eat pray love《美食 祈祷和爱》英文读后感.doc

内容：At 32 years old, Elizabeth Gilbert was educated, had a home, a husband, and a successful career as a writer. However, she was unhappy in her marriage and often spent the night crying on her bathroom floor. After separating from her husband and initiating a divorce, which he contested, she embarked on a rebound relationship which continued for some time but did not work out, leaving her devastated and alone.Afterwards, while writing an article on yoga vacations in Bali, Gilbert met a ninth-generation medicine man who told her she would one day come back and study with him. After finalizing her difficult divorce, Gilbert spent the next year traveling around the world. The trip was paid for in advance with a book deal from the publisher.She spent four months in Italy, eating and enjoying life (Eat). She spent four months in India, finding her spirituality (Pray). She ended the year in Bali, Indonesia, looking for balance of the two and found love (Love) in the form of a dashing Brazilian factory owner.作者简介Elizabeth M. Gilbert (born July 18, 1969) is an American novelist, essayist, short story writer, biographer, and memoirist. She is most known for her 2006 memoirs, Eat, Pray, Love, which as of December 2010, has spent 199 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was also made into a film by the same name in 2010.The books Chinese edition-一辈子做女孩 did not grab my interest when I heard it for the first time. Because I guess it might be the kind of book which try its best to convince a girl of some so called principles to behave more like a girl. Much to my surprise, I absolutely enjoyed its original edition. From the English titleeat pray love and the subtitle -one womans search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, we could find the slightly difference with the Chinese edition. Actually, the book is telling about a womans pursuit of worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion through traveling and meditation.At 32 years old, Elizabeth Gilbert was educated, had a home, a husband, and a successful career as a writer. However, she was unhappy in her marriage, did not want to have a child and often spent the night crying on her bathroom floor. After separating with her husband, she embarked on a rebound relationship which continued for some time but did not work out, leaving her devastated and alone. To get a relief, she decided to have a gap year. Firstly, Liz went to Italy to hide herself from the failure of marriage, she was quite frustrated and puzzled of her future life. Thus she could only find her way out by eating all kinds of delicious cuisines in Italy. Then, after finishing this sort of lower hierarchy of needs, she began to think deeper, about the truth of life. Then, she came to India, and learnt to meditate with Guru, figured out devotion and inner peace with her own experience. At last, in the paradise Bali, Liz eventually fell into a new relationship, and she managed to keep the balance between love and spirituality. The story is quite simple, but each place represents a kind of inner situation of Liz, which witnesses her growth on her way searching for the ultimate truth of life from tears to relief.Three things impressed me most when Liz was in Rome. As a person who has no resist to delicious food, I really envy the delicious cuisines she ate there. I remember as Luca Spaghettis birthday falls on Thanksgiving, they ate both American Thanksgiving roast turkey as well as Italy delicacy. The way she ate those spaghetti really makes me hungry. And at the party when they were giving their appreciation to life, one guy said he is so thankful for feeling scary because it is the first time he met a girl who makes him feel scared that she might left him first. Its really a romantic confession, isnt it? Another thing is that I got to learn the art of doing nothing from these Italian. Just like many modern people in this society today, we often spend our time to do everything in a rush way. We just ignored the beauty of doing nothing. Actually, the beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all our work, the final accomplishment for which we are mostly highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully we can do nothing, the higher our lifes achievement. We dont necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. Because its the most common thing exists in everyones life.In India, Liz learned the way to get through hard times and she got to know the importance of controlling her thought. As her friend Richard told her, we need to learn how to select our thoughts just the same way we select what clothes were going to wear every day. This is a power we can cultivate. If we want to control things in our life so bad, work on the mind. Thats the only thing we should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. If we cant learn to master our thinking, were in deep trouble forever. Meditation really helps Liz a lot in finding out who she is and where she is going to. As for me, Ive been meditate since I clearly got to know myself three years ago. Now Im still on my way of living an inner balanced life. And I feel so grateful for what I own today, what is going to happen tomorrow, who appears in my life to do the whole life work with me. And Im truly willing to regard everything that happens to me on my journey as a clue, and accept everyone I meet alone the way as a teacher. Its much easier for me to understand Lizs frustration and Im so pleased to see she finally find the way to keep balance. Just like Guru said to Liz, to find the balance we want, we must keep our feet grounded so firmly on the earth that its like we have four legs, instead of two. That way we can stay in the world. But we must stop looking at the world through our head. We must look through our heart, instead.As for love, I got a brand new idea about soul mate. Almost everyone want to meet a true soul mate in order to be more secure about we are been loved in this world. We are not alone. And in desperate love we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place. Maybe thats why peoples relationship always ended up unhappily. People always think a soul mate is our perfect fit, and thats what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows us everything thats holding us back, the person who brings us to our own attention so we can change our life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person well ever meet, because they tear down our walls and smack us awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? No. thats too painful. Soul mates, they come into our life just to reveal another layer of ourselves to us, and then they leave. And we should thank God for it. Sometimes all we need to do to go away from an obsession is to accept the fact that we are obsessed with it. Admit that it takes time to go away. Never be ashamed of expressing nice feelings. Never be overly cool to fake feelings, especially those that will hurt people. Let it be and it will finally fade away, no matter how intense it used to be.From Liz, I got to know the significance of treasuring every single moment of our lives and making every minute count with our own experience. Our life is full of ups and downs. We must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation. It is better to