This is an extended version of another post, Liz Gilbert’s Letter from Love, for those who’d like some additional reading/context. Enjoy!
Liz Gilbert’s Letter from Love
From the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things,” episode 95. “Why Elizabeth Gilbert Disappeared & What She Came Back to Say,” https://momastery.com/blog/we-can-do-hard-things-ep-95/
Glennon Doyle:
We’ve had a conversation recently where I think I texted you and said I was back in the rooms and just pissed off all the time because of all the male language in the steps and all things. And then you told me that I was allowed to create the higher power in my own way. When you think about your higher power, what do you think of? And what are the spiritual practices? Because, well, every time we talk, you’re talking to me about how you’ve just done or you’re doing your spiritual practices. I don’t know why the hell I’ve never asked you, what are those things? What are you doing?
Liz Gilbert:
Yeah. So one of the things I loved is that my sponsor said to me one time, when we got to step two, she’s like, “Why don’t you write out what you’re looking for in a higher power, as if you were writing what you were looking for in a romantic partner, or what you’re looking for in a job? Manifest this. What are you looking for? What would work for you? What does it have to be? And what can it not be?” And it was so funny, because even as open as I’ve always been about spirituality, I was like, “You’re allowed to do that? Don’t you have to work with the God they give you?”
Glennon Doyle:
You can customer custom order a higher power?
Liz Gilbert:
You can custom order it. And she was like, “Not only can you do that, but to get well, you must. To get well, you must create your own higher power because the only higher power who you’re going to believe in, love, and trust is the one that is tailored to you.” And I found that to be really revolutionary. I think you guys all grew up Catholic with a high demand religion, so I have a different background than you. I don’t have the anger at God because I didn’t grow up assaulted in my religion. And when you grow up… A lot of people in the rooms, I’m always very conscientious about whenever I share about like saying, “The God of my understanding is not the God of your father’s nor the God of my father’s.” But my family was pretty low key about religion, so I didn’t have to erase. I didn’t have to undo a lot of trauma to naturally find my way to a God of my own understanding.
Liz Gilbert:
And what I did was I built upon a practice that I have had for years, which is, whenever I’ve been in distress for years, I’ve always written letters to Love. I wrote about this in Eat, Pray, Love, where I write a letter to unconditional love herself, who I’ve always felt is very female and say… This incredibly compassionate, all-accepting mother, divine mother. And I say, “I’m in trouble and I need help.” And for years I’ve done this, and then I write… For years, I don’t know where I learned it, it just sort of intuitively happened. Unconditional Love writes back to me and always with the same first line, which is: I’m right here, which I have tattooed on my chest in my own handwriting because it comes in my own handwriting. “I’m right here. I see you, and I love you. And I know you’re in a lot of pain right now, and I’m not going anywhere, and I have nowhere better to be.”
That’s the thing that love always tells me, “There’s nowhere else in the universe that is more important to me, to be right now than with you in this moment. And if you need to be in distress all night, I will sit here with you through this because you are my beloved and you are my child. And there’s absolutely nothing you could ever do to lose my love. And if you lose everything else in the entire world, I will be there still.” And so I sort of expanded on that to create what I call the God of my understanding, but my primary spiritual practice these days is, I’ve explained it to you before, is two-way prayer, which is actually really interesting.
Apparently, the history is that the very early first group of people in Alcoholics Anonymous created this thing and they, at the time, thought it was the most important part of recovery, more important than going to meetings, more important than doing the steps, more important than having a sponsor, literature, all of that. It was really creating that conscious contact with a higher power. And the way you do it, the way they teach it is that you find a quiet spot and a quiet moment, and you open up… The way I think of it is, you open up the doorway to the infinite, through reading something that, for you, opens up the doorway to your infinite. So that can be a piece of sacred writing of any… Whatever sacred writing is to you. So for me, it’s Walt Whitman, and it’s any line. I open up to any line of Song of Myself.
And I feel like Walt Whitman was a mystic and a great Saint, and that he was in direct communion with God, and that he left the door open behind him. And I draft in on his draft. So I read a couple lines of Walt and then I’m with God, right? And it’s like, “Thanks, uncle Walt.” And Rumi does that for me. Hafez does that for me, all of those. Mary Oliver does it for me. They left the door open behind them, out of their generosity. And you can slip in on their words and it changes something and you interiorly, and now you’re in divine space. And then you write one question, and one question only. As my sponsor said, “It’s not a deposition, Liz.” One question and that question is… My question every day is the same, and I’ve been doing it now for two years, “Dear God, what would you have me know today?”
