Spiritual Advice in the manner of
Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love”
“My writing rituals
& practice have taught me that the most important thing to being creative is Cleanliness. It's not necessarily the
same as that Godliness thing, but
close. Maybe it’s because focusing on all this Discipline and Hard Work can become a prison for the Creative soul. But really these ideas are just like wash rags. And once these ‘wash rags’ are dirty, dirty, dirty
wash rags—well, they have become just another thing for you to be anxious
about, and they've lost all their appeal.
“Take the ‘Bath Sponge’ for example. I try to be
limber with it and soft with it. Some days I can be very, very hard with it.
And some days it’s like I can’t live without it. And if I catch a week going by
where I don't sit down & rest — even for at least ten minutes — in silence
and do what they call ‘taking a bath’ … well, yes, that’s bad … yeah, I think
the scented oil in a ‘Bath Sponge’ is, well essential to my skin’s happiness … I
think it’s something they invented in India about forty years ago. I think
maybe that skinny old Indian guy Gandhi came up with it, just to take his mind off of all that fisting and
stuff.
“Then
I'll say, ‘Okay Self, we’ve gone a little too long here. We need another long,
hot bath.’ Something else has to be cut out today, because this ‘bath stuff’ is
essential to my well-being.
“So feel free to cut in line at the so-called ‘Bath
House.’ You deserve it. And do it before they have to scrape the holiness off
you with a knife.”
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