted with a few men—she stopped on that word. That was it. The reintroduction of men to her life agitated her.
She worried that opening her life to a man again might make her lose control. She didn’t want her journey, life, or work to be disrupted. But she also thought about how nice it might be to experience romance again. And just like that, thoughts of her heartbreak over David flooded her. She wondered if she should call him and try to reconcile. Then came thoughts about her divorce, and down the rabbit hole she fell. She was only able to stop the mudslide of regret when she thought about what Felipe had said. She was young and should be having fun. But she no longer knew how.
Gilbert was given a reprieve from her dismal thoughts when she arrived at Wayan’s shop the morning after the party. Wayan had received word that her lease was up in a few months and the rent would be raised. She’d have to move again, but she didn’t have any money or anywhere to go. And she’d have to take Tutti out of school again. Each move jeopardized the little girl’s chances of going to university to study veterinary medicine like she wanted.
What made matters worse were two orphans Wayan had taken in not long before. The two girls, both barely adolescents, had been trafficked street hustlers. They’d been under the thumb of an adult who made them beg and then took the money. Wayan found them starving and brought them home. She took care of them like they were her own. This act of compassion by a poor single mother was more than Gilbert could believe. She was in awe.
Gilbert noticed Tutti walking around the store with a small piece of blue tile in her hand. She chanted over it and sat on it in a corner for a long time. Wayan explained that Tutti had found the tile outside a hotel construction site. She brought it home and prayed that she and her family could have a beautiful tiled floor like that someday.
An electric current ran through Gilbert’s body. It was the same energy she’d felt the first time she met Wayan. She realized she’d wanted to help this magical woman but hadn’t known how then. Now, she did. All frivolous thoughts about men disappeared. She had a new mission.
Gilbert left the shop and went to the Internet cafe. She composed a message to her friends and family at home. Her birthday was coming up, and she told them that if she were home, she would have thrown some expensive party. They would have bought her expensive gifts. It would have been quite the scene. This year, she asked them to spend their money a different way.
In her letter, Gilbert explained about Wayan, her past, her children, and her current situation. She also told them that she was happier than she’d ever been and owed much of that to her friendship with Wayan. For her birthday that year, she asked everyone to help her buy Wayan a house. She promised to match whatever donations people could offer.
The next day, she found that her friends had already donated $700. The day after, the donations outgrew what she could match. Everyone chipped in, even if only $15. A friend’s boyfriend, who worked on Wall Street, offered to match the final sum. Then, people started to forward the email, and soon Gilbert was receiving donations from strangers.
At the end of the week, she’d raised $18,000, which was more than enough to build a house for Wayan’s family. A friend pointed out to Gilbert that Tutti meant “everybody” in Italian. Gilbert couldn’t believe she’d missed it. She’d set out into the world to help herself and wound up helping everybody.
During the week of fundraising, Gilbert kept her actions a secret. She didn’t want to get Wayan’s hopes up. She continued her meetings with Ketut and Wayan, but she also distracted herself with her new friend Felipe. She finally admitted she had a small crush on him after seeing that he was more than what he appeared to be. When Armenia said Felipe had come to Bali to get over a divorce, Gilbert knew she’d found another kindred spirit.
Felipe wasn’t a real prospect for a relationship, though. He was 52 and had silver hair. But Gilbert was enchanted by this grown man. It was like encountering a new species. He’d been in a committed marriage for 20 years, had grown children who adored him, had traveled the world, and spoke four languages. He also said what was on his mind and didn’t play games.
One night, Felipe told Gilbert she should take a lover. With all sincerity, he said there were plenty of men on the island who’d be happy to show her a good time. But Gilbert wasn’t ready for romance yet. She didn’t feel like reshaping her life or body to fit a man. And the “getting to know you” part was exhausting. Then, there was birth control to consider. It was a lot to take on. Plus, her heart was still broken.
Felipe didn’t make her feel stupid about her feelings. Instead, he shared his own stories of love, marriage, and divorce. They talked about the depression that followed the ending of a marriage. They ate and drank well together and became good friends.
Twice, Felipe tried to give her a friendly kiss when he dropped her off. Each time, Gilbert turned her head away and nuzzled against his chest. She wasn’t ready for kissing, but she hadn’t been held in a long time. She could handle being held.
As Gilbert became more comfortable with Felipe, she started inviting him to meet her friends. Ketut read his palm and was less than sly when he told her that Felipe was a very good man. She also introduced him to Wayan, who gave her approval as well. Gilbert still wasn’t interested in him romantically. But she was able to stop thinking about other men, and that was everything.
After two months in Bali, Gilbert finally made it to the beach. She and Felipe drove to the coast one Sunday and spent the whole day talking, playing in the waves, napping, and reading to each other. They drank beers and filled in the gaps of their life stories. Ten hours passed and the sun went down. But neither was ready to leave.
