Dear Ones – I’m SUPER excited to be featured on a special edition of Oprah’s Su…

Dear Ones –

I'm SUPER excited to be featured on a special edition of Oprah's Super Soul Sunday, tonight: 7pmET/6pmCT, on the OWN network.

This will be a compilation show, featuring the greatest wisdom of three years of Super Soul Sunday Guests — should be really cool!

Here's a short video:

https://bit.ly/1CifOzZ

I hope you get a chance to tune in…

And right after the special, will be the very first episode of my friend Rob Bell's new show — which is helpfully called THE ROB BELL SHOW. He's stupendous, and I can't wait to see what he's up to.

Tonight is the winter solstice. It's the longest and darkest night of the year — for us Northern Hemisphere folks, anyhow. We might as well pass through this dark night with some wisdom and some SOUL.

And you know what happens tomorrow? The days will start to get longer. Somewhere in their deepest roots, the trees will sense the shift and they will know — it's happening. Spring will begin to inch toward us again.

The light is coming, Dear Ones — the light is coming!

LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

If there’s anybody out there today who has not felt supported in their dreams la…

If there's anybody out there today who has not felt supported in their dreams lately, let me be the one to say it: "Hell yeah, baby! GO FOR IT!"

You're awesome and you got this.

ONWARD,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

LET’S TALK ABOUT GIVING. Dear Ones — I am blessed. I am over-blessed. I am be…

LET'S TALK ABOUT GIVING.

Dear Ones —

I am blessed. I am over-blessed. I am beyond blessed. There are not enough fingers in the world upon which I could count my blessings. If you ever hear me complaining about anything in my life (ANYTHING at all) please fucking slap me.

Even before I was lucky enough to become financially successful, I was already over-blessed by life. Just the mere fact that I was born physically healthy is already enough to put me high on the global scale of LUCKY. To have grown up safe in a world of danger is another outrageous stroke of luck. But if you add to that all the love and friendship that I have known, and the education I was allowed to receive, and my political freedom, and the creativity I have been allowed to explore…well, like I said: over-blessed.

And so I try to give back.

I know that a lot of us try to give back, in so many ways.

Giving is a practice — an exercise of the soul — that can only be made stronger by more giving.

I remember once I commented to somebody how impressed I was with Oprah Winfrey's extraordinary generosity, and the person scoffed, and said, "Well, I could be generous, too, if I was a billionaire!"

That is a person who does not understand the meaning of the word "generous".

Generosity is a state of being. It is question of your spirit, not a question of your bank account. You're either a generous person, or you aren't. Some of the most generous people I've ever met were incredibly poor (at least financially — not in spirit.) Some of the richest people I've ever met were not generous in the least — in fact, they clutch to their resources in constant terror of scarcity.

I wanted to say to that person: "If you're waiting to become a billionaire before you become generous, I think you're missing the point."

But it's tricky, isn't it? I mean — it's hard to know where to put your generosity. The needs of the world are bottomless, and our resources are not bottomless, so sometimes it seems overwhelming. To give to one is not to give to another, and this can be heartbreaking.

Also, of course, you are almost certain to be criticized for how you give, or to whom — because the critics who walk among us are always so difficult to please. When Oprah started a school in Africa, she was attacked for not helping out closer to home. On the other hand, when Mark Zuckerberg tried to bail out the troubled school system of Newark, NJ, he was critifized for not thinking more globally. Even as Bill Gates is trying to find a cure for the worldwide Malaria epidemic, he is criticized for not helping the homeless of Seattle. When a woman in my own hometown started a club this year to help local teenage girls face down the problem of low self-esteem, she was criticized for not also helping boys.

If you give publicly, you are accused of making a show of yourself.

If you give privately, you are accused of not providing a good example to others.

What can you do?

YOU DO WHAT YOU CAN.

You do what stirs your heart, and what feels right to your soul.

No matter what our resources may be, I know that ALL OF US think about these questions:

What can I afford to give?

How can I share what I have?

Is it better to offer my time, or or money?

Local or global?

Environmental or social?

Animals or people?

The arts or education?

Children or the aged or women in need?

Refugees or homelessness?

Give it all to one organization, or spread it around?

Help your family, or help out strangers?

After years of thinking it over, and trying different techniques, here what I have settled on…which is the best I can do for now.

