{"id":4446,"date":"2009-08-22T22:59:50","date_gmt":"2009-08-23T03:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2021-06-18T11:42:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T16:42:42","slug":"spiritual-memoirs-eat-pray-love-sharon-janis-never-to-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/spiritual-memoirs-eat-pray-love-sharon-janis-never-to-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Memoirs: Eat, Pray, Love and Sharon Janis’ Never to Return"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just got my copy of<\/span> Eat, Pray, Love<\/a> in the mail. I get so many review copies that I seldom buy books, ever, but I wanted to see what everyone was so fired up about.<\/span>\u00a0 Eat, Pray, Love <\/a>is built on the notion of a woman trying to heal herself from a severe emotional and spiritual crisis.\u00a0 Author Elizabeth Gilbert<\/strong> “wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.<\/em>”\u00a0 I enjoyed the book and, as a former devotee,\u00a0 I enjoy reading about ashram life.\u00a0 I spoke with Sharon Kumuda Janis<\/strong>, author of Spirituality for Dummies<\/strong>, and Secrets of Spiritual Happiness<\/strong>, who first contacted me 1998. \u00a0 She told me since her memoir Never To Return<\/strong> describes her decade living in and serving with the same path that Elizabeth Gilbert<\/strong> wrote about in<\/span> Eat, Pray, Love<\/a>, she thinks the time is right to re-release an updated version of her book to ride the wave when the movie<\/span>\u00a0 Eat, Pray, Love<\/a> is released next year. Sharon<\/strong> recorded a version of the Guru Gita<\/strong>, which played a part in Gilbert<\/strong>‘s\u00a0story, and the Diamond Sutra<\/strong> as well. \u00a0 I told her I’d be glad to help promote her.<\/span> <\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gilbert<\/strong> studied at the<\/span> Ganeshpuri ashram<\/a> of Muktananda<\/a> and Chidvilasananda’s Siddha Yoga<\/a>.\u00a0 Siddha Yoga has been controversial<\/a> throughout the years, for many reasons, but not any more so than any other business of that size with a lot of personalities and egos involved.\u00a0 Living in an ashram can be a very powerful yoga in itself.\u00a0 It puts you into a pressure cooker of personalities and quickly separates who is there to do their own spiritual work, and whoever is not really grokking it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In<\/span> Eat, Pray, Love,<\/a> Elizabeth Gilbert<\/strong> only spent a short time in residence, but she absorbed herself in the ashram routine and it was like a balm to her open wounds.\u00a0 She noticed the politics, but she didn’t get all wrapped up in it.\u00a0 She has a way of weaving a story just so, to draw you in to the experience with her.\u00a0 It was a good story, well told.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sharon Janis looked me up and sent me her memoir Never To Return in 1998.<\/strong><\/span> In it she details her years at the<\/span> SYDA Muktananda ashrams<\/a> and gives the behind the scenes dish on her experience there.\u00a0 Unlike Elizabeth Gilbert<\/strong>, she doesn’t hesitate to dig up the dirt, stir the pot and name names.<\/span><\/p>\n

As you’ll read in the Afternote<\/span> <\/strong>below, several months after I wrote this on August 22, 2009, out of the blue Sharon<\/strong> went all Mel Gibson<\/strong> on me and well, you’ll read it.\u00a0 She’s a good writer and a she’s prolific writer.\u00a0 Surprised you haven’t heard more about her?\u00a0 She doesn’t advertise, she says, but she knows search engine optimization so she’s gotten ranked #5 out of 16,700,000 on Google for “spiritual links”.\u00a0 She knows how to do all that stuff with websites to get high rankings.\u00a0 She could make a fortune doing search engine optimization but prefers to see herself as the indigent monk.\u00a0 The trouble is she’s told her story for so long that now she’s living it.\u00a0 And I got fired for pointing that out to her.\u00a0 Such is life \ud83d\ude42<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Drama aside, if you liked Eat, Pray, Love<\/strong>, you may enjoy Never To Return<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

AFTERNOTE<\/span><\/strong>:<\/span> I initially gave Never To Return a glowing review in 1998 and in late 2009 Sharon publicly mocked me for it on <\/span>Facebook<\/span> <\/strong>– so frankly I don’t know what to think about that.\u00a0 She has now removed the very review she proudly displayed for 13 years, and has blocked several of my computers from accessing her websites. I like spiritual memoirs because I like to discover the different ways people make their way along the spiritual path, what their mental processes are, how they manage the daily struggles they encounter, how they overcome them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if they don’t overcome them for long and then act as though they never knew how to in the first place.\u00a0 Especially then.\u00a0 It’s a lesson we can all use.\u00a0 The spiritual path isn’t some rose laden paved way of butterflies and faeries, it’s working your way through personality conflicts you have with people you don’t care for.\u00a0 An ashram is a perfect steam cooker for that.\u00a0 Some can handle it, some cannot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some can handle the physical and psychological and emotional changes that move through you as your kundalini rises; some have a harder time with it.\u00a0\u00a0 Beginning the study of yoga – or going to a yoga retreat – is not merely putting your bodies into body positions and asanas.\u00a0 You’re training your mind.\u00a0 When you train your mind, a whole new world opens up to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or three new worlds, as Elizabeth Gilbert found in<\/span> Eat, Pray, Love<\/a><\/p>\n

RELATED POSTS CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER:
\nWhat do you do when friends misunderstand you and don\u2019t want to play anymore? <\/a>
\nWhen Friends Misunderstand<\/a>, because we each see things as we are<\/a>
\nClash of the Egos<\/a>
\nWhen Friends On The Path Go Off The Deep End<\/a>
\nTaking Note of Cause and Effect in Action<\/a>
\nSimple Scripts To Attract a Better Tomorrow<\/a>
\nWhen friends betray friends<\/a>
\nPeople Who Lie About Who They Are<\/a>
\nThe saga continues with Sharon Kumuda Janis<\/a><\/p>\n

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