talking. They weren't even ex-spouses, not an obstinate midwesterner and a high-strung Yankee, not a guy in his forties and a woman in her thirties, not two limited people who had argued for years about sex and money and furniture-none of this was relevant. For the purposes of this meeting, at the level of this reunion, they were just two cool blue souls who already understood everything. Unbound by their bodies, unbound by the complex history of their past relationship, they came together above this roof (above me, even) in infinite wisdom. Still in meditation, I watched these two cool blue souls circle each other, merge, divide again and regard each other's perfection and similarity. They knew everything. They knew everything long ago and they will always know everything. They didn't need to forgive each other; they were born forgiving each other.
The lesson they were teaching me in their beautiful turning was, 'Stay out of this, Liz. Your part of this relationship is over. Let us work things out from now on. You go on with your life.'
Much later I opened my eyes, and I knew it was over. Not just my marriage and not just my divorce, but all the unfinished bleak hollow sadness of it… it was over. I could feel that I was free. Let me be clear-it's not that I would never again think about my ex-husband, or never again have any emotions attached to the memory of him. It's just that this ritual on the rooftop had finally given me a place where I could house those thoughts and feelings whenever they would arise in the future-and they will always arise. But when they do show up again, I can just send them back here, back to this rooftop of memory, back to the care of those two cool blue souls who already and always understand everything.
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you're craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet. If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God.
So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing-a spontaneous handstand-isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.
61
Richard from Texas left today. Flew back to Austin. I took the drive with him to the airport, and we were both sad. We stood for a long time on the sidewalk before he went inside.
'What am I gonna do when I don't have Liz Gilbert to kick around anymore?' He sighed. Then he said, 'You've had a good experience at the Ashram, haven't you? You look all different from a few months back, like maybe you chucked out some of that sorrow you been hauling around.'
'I'm feeling really happy these days, Richard.'
'Well, just remember-all your misery will be waiting for you at the door upon your exit, should you care to pick it up again when you leave.'
'I won't pick it up again.'
'Good girl.'
'You've helped me a lot,' I told him. 'I think of you as an angel with hairy hands and cruddy toenails.'
'Yeah, my toenails never really did recover from Vietnam, poor things.'
'It could've been worse.'
'It was worse for a lot of guys. At least I got to keep my legs. Nope, I got a pretty cushy incarnation in this lifetime, kiddo. So did you-never forget that. Next lifetime you might come back as one of those poor Indian women busting up rocks by the side of the road, find out life ain't so much fun. So appreciate what you got now, OK? Keep cultivating gratitude. You'll live longer. And, Groceries? Do me a favor? Move ahead with your life, will ya?'
'I am.'
'What I mean is-find somebody new to love someday. Take the time you need to heal, but don't forget to eventually share your heart with someone. Don't make your life a monument to David or to your ex-husband.'
'I won't,' I said. And I knew suddenly that it was true-I wouldn't. I could feel all this old pain of lost love and past mistakes attenuating before my eyes, diminishing at last through the famous healing powers of time, patience and the grace of God.
And then Richard spoke again, snapping my thoughts back quickly to the world's more basic realities: 'After all, baby, remember what they say-sometimes the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.'
I laughed. 'OK, Richard, that'll do. Now you can go back to Texas.'
'Might as well,' he said, casting a gaze around this desolate Indian airport parking lot. 'Cuz I ain't gettin' any prettier just standing around here.'
62
On my ride back to the Ashram, after seeing Richard off at the airport, I decide that I've been talking too much. To be honest, I've been talking too much my whole life, but I've really been talking too much during my stay at the Ashram. I have another two months here, and I don't want to waste the greatest spiritual opportunity of my life by being all social and chatty the whole time. It's been amazing for me to discover that even here, even in a sacred environment of spiritual retreat on the other side of the world, I have managed to create a cocktail-party- like vibe around me. It's not just Richard I've been talking to constantly-though we did do the most gabbing-I'm always yakking with somebody. I've even found myself-in an Ashram, mind you!-creating appointments to see acquaintances, having to say to somebody, 'I'm sorry, I can't hang out with you at lunch today because I promised Sakshi I would eat with her… maybe we could make a date for next Tuesday.'
This has been the story of my life. It's how I am. But I've been thinking lately that this is maybe a spiritual liability. Silence and solitude are universally recognized spiritual practices, and there are good reasons for this. Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss. Swamiji, my Guru's master, was a stickler about silence in the Ashram, heavily enforcing it as a devotional practice. He called silence the only true religion. It's ridiculous how much I've been talking at this Ashram, the one place in the world where silence should-and can-reign.
So I'm not going to be the Ashram social bunny anymore, I've decided. No more scurrying, gossiping, joking. No more spotlight-hogging or conversation-dominating. No more verbal tap-dancing for pennies of affirmation. It's time to change. Now that Richard is gone, I'm going to make the remainder of my stay a completely quiet experience. This will be difficult, but not impossible, because silence is universally respected at the Ashram. The whole community will support it, recognizing your decision as a disciplined act of devotion. In the bookstore they even sell little badges you can wear which read, 'I am in Silence.'
I'm going to buy four of those little badges.
On the drive back to the Ashram, I really let myself dip into a fantasy about just how silent I am going to become now. I will be so silent that it will make me famous. I imagine myself becoming known as That Quiet Girl. I'll just keep to the Ashram schedule, take my meals in solitude, meditate for endless hours every day and scrub