I divide my giving into these six categories:

International
National
Regional
Local
Intimate
Whimsical

I'll start from the bottom up on the list, to explain!

1) Whimsical: In all our worrying about the deep and dire problems of the world, we must not only focus on darkness and evil, or it will make us feel sick and defeated. Always leave a little room for support of the Whimsical, in defense of beauty and the humanities — for if there is not a bit of room in our imagination for whimsy, what is the point of life? For me, this year, that means supporting the restoration project of The Woodlands (the house I based Alma's home upon, for THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS). Here's some info on what I'm doing there: https://bit.ly/1DwwAjf)

2) Intimate: This is helping out the people whom you intimately know. Friends who are going through a hard time. Somebody whose child is having an expensive operation. Somebody who is going through a divorce and starting over. The family whose breadwinner just lost her job. For me, this is the most personal kind of giving, and sometimes the most rewarding — because you see on somebody' face how much they needed the help and the love. This is not only about money, but about your time, your comfort, your friendship.

3) Local: For me, this is the question of how to best help my town. I am not a church-goer myself, but I give money to our local church, because they are so good about helping out my neighbors in need. I might not know who is struggling nearby, but the church community knows. They know exactly who needs food, and who needs help with the oil bill, so I turn it all over to them to decide what is best.

4) Regional: In my area, I am most moved by this charity: Project HOME, of Philadelphia, which works tirelessly to support the most vulnerable population of The City of Brother Love. Sister Mary Scullion, the nun who runs the organization, is one of my life's heroes. (In fact, I was able to nominate her as one of TIME magazine's Most Influential People a few years ago, which was great.) I gave Project HOME all my earnings from Oprah's Life You Want Tour this year. Here is their website: https://ift.tt/13o7JxH

5) National: Planned Parenthood. Very few causes are more important to me than women's reproductive health and safety. I supported them back when I was a broke diner waitress, and I will support them forever.

6) International: This is very hard question. In a world so big, and so full of suffering, how can I help? I give to Doctors Without Borders and The Red Cross, and other relief organizations…but most of my money goes to the beautiful gentleman in the photo below: Dr. Rick Hodes. Dr. Hodes is a spinal surgeon who went to Africa almost twenty years ago on a brief "volunteer vacation" and never left. While he was there, he met an orphan who suffered from spinal tuberculosis — an awful disease of poverty that is barely known anymore in the western world. Dr. Hodes not only performed surgery on the boy, but adopted him. (And he has since adopted — I have lost count — over a dozen other children.) He spends his life fixing the most terrible spinal deformities imaginable in one of the most impoverished places on earth. I've been lucky enough to be able to pay for many of his patients to get their operations, and be able to walk and breathe and live again. Some of these young people had 90-degree curvatures of the spine, and now they are fixed. Does it save the entire world? No. But I cannot save the entire world. But I can help somebody who has had NONE of my advantages in life be able to walk again… and as for that? Well. There are no words for what that does to my heart.

I am so lucky to have so much to give. But I used to give what I could, even before I got so lucky. My mom set that example for me, and I am grateful.

I am so curious to hear how you all have solved the question of giving, in your lives…

Who are your generosity role models?

Who taught you how to give?

What have been your greatest moments of giving?

Where do you share yourself?

And what does the practice of giving offer to you?

Sending so much love this holiday season!

Count your blessing, dear ones. Count them on all your beautiful fingers…

ONWARD,
LG

https://ift.tt/1nb2mZ0

About Rick Hodes
rickhodes.org
Rick Hodes is an American doctor who has lived and worked in Ethiopia for over 20 years. He is the Medical Director of Ethiopia for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a 95-year…

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

FORGIVENESS…thank you! Dear Ones – Thank you so much for spending the week t…

FORGIVENESS…thank you!

Dear Ones –

Thank you so much for spending the week talking about forgiveness with me on this page. It's been beautiful, and I am grateful.

There is one last thing I wanted to say on the topic of forgiveness, which is this:

DON'T SKIP ANY OF THE STEPS.

To forgive somebody is a great act of courage and grace (and ultimately a gift to the self) but it also must be done carefully, and in the right moment — and only when you are ready and strong enough. This means: Only when you have appropriately processed your anger, your sorrow, your shame, and your lessons.

