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The voyage is one of self-discovery and self-realization:
David and I met because he was performing in a play based on short stories I'd written. He was playing a character I'd invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? 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...
David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle)...I had become addicted to David...It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose...of thunderous love and roiling excitement...When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore -- despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free)...
I have boundary issues with men...I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything...my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog...everything...I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.
Sound like someone you know, or suddenly know now?
Ms Gilbert's tale is a long, terrible, wonderful, personal story, and she is a master raconteur of small anecdotes and incidents with profound meaning:
"To find the balance you want," [the ancient Balinese medicine man] Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs instead of two. That way you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead."...
She intersperses her self-reflections and anecdotes with perceptive insights into Western culture: "Generally speaking, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure...Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one...Americans don't really know how to do nothing." Her description of Italian men's post-football-game rituals is side-splitting. And she describes Yoga in an astonishing and refreshing way, as grappling with
...the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment...Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul yourself away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek instead a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise.
Faith, she says, is "walking face-first and full speed into the dark". Our destiny, she asserts, is focusing attention on things we can control and accepting and adapting to those we cannot: "I can decide how I spend my time, who I interact with, who I share my body and life and money and energy with...And most of all, I can choose my thoughts... the same way [I] can select the clothes [I'm] going to wear...If you want to control things in your life...work on the mind...Drop everything else but that...Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow. I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore."
She describes her moment of Zen, of communion with God, painstakingly and passionately. Then, as she describes the balance she finds in Bali, she reports with astonishment: "I have so much free time, you could measure it in metric tons". And finally, in retrospect, she says, of her bliss: What keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years -- I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue...