Gilbert linked her arm through Felipe’s as they walked through a nearby fishing village. During this walk, Felipe finally asked if they should have an affair. He asked it as casually as if he’d asked for the time. Gilbert liked the way he asked this question. There was no awkward attempt at intimacy or drama. Still, she didn’t know how to answer.
She told Felipe that she was interested but had promised to stay celibate and focused on improving her life. She didn’t want to thwart her progress and transformation by getting involved with someone. And she didn’t want to lose herself again. Felipe listened and understood. He said they would remain friends, but he still wanted a chance to convince her.
Felipe told her that he was not a man she had to fear. He already knew her life story, and he didn’t want anything from her that she didn’t want to give. He also had experienced broken hearts, and he wasn’t interested in putting either of them through that again. He wasn’t looking for long-term promises or planning on coming back to the States with her. But he had to admit that he’d never enjoyed being with someone as much as he enjoyed being with her. Gilbert thought his declaration was incredibly romantic. But she still said no.
That night, Gilbert went to bed alone and thought about her history with men. She’d always made fast decisions and tried to see the best in the men she was with. She assumed they wanted to become their best selves, so she waited around for it. But she never asked what they really wanted from life or what their intentions were for their relationship with her. She had to start acting like her own overprotective brother or father. She had to question whether a suitor was worthwhile. She felt that Felipe was a worthwhile suitor, but she knew she wasn’t ready.
In the morning, Gilbert chanted the entire Gurugita and meditated. Her sense of dissatisfaction and imbalance faded away. Happiness came into her heart again, and she felt full of God’s love. At that moment, she knew she’d made the right decision to turn Felipe down.
The next night, Gilbert went to Felipe’s for dinner. They relaxed afterwards and talked for hours. Then, Felipe moved close and said there’d been enough talking. He again asked her to come to his bed. This time, Gilbert didn’t argue.
Before making love, Felipe said he didn’t want anything from her except to shower her with affection for as long as he could. Gilbert nodded, suddenly unable to speak. She had no more words to persuade either of them away from this moment. She’d been alone for a long time. It was time to feel something else.
Gilbert’s memory of that night is a bit hazy. What she remembers most is the mosquito net around the bed. She imagined that it was a parachute carrying her safely through the air after jumping out of her private jet of solitude. She felt like she was free-floating between her past and future, and she landed safely in the arms of her Brazilian lover.
Felipe was sorry to learn that Gilbert had to leave early the next morning. She’d promised to go on a road trip with Yudhi, a sort of American-style cross-country journey. Of course, the small island of Bali didn’t afford such adventures, but they would do their best.
Gilbert felt a pang of regret that she had to leave Felipe’s inviting bed, but she was also slightly relieved. She needed to step back and look at what had occurred. She’d broken her vow of celibacy, and she wanted time to adjust her perspective on life. A week away was the perfect thing.
She and Yudhi stuck to the coastal roads and bounced from beach to beach. They ate junk food and spoke American. This was a nice break for Gilbert. She’d been speaking a lot of English, but she missed the vernacular and nuance of American English. They spent hours on the beach, forgetting for a minute where they were. They drove, listened to American music, and ate pizza wherever they found it. In the evenings, they wandered into towns and became immersed in whatever local ceremony was occurring.
Gilbert called Felipe daily from the road. He told her he was falling in love with her, something he hadn’t felt for almost 30 years. Gilbert was apprehensive. She wasn’t ready for love yet. But he assured her, his love came with no strings. He was prepared to be destroyed by her. He only wanted to enjoy her while she was still there.
This heady place of romance filled her head along the road trip. But she came back down to earth when she and Yudhi talked about New York. They spent the last day on a beach talking about the city and their memories there. Yudhi’s longing was so intense, it made Gilbert homesick for the first time. She had to remind herself that she could go back whenever she wanted, something Yudhi was not free to do.
Gilbert didn’t leave Felipe’s for almost a month after her trip. She’d never experienced love and affection like that before. She’d never felt so free during the act of lovemaking. Their bodies fit perfectly together, like magnets. He whispered intimate statements in her ears, which helped her pick up a little Portuguese.
Gilbert enjoyed this new sense of timeless drifting, which was so different from her usual organized mind. Still, she made time to meditate every morning. She was in such a state of calm and contentment, she was able to slip into meditation within seconds. She no longer could remember why she thought life was such a struggle.
She also finally went back to visit Ketut after a lengthy absence. Ketut took one look at her and understood what she’d experienced. He was happy for her but warned her not to get pregnant.
She also visited Wayan again. Wayan was happy for her friend. The beginning of a love story was so exciting. She said part of a balanced existence required losing yourself to love every now and then. She also warned Gilbert not to get pregnant. Gilbert assured her it was impossible. Felipe had had a vasectomy.
To change the conversation, Gilbert asked Wayan about the new house. When Gilbert had finally told Wayan about her fundraiser, Wayan had seemed pained. The shock of the gesture and the sum of money seemed to cause her grief. And when the news finally sunk in, Wayan’s first response was to offer her new home to everyone. She made Gilbert promise that each one of the people who helped her knew they'd be welcomed in her home.
Wayan became caught in fantasizing about her new home. She would have a place for her medical texts, a garden, a real restaurant, and an address that guide books could finally list for tourists. There was a piece of land in a nearby village picked out in her mind, and there was a good school close to it.
That day, Wayan had wondered what she would have done if Gilbert had never come there. Gilbert knew she was always going to be there. Their story was all already written by God. But this fateful gesture became tainted when Wayan told Gilbert she hadn’t bought the land yet. The one she wanted was too expensive, but she wasn’t worried. There was no rush.
When Gilbert told Felipe about the land, he told her to be careful. In Bali, sometimes the truth is not as truthful as it seems. It had already been a month, and the money she’d raised was just sitting in Wayan’s account. He said to make sure the money was spent before she left.
Gilbert celebrated her 35th birthday in mid-July with a party thrown by Wayan. Balinese parties are not like American parties. Mostly, people get dressed in their finest clothes, then sit quietly admiring each other. Wayan wrapped Gilbert in a purple sarong, bustier, and a gold sheath. The children helped Wayan decorate and make a birthday cake. Wayan’s nieces and nephews were ceremony dancers and performed a ritual dance for Gilbert. The orphan girls gave her gold barrettes. There were also some of her international friends in attendance. It was the weirdest but happiest birthday party Gilbert had ever experienced.
As time continued to tick by, Gilbert became more anxious about Wayan and the house. She wanted everything to be secured for her own peace of mind and that of the expectant donors back home. But whenever she asked Wayan about it, Wayan brushed her off with excuses. It wasn’t easy to buy a house. It took time to find the right one. When Gilbert tried to dig deeper, Wayan merely shrugged.
As the weeks grew closer to September, when Gilbert would be leaving and Wayan would be evicted, she and Felipe threw themselves into locating potential properties. But Wayan dragged her feet. The right land needed to have good taksu, or “a positive spirit,” she said. She dismissed two potential properties because of their negative taksu.
Wayan also said she had to meet with a priest to find an auspicious day for making a purchase. But to meet with the priest, she had to decide she actually wanted a property. And to decide that, she had to have an auspicious dream. And to have that dream, she had to make an offering at a major temple. The situation seemed impossible to settle.
Despite these frustrations, Gilbert was having fun. The property search brought her and Felipe closer, and she was falling more in love with him. Felipe joked about enjoying his mundane life before he met Gilbert. But he threw himself into the mission of finding Wayan a house as though it was his own.
There were so many things about Felipe that Gilbert loved. He was a nurturer and had this way of making her feel like the center of his universe. She could tell he enjoyed having someone to care for, which was different than her previous relationships. He often recounted how as soon as he saw her that night at the dinner party, he knew he wanted to take care of her.
But Gilbert didn’t know if she could handle being the center of someone’s universe—or if she wanted to be. When she told him this, he reminded her that he’d never asked her to be his purpose for living. Gilbert felt ashamed of her arrogance, but then he said she wasn’t completely wrong.
At 52, Felipe felt no need to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. He knew she didn’t love him the way he loved her, but it didn’t matter. He would continue to love her even after she left because she had filled him with life again. He would love to be with her always, but their lives didn’t allow for that. He was in Bali, and she would soon be back in the States. He didn’t need to dwell on it.
Gilbert wondered about life in Bali full time. The other expats seemed to have run away from something in the “real” world. They were content to have no ambitions and live a life of leisure. But Gilbert still had ambitions. She didn’t want to turn away from a serious life, but she also didn’t want to turn away from Felipe. Then, she realized there was no need to worry. Worrying was part of her past. She could just be present in their love and watch the rest happen.
The more Wayan refused the properties Gilbert and Felipe found, the more Gilbert started to wonder if she was receiving the full story from her friend. Again, she tried to infuse a sense of urgency about buying a house. She had less than two weeks left on the island. Again, Wayan said the process couldn’t be rushed.
However, a few days later, Wayan found a piece of land she liked. It had good taksu, was close to town, and was surrounded by rice fields. The owner was a friend of her father’s and needed money quickly. The land was the Balinese equivalent of 7 acres, and he was willing to sell her two of them. Gilbert told her to buy it immediately.