Be careful not to skip over any of those steps of emotional processing and healing, in your haste to "move on".

Sometimes the reason we haven't forgiven somebody is because we never actually worked on the anger, the sorrow, the shame, or the lessons. We never examined the original pain very carefully. We never talked about the incident with anyone in an honest and vulnerable manner. We never worked the pain out of us. We never allowed ourselves to heal through therapy, or recovery, or prayer, or the support of others…or by learning how to set proper boundaries, or how to take care of our wounded selves with compassion.

Instead, we just settled immediately into RESENTMENT — which is like a hard cast that we wear over a wound that was so painful and frightening (and is still so open) that we never allowed ourselves to go near the point of injury.

The hard cast of RESENTMENT keeps the wound alive, while also hiding it from us.

The poet David Whyte says that forgiveness is so difficult because — in the process of forgiving — we must approach the original injury all over again, and engage with "the raw center of it".

He writes:

"To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself."

In other words, before you can free yourself from the pain, you have to go back to that pain. You must take off that protective cast of resentment, and look at the injury.

This is so difficult to do, but it must be done. This is the step that cannot be skipped. This is the work behind forgiveness, and it's hard work, but it has to be done.

That said, I beg of you not to do it alone. Find somebody to talk to, and to share your process with. Be certain that you are in a safe place, emotionally, and that you are supported. Only then, very carefully, can you peel back the protective cast of resentment, and start to work on the original injury. Only through that work can your true forgiveness begin.

As David Whyte writes:

"Forgiveness is a skill, a way of preserving clarity, sanity, and generosity in an individual life…a way of shaping the mind for a future we want for ourselves."

What is the future that you want for yourselves, Dear Ones?

I know the future I want for myself, and I believe that absolute forgiveness is the only way I will ever get there.

But I won't skip any of the steps along that path, and I hope you won't, either.

Thank you, and god bless you all for sharing this space with me.

ONWARD,
LG

ps — and thank you again to Iyanla Vanzant, for her guidance and wisdom on this important subject. Again, I recommend her book FORGIVENESS to anyone who needs support on this matter: https://ift.tt/1p9gXko

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

This.

This.

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

FORGIVENESS WEEK, continued… Dear Ones – All week on this page, we’ve been t…

FORGIVENESS WEEK, continued…

Dear Ones –

All week on this page, we've been talking about forgiveness. I'm so grateful for everything you've all been sharing with me on this vastly important (and potentially life-changing) subject.

Today I want to share with you this 10 minute TED talk from journalist Megan Feldman, about the two years she spent traveling around the world, investigating the power of forgiveness — both in our personal lives, and globally.

The story she tells here of a father forgiving his son's murderer (and the two families who were healed and brought together by this act of profound grace) gives such inspiration…and challenges all of us, I think, to ask ourselves what sort of transformations are possible in our own lives and souls

I also love that she clarifies the distinction between anger (a normal and sometimes even healthy human emotion) and resentment (which is what happens when that anger HARDENS.)

Also, the ideas about blame and resentment being acts of violence against the self and others….well, this is at the very heart of all we've been discussing this week, isn't it?

I would love to hear your thoughts!

ONWARD,
LG

https://bit.ly/1uWuC1k

Forgiveness in an unforgiving world | Megan Feldman | TEDxBoulder

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. We have to learn to forgive if we are to heal the planet. Megan Fel…

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

FORGIVENESS, continued… Dear Ones – Thank you so much for everything you’re…

FORGIVENESS, continued…

Dear Ones –

Thank you so much for everything you're sharing this week with me on the subject of forgiveness.

For those of you who are just tuning in, I'm dedicating my Facebook page this week to FORGIVENESS. I just finished Iyanla Vanzant's six-week e-course on Forgiveness, and it's been pretty revolutionary for me, and I want to try to share what I've learned…and to learn more!

Here's a note that I wrote to myself the other day, after doing some soul-searching about the most painful and difficult kind of forgiveness of all — self-forgiveness.

If you are like me (and I'm going to guess you are, if you are here) then you carry around a giant pile of shame about all your failings, shortcomings, mistakes and perceived sins.