I have become...liberated from the farce of pretending to be anyone other than myself.
Her journey represents the journey of all of us, to get rid of the gunk that prevents us from being, simply, naturally, ourselves. It is my belief that wild creatures do not need to make this journey. They know who they are, and they live in that "eternal presence" without the need to unlearn and relearn and achieve self-mastery to do so. We have moved out of that world, into our heads, and our "spiritual" journeys are all, to some extent, in search of that way home to that place where we are our authentic selves, where we belong.
It takes both great courage and exceptional self-awareness for an author to reveal herself so honestly that the reader can learn from her mistakes and her struggles. For that reason alone this book is a remarkable accomplishment, a profound and purely unselfish autobiography. Forget the self-help books -- read this wonderful story and become, by association, a better, more focused, more aware, more directed, more self-knowing, more sensuous, spiritual and loving person.
参考译文：
这次远行是一种自我发现和自我领悟的朝圣之旅。
我和大卫的相识，是因为他出演一部根据我的短篇小说改编的戏。他在扮演一个我虚构出来的人物，这就足以说明问题。在绝望而不顾一切的爱情中往往是这样的情形，不是吗？在绝望的爱情中，我们总是将情侣人物虚构出来，苛求他们变成我们所需要的人，然后，当他们不愿意表演我们最初所创造的角色……
考虑到我是这个星球上最富情感的生命形式（类似于一种金毛猎犬与藤壶属生物的杂交品种），即便在最好的情况下，大卫突然的情感变故对我来说本来很可能是灾难性的……我痴迷于大卫已经到了无力自拔的地步……当你崇拜的对象给予你某种令人飘然陶醉的迷幻药时，这种毒瘾就开始上身了……是那种电闪雷鸣的惊天动地强烈的爱……当这种迷药停止供给时，你立即感到恶心、疯狂和枯竭（更不要说对当初鼓励你上瘾但现在却拒绝花钱再供给你这种好东西的毒贩子的怨恨……既便你明知他将迷幻药藏在某处，该死，因为他过去是免费给你的）……
我在处理与男人们之间的关系上常常把握不好尺度……我往往在心爱的男人面前迷失自己。我是透性膜。如果我爱你，你可以得到我的每一样东西……我的时间，我的虔诚的爱，我的臀部，我的金钱，我的家人，我的狗……我的一切……我会给你一切甚至更多，直到我精疲力竭，一无所有，最后，唯一让我恢复精力的方式就是痴迷上另一个人。
听起来象是你的一个熟人，或者现在突然认识的人吧？
吉尔伯特女士讲述了她丰富漫长而又不堪回首的个人往事，而且她还十分健谈，是一个善于讲述各种含意隽永的逸闻趣事和佳话插曲的行家：
［那位古巴厘药学世家］曾通过他的翻译告诉我说：“寻求你想要的平衡，这是你必须做的。你必须让双脚牢牢踩在地上，坚定得如同你有四条腿而不是两条腿。那样，你才可能活在世上。但你必须停止用头脑看世界。相反，必须运用自己的心灵去感知世界……
通过对西方文化独特的认识和见解，她经常进行自我反省并讲述自己的一些轶事：“一般说来，美国人不具备放松下来去纯粹地享乐的能力” …… 我们美国人是一个追求娱乐的民族，但未必是一个追求享乐的民族……美国人并不真正懂得如何做到“无所事事。” 她对意大利男人足球比赛后的仪式的描绘真是令人捧腹。她描述瑜伽的方式也是令人耳目一新：
……那种令人心碎无法承受的满足……瑜伽是关于自我驾驭和虔诚灵修的艺术，努力使自己摆脱对过去的无边的沉思以及对未来的无休止的焦虑，那样你便能找到一个永恒所在，在这种状态下，你以镇静和平和的心态对自己和周围的环境加以关注。
关于信仰，她说，就是"从表面开始，义无反顾地通往灵魂深处的一段心路历程。” 她断言，我们的命运就是专注于我们能驾驭的事物，同时接受并适应那些我们无法驾驭的事物：“我可以决定怎样度过自己的时间，我与谁相互影响，我与谁分享我的身体生命金钱及精力……而至关重要的，我可以选择自己的思想……如同选择要穿的衣服……如果你想掌控你生活中的事物……专注于内心……放下此外的一切……每当一种逐渐衰微的念头出现时，我就重复这句誓言。我不会再庇护任何不健康的思想。”
她描述自己悟禅的瞬间，与上帝灵交的瞬间，她是那么刻苦和热情。然后，当她描述自己在巴厘岛所找到的平衡时，她用惊讶的口吻写到：“我现在有大量空闲时间，多得可以用公吨来计算”。最后，在回顾一年来的生活的福祉时，她写道：一个明确的事实使我现在不会陷入一个完美神话的美丽光环，而这一事实在过去几年里也锻炼了我的筋骨，那就是－－拯救我的不是哪位白马王子；行施自我拯救的执行者正是我自己……
我曾经在一场闹剧中扮演除自己之外的任何角色，现在我已经从这场闹剧中解放出来了。
她的旅程代表着我们所有人从泥泞中爬出来的历程－－这种泥泞阻碍我们简单而自然地做我们自己。我相信，野生动物无须这样的朝圣．它们知道自己是谁，它们无须忘却和记忆，无须实现自制去寻求＂永恒的存在＂。我们已经离开那个世界进入了自己的头脑，在某种程度上，我们的 “精神”朝圣之旅都是为了寻求那条通向＂永恒存在＂的归程，在那里，我们回归真正的自我，那才是我们的归宿。
一位作者需要超人的勇气和特别清醒的自我意识才能去揭露自己，她是非常真诚的，如此，读者便能从她的过错和她的抗争中有所借鉴。仅仅因为这一理由，这就是一本了不起的书，一本深奥的纯粹无私的自传。忘记那些寻求自我帮助的书来读读这本精彩的故事吧，并通过思考成为更好，更专注，更清醒，方向更明确，更加自知，更加敏感，更加崇高和忠诚的人。
注：本书英文名为《eat, pray, love》，中文名为《一辈子做女孩》。
