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1-Page Summary of Eat, Pray, Love
Overview
Eat, Pray, Love is a book about Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey around the world. She spent four months in Italy studying food and language; she then went to India to study at her guru’s ashram for three months; finally, she traveled to Bali for one month of relaxation.
Liz’s story began when she was sitting on her bathroom floor, having a moment of despair. She wasn’t religious at the time, but in that moment, she called out to God and asked for guidance. A voice told her to go back to bed. Liz did so and discovered spirituality later on in life.
Liz had a messy divorce, and she assumed much of the blame. She offered to give up almost everything in order to be free from her husband. At the same time, Liz was dating David, but they fought frequently because they were so different emotionally. Eventually, Liz started practicing yoga and meditation after meeting David’s guru.
Liz went to Bali for a magazine assignment, and she met Ketut Liyer. He read her palm, drew her a picture, and said that he would teach Liz about spirituality and meditation. This inspired Liz to travel around the world for an entire year—a trip that eventually became a book proposal.
Liz’s first stop was Italy, where she studied Italian and ate delicious food. She stopped taking her depression medication, which made her feel worse. However, she met friends through her old contacts and found new ones in language classes. One of those friends was Sofie. Liz also had a great time eating with Luca Spaghetti, one of the most fun people she knew while in Italy. Food brought pleasure to Liz during that time because it helped lift her out of depression (and there were many delicious foods to choose from). But despite all the good things going on for Liz at that time, including making many new friends and enjoying some amazing meals with them, she remained celibate throughout this period in Italy and did not date anyone there at all.
In an email exchange, David and Liz officially ended their relationship in a friendly way. However, Liz was still very upset about it. She had lingering feelings for David for a long time after that. While she was in Italy, Liz took some time to reflect on her life and what she wanted out of it. This was the first time that this happened since she had always been busy with work or school before moving to Italy.
Liz then traveled to India. She spent several weeks at her guru’s ashram, where she practiced devotion and explored spirituality. Liz had struggled with meditation in Italy and before leaving New York City, but she had a hard time meditating again in India because of the long periods of silence required by the Gurugita, a holy prayer that is particularly long. Between worship and cleaning floors, which was her job at the ashram, Liz met other devotees and made friends there. One friend from Texas named Richard helped her come to terms with controlling tendencies she didn’t want to admit having as well as obsessive thoughts about David (her ex-husband) and their divorce.
One day, Liz was at the ashram when she considered skipping her daily prayer. She didn’t like doing it but decided to do it anyway because she knew that’s what her guru would want. However, as a result of this decision, Liz ended up missing the prayer and jumped out of a window instead. The reason for jumping was so that she wouldn’t miss the prayer even though it wasn’t something that she enjoyed doing or believed in. Later on, Liz changed her plans about leaving India and stayed there instead because of an incident with one of her friends from the ashram who helped get rid of some negative feelings towards an ex-husband by going up to a rooftop where he taught her some techniques which enabled her to project those thoughts away from herself and onto him so they could be dealt with later on.