I always knew that I had a problem with self-forgiveness. I knew that I've always had trouble letting myself off the hook, and that sometimes I am unable to drop the knife that I've been holding to my own throat in self-punishment. I felt that I've made a lot of progress on that over the years, and I felt like I understood the origins of my own self-abuse.

But I was amazed to find — while doing my forgiveness work — that so much of the anger and sadness and frustration that I feel toward OTHER PEOPLE is actually tangled up in anger at MYSELF.

Let me explain: As I dissected some of my lasting grudges and resentments toward other people, the story always came back to me. I realized that (deep down) I blamed myself more than I blamed them. I might be angry at someone else for taking advantage of me, for instance, but I was FURIOUS at myself — for allowing myself to be taken advantage of.

And my fury at myself was often greater, deeper, and more toxic than my anger at the other person. Because that person might be an asshole, sure…but *I* was an IDIOT. Because I was the stupid, blind fool who had allowed it to happen.

Here is the mantra of the person who cannot forgive herself:

"You should have known better, you should have known better, you should have known better…"

And what was I furious at myself about? Every single time?

I WAS FURIOUS AT MYSELF FOR NOT KNOWING SOMETHING SOONER THAN I ACTUALLY KNEW IT.

But how can you abuse yourself for not having known something before you knew it? That's so unfair to yourself.

Think of it this way: Imagine that you are in a classroom, on the very first day of school, and you are about to begin studying French, for the very first time in your life. And imagine if the teacher walked into the room and immediately started screaming at you for not being able to speak French yet.

That would be crazy, right?

Because: How could you? How could you know French, before you learned French?

How could you know any of your life's most important lessons, before you learned them?

This may sound almost insanely simplistic, but here goes: YOU CANNOT KNOW SOMETHING BEFORE YOU KNOW IT.

The question of what you should have known (or should have done, or should have stopped, or should have seen coming)…well, this is all just cruelty against a more innocent version of your beautiful, evolving self.

We learn what we learn when we learn it…and not a moment before.

Some of these lessons take a long time to learn — because of your upbringing, your blind spots, your karma, your destiny, your delusions…whatever.

But life will keep trying to teach you, until you finally figure it out. And eventually you will figure it out.

The person who you are today must forgive your younger self for what she could not possibly have known yet at the time. It wasn't because she was stupid, or evil, or terrible…she had simply not taken that class yet.

We are all just students in this classroom. We are all beginners.

Embrace the lessons when you finally learn them, forgive yourself for what you did not know earlier, and move forward in grace and peace and self-compassion.

Here's what I've found: Once I start to forgive myself, it becomes curiously easy to forgive other people. Because I can see that they are just students, too. (They do not know what they cannot yet know.)

So once more I will say it: Drop the knife that you are holding to your own neck.

It is time to set yourself free — and in doing so, you will free others, as well.

ONWARD,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

Dear Ones — Should we keep talking about forgiveness today? Let’s keep talkin…

Dear Ones —

Should we keep talking about forgiveness today?

Let's keep talking about forgiveness.

Thank you all so much for your comments and questions and wisdom that you shared yesterday on this bottomlessly important subject.

As many of you know, I just finished taking Iyanla Vanzant's six-week e-course on FORGIVENESS (some soul-work that I very much needed to for my life) and I'm still processing all that I learned.

What I want to talk about today is perhaps the most radical lesson for me of the whole course, which was about letting go of your judgments and your beliefs about that past — and how letting go of your judgments and your beliefs can open up your heart to the grace of forgiveness.

This is a HARD ONE, you guys.

My judgments and my beliefs are pretty damn solid — and never more so than when I have a strong opinion about something that somebody else has done wrong.

And if somebody else has done something wrong to ME?

Oh baby, watch out.

Because that wrong-doing will be carved into my Book of Offenses, and my Book of Offenses is made of granite. Once your name is carved in there, it is not easily erased.

I look all sweet and nice, but deep inside, I might as well be a mafia boss, for how hard I hold to my grievances.

I can justify holding onto my Book of Offenses because some of the shit that people have done to me is REALLY BAD. Inarguably bad. And, by the way, what has been done to me is nothing compared to what happens to other people in this world — because sometimes human beings are unbelievably horrible to each other. What some people have to go through in their lives is sometimes absolutely unthinkable.

Some of you shared your stories yesterday of what you have been through, and it's devastating.