Another few days passed, and Wayan still hadn’t bought the land. Gilbert pressed her about it, and Wayan became evasive. She said the farmer’s wife wouldn’t let him sell part of the land. He had to sell the whole property. Wayan then said if she had a little more money, she could buy the whole thing, as a mystic had advised her to do. It was her destiny to own the land and start a healing center, and someday, maybe she could build a fancy hotel.
Gilbert couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She told Wayan she didn’t have more money to give. And after she heard the words “fancy hotel,” she suspected that she was getting played. Gilbert felt hurt and betrayed. She asked Felipe what he thought. Up to this point, Felipe had merely been a facilitator. He’d kept his opinions to himself. Now, he stated outright that Wayan was playing her.
Felipe told her not to be angry with Wayan. He’d lived on Bali long enough to realize that this type of behavior wasn’t intentional. It was a way of life. Everyone is so poor and tourists are so wealthy, it is second nature for the locals to try to squeeze every cent they can out of tourists before they leave. When Gilbert raised the $18,000, Wayan couldn’t help but become obsessed with the idea that more could be attained. It was her only understanding of how to survive. He said the best course of action would be to do something to snap Wayan’s thinking back to reality. It would be a great service to do so.
The next day, Gilbert told Wayan she was upset because her American friends were demanding answers. She said she was getting daily messages from angry friends who accused Wayan of stealing. Gilbert knew this would do the trick. The worst insult in Bali was to call someone a thief. They all hustled to make a living, but no one was ever called out for it.
Wayan grew emotional and apologized for putting Gilbert in a terrible position. Gilbert said she understood but would have to take the money back if Wayan didn’t find something that week. Of course, there was no legal way Gilbert could get the money back, but Wayan didn’t know that. It only took four hours for Wayan to call and say she bought the 2 acres from the farmer. The wife had apparently changed her mind.
The women exchanged affections, and Gilbert reassured her that all was well between them. After she hung up, she and Felipe opened a bottle of wine and celebrated. They could finally go on vacation.
Gilbert took Felipe to Gili Meno, a small island off the coast of Bali. The island was so small, you could walk the perimeter within an hour. Gilbert chose this island for their vacation because she’d been there before. When she visited Bali two years ago, she took a 10-day trip by herself to the island for a silent retreat.
Gilbert was in the middle of her divorce at the time. The years of suffering and guilt leading up to the separation, the trauma of separating, and the heartbreak from David had left her scraping the bottom of her life. She wanted to be alone and in complete silence so she could find a way to manage the demons that lived inside.
During those 10 days, she walked the island twice each day and sat on the beach with her thoughts. She knew enough about Yogic tradition to know that thoughts are what bring emotions, both good and bad. Her thoughts were all bad, so she always felt pain. She figured if she kept silent and let the thoughts run their course, she could reduce their power.
It took three days for her mind to quiet down enough for her to examine each thought separately. She invited the sorrowful thoughts to enter one at a time. She examined each one, blessed it, and let it settle peacefully in her heart. Then, she examined each angry thought. Finally, she examined all her shame. After she was done, her mind was empty of all the negativity, but her heart was not full. She realized she had more room in her heart than she thought. This meant her ability for love was never-ending. At that moment, she understood God.
Although that moment was life-changing, she knew it was temporary. There would be other thoughts to contend with. And she knew her journey to true healing was just beginning. So that night, Gilbert went to her cabin and opened a new notebook. She spoke for the first time on the island and wrote the words down. She wrote that she was loved, would never be alone, and would always be taken care of.
Those words became the mantra she heard whenever the voice showed up to help her. Over the next two years, that conversation continued in that same notebook. She knew it had saved her life so many times, and she finally understood who the voice belonged to. It was the voice of the balanced version of herself calling her forward to become who she now was.
Bringing Felipe to that island now was her way of acknowledging the origin of the person he loved. She had not been saved by a man. She had saved herself through self-love and spiritual devotion. She was happy and balanced because she fought for it. And she was ready to share her new life with someone else.
Before they landed on the island, Felipe suggested they build a specific brand of life that suited them. He had to be in Bali for business, Australia for his children, and Brazil for his family. She had to be in America for her work and family. Why didn’t they simply exist together among those four locations? The writer in Gilbert didn’t miss the AABB connection with poetry (Australia, America, Bali, Brazil). Of course, that was how they’d move through life together, in measured couplets of beauty. She looked at him and said, “Attraversiamo.” It was time to cross over.
Gilbert’s story is about overcoming struggles and finding your true spirit. How has her story helped you look at your struggles and happiness?
What aspects of Gilbert’s life before her year-long journey do you identify with? A broken heart? A loss of identity? Depression?
What aspects of her journey to self-discovery can help you along your own journey?
What did you find the most frightening aspect of Gilbert’s story to be? What scared you about it?
If traveling around the world for a year is not an option, how can you attain a better balance in your life at home?
If you had the resources and time to travel for a year, where would you go and why?