And then the answer. You start writing the answer. And that presence has never not been there. And I’ve been through some stuff in the last couple years. And the answer always surprises me. It delights me. I get a letter every morning from my higher power, giving me my instructions for my day, tailored to that God of my creation and my understanding, who loves me enough to have taken the form that I can handle in the creation that I projected onto it. That’s how loving I think God is, that God will be like, “Oh, you want me to show up as this? Okay. I’ll love you so much that I will be this, so that you can be with me and we can be together.” And that God meets me wherever I am, with whatever I need.
And then I have two-way prayer partners in my fellowship, and we call and we read each other our two-way prayers, because God also speaks to me through other people’s prayers. And I meditate. And I spend a lot of time in solitude. That’s a very big top line for me. I need that in order to be able to hear what I need to hear. Otherwise, I’m looking at too many other people and asking them if I’m okay. And that used to be my spiritual practice. That used to be my higher power. If you want, I can read you guys… Do you want to hear my prayer from today?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, please.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. Also, this is a God I could follow. What she’s just explained.
…
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. Please read your letter you wrote this morning.
Liz Gilbert:
It’s funny, I already forgot it. So I have no idea what this is going to be, but it’s good. And sometimes I actually record them. So I’ve got months of these. So it’s like my own Bible. So when I’m really stressed, I’ll go back and pick a random date and I can hear God talking to me again. And usually, whichever random one I hear, it’s like, here’s God’s custom made offering for me for this day.
Dear God, what would you have me know today?
Oh, and then also they suggest you begin God’s response to you with an incredible term of endearment, that opens up the heart space between you and the divine. So God always calls me, “My Love,” or, “My Child,” or, “My Favorite Baby,” often comes up.
[***Liz Gilbert’s Letter from Love***]
[Apple Podcast: 42:35]
“My Love,
I would have you know humility.
When first you heard my voice, nearly 20 years ago, you were so beaten down and so love starved that I could only come to you in one form: as pure unwavering, devotional, unconditional love. You would have died without it. For many years, you could only receive me as that. We had to save your life, and this is how we saved you: by loving you back into yourself and building you up.
Now that you believe genuinely that you are both lovable and loved, now that you know that I will never abandon you, that you cannot be alone, now that you believe fully in that love, I want you to learn humility.
Don’t worry, this won’t be Bogue. Ray’s favorite word. This is not about beating you back down. There will be no punishing, no degradation.
My love, I want you to know the sweetness and the deep all-encompassing relief that humility will bring to your life. Look how much your life has improved by handing over so much of it to me already, but every single aspect of your life that you still hold back from me because you do not trust me, thinking in your ignorance and in your self importance that you need to handle it, that you need to control it, fix it, manage it, solve it, understand it, everywhere that you are still doing that, you will, and you are experiencing strain and suffering and stress.
Listen to what your fellow “B” passed along to you yesterday, about how she came to me and asked me not just to help her with her fourth step, but to do it for her.
And yes, My Love, I did. I did it for her, just like that.
Ask me to do things for you. That is what humility means. Ask me to do your family for you. Just say, “You do it. I don’t know how.” Say, “Here, God, you take it,” and I will.
Admit that you are powerless over everything. That’s actually humility and life will get easier.
My Love, remember the exquisite sensation you used to experience in romance when you would surrender completely to another, the way that you wanted to be devoured? I say this not to stimulate ecstatic recall, but to say, My love, that was actually nothing. That was nothing compared to the sweet, tearful, grateful relief you will experience when you give everything to me.
Ask me to write your book for you. Try it, I’ll do it. Ask me to do this interview today with Glennon, for you. I’ll do it. Say, “God, here you do it,” and open up your mouth and I will do it. Ask me to do your yoga for you. Ask me to take walks for you, not with you, for you. Ask me to schedule your life for you.
Remember what Byron Katie said to you about her life, that she has not done or said anything in years? She doesn’t do anything. Ever since her moment of awakening, she said she either just sits there or stands there, and then everything is done through her. She says, and you must believe her, for it is true, she has not made a decision in 25 years. Something decides her, for her. That is the thing that I can do for you.
Don’t make plans, My Little Love, let me arrange your life. Pause. Listen for me and let me do it.
I don’t want you to miss this experience of letting go into love and trust.
This is what I would have know, My Love: more God, less Liz is the equation for perfect peace.
You’ve worked too hard your whole life, My Love stop working so hard. Stop trying. Let me do more things. Let me do everything.
Trust me completely.
Say, “Here, God, you do it.”
See what those words that belief will create out of you.
Let me dance you. Let me live you, for you. Let me show you how much I love you when you give your whole will and your whole life to me. Let me show you how beautiful humility is.
Stop knowing anything except this, accept this: you are mine and I am you. And I love you.”
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