People do things to each other that are not just heartbreaking, not just disappointing, but often deeply traumatizing and sometimes flat-out evil.

The world is full of wrong-doing, and it hurts us — and we are constantly cataloging our injuries and our injustices.

To hold onto that wrong-doing forever, though, is to never forgive.

On one hand, why should you ever let go of it, when what was done to you was so terrible?

But the problem is this — over the years, you can become broken and sick from carrying around your Book of Offenses forever on your back. Your spine and your soul can be crushed beneath that heavy granite slab, with its names carved so deep. You get so bent and twisted beneath that unforgiveness that you cannot even lift your face to the sky anymore. Then what has your life become? How can you fly? How can you ever be free?

A lot of the reason we hold onto our pain (and our suffering, and our anger, and our shame, and our resentment, and our desire for revenge) is because we believe that what happened SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. We cannot shake our indignation that God let it happen, that our families let it happen, that our lovers let it happen, that our neighbors let it happen, that we ourselves let it happen — whatever "it" may be.

But it happened.

That's the reality. It happened.

And, as Iyanla reminded us again and again in this course, "Any time you fight against reality, you will suffer."

To continue to insist forever that "THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED TO ME!" is to fight forever against reality. And you will only suffer in that fight, because you cannot win that fight. Reality will always win that fight. You can keep fighting against that reality till the end of time, and you will become obsessed, depressed, angry, bitter — but the reality of what happened will never change.

It happened. The horrible thing happened.

Why did it happen?

Why did you have to suffer?

I DON'T KNOW. Nobody knows. You may never know. And as my friend Pastor Rob Bell reminds us: "Be very suspicious of anyone who tells you that they DO know why you had to suffer."

Someday you might see how that horrible event formed you into the person that you needed to become…or maybe you won't. Maybe it will never make sense. What if never makes sense?

Nonetheless, it still happened.

And the most radical thing I learned from Iyanla during the whole forgiveness course was this: "You don't have to know what anything means."

It was such a simple statement, but it blew my mind. I ALWAYS want to know what everything means! I need answers. I need action. I need resolution. In the story that I am constantly telling in my own mind about my own life, I am always trying to set the world into logical moral order. I try to tidy up the chaos, because I want to control the disorder that I see around me. I want to change wrong-doing to right-doing. I want everything to be fixed.

And there's nothing that I want to fix more than the past.

But the past cannot be fixed. What happened happened, and you don't need to know WHY it happened.

Can you forgive this world for not making sense? If you could forgive the world for not making sense, would that help you to drop the granite Book of Offenses that you have been carrying around on your own back for so long? Would that set you free?

I feel like something shifted in me when Iyanla said, "You don't have to know what anything means."

Like: maybe I could let some things go.

"Letting things go" doesn't mean that you open yourself up again for future mistreatment. It doesn't mean that you welcome back into your life the person who abused you, who lied to you, who cheated you, or used you. It doesn't mean you condone what occurred, or that it was OK. It doesn't mean you sign up for more harm. It doesn't mean that the guilty should go unpunished. (If somebody needs to go to jail, then they really do need to go jail.) Letting things go doesn't mean you volunteer to be a victim forever.

It just means that maybe you stop saying, "THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED TO ME!"

And instead you simply say: "IT HAPPENED."

You say: It happened, and I processed it as well as I could, and I may never know why it happened, but now I am ready to move on — even if I am never apologized to, and even if I am never given justice. I am ready to let go of my judgments and beliefs about what happened — because I do not know the master plan. I will surrender to not knowing, in order to be liberated. Because all those thoughts of anger and shame and pain and indignation are doing nothing but causing me to continue suffering, when the only thing I want is to be free.

Because maybe there really IS a field out there somewhere in our collective imaginations, way out there beyond all our ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing…and maybe we ARE supposed to meet there. Maybe that's what heaven is — the place of no grievances, the place of complete and total forgiveness.

Maybe that's what all the great peace-makers have been trying to teach us, for centuries.

Maybe you can only get there by letting go.

I don't know.

I just know that I really don't want to carry around a stone of grievances on my back for the rest of time.

I am so curious to hear your thoughts, dear ones.

Thank you for sharing this space with me.

I would love to meet you all in that field of peace.

ONWARD,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall