tions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love
me? And Who’s in charge?” Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two ques-
tions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering. And both of
them, unfortunately (or maybe obviously), are what I’m dealing with at this Ashram. When I sit
in my silence and look at my mind, it is only questions of longing and control that emerge to
agitate me, and this agitation is what keeps me from evolving forward.
When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my
meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse
my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind’s workings. Instead of thinking that I
was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being—and a normal one, at
that? The thoughts came up as usual—OK, so it will be—and then the attendant emotions
rose, too. I began feeling frustrated and judgmental about myself, lonely and angry. But then
a fierce response boiled up from somewhere in the deepest caverns of my heart, and I told
myself, “I will not judge you for these thoughts.”
My mind tried to protest, said, “Yeah, but you’re such a failure, you’re such a loser, you’ll
never amount to anything—”
But suddenly it was like a lion was roaring from within my chest, drowning all this claptrap
out. A voice bellowed in me like nothing I had ever heard before. It was so internally, eternally
loud that I actually clamped my hand over my mouth because I was afraid that if I opened my
mouth and let this sound out, it would shake the foundations of buildings as far away as De-
troit.
And this is what it roared:
YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS!!!!!!!!!
The chattering, negative thoughts in my mind scattered in the wind of this statement like
birds and jackrabbits and antelopes—they hightailed it out of there, terrified. Silence followed.
An intense, vibrating, awed silence. The lion in the giant savannah of my heart surveyed his
newly quiet kingdom with satisfaction. He licked his great chops once, closed his yellow eyes
and went back to sleep.
And then, in that regal silence, finally—I began to meditate on (and with) God.
Eat, Pray, Love