“Eat, Pray, Love” – Book Three: Indonesia

This brings us to the final section of Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love” – Book Three:  Indonesia, subtitled “Even in My Underpants, I Feel Different or 36 Tales about the Pursuit of Balance.”

She rents a house in Ubud, located in the mountains in the center of Bali.  Ubud is a place where traditional Balinese painting, dance, carving, and religious ceremonies thrive.  Bali is a Hindu island in the mostly-Muslim Indonesian archipelago.  Religious ceremonies are important to the Balinese, who are masters of balance and equilibrium, and Gilbert realizes how unbalanced she is.

“The Balinese,” she writes, “don’t wait and see ‘how things go.’  That would be terrifying.  They organize how things go, in order to keep things from falling apart.”

There are three questions they ask upon seeing you:  (1) Where are you going?  (2) Where are you coming from? (3) Are you married?  To answer the first two questions, you must pick a specific direction, and to the third question, you must say “yes” if you are married or “not yet” if you are single or divorced.  These answers position and orient you in the Balinese grid of security and comfort.  If you don’t know where you are or whose clan you belong to, then how can you possibly find balance?

She agrees to teach English to Ketut Liyer, a medicine man, and he, in turn, teaches her Balinese meditation. “Why you always look so serious in Yoga?” he says.  “You scare away good energy.  To meditate, you must smile.  Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.  Too serious, you make you sick.”

The purpose of meditation is happiness and peace.  Gilbert finds that after the intense religious life in the Ashram in India and eating everything in sight in Italy, life in Bali is peaceful.  She came to Bali “to search for the balance between worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion.” 

In a desperate act of kindness, she emails friends and family to raise $18,000 to help a divorced medicine woman named Wayan to buy a house in Ubud for herself and her three children. 

Through Wayan, 35-year-old Gilbert meets Felipe, a divorced 52-year-old Brazilian, who has been living in Bali for five years.  After 1-1/2 years of celibacy, she gives in to him and they have a passionate love affair.  Although she must leave Bali, where she has lived for four months, they agree to build a life together between America (where her work and family are), Australia (where his children reside), Brazil (where his family is), and Bali (where he lives). 

And there the story ends.  After a year abroad, Elizabeth Gilbert is happy, healthy, and balanced.