Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Liz considers her new job as one of Swamiji’s jokes. It happens frequently at the ashram. She makes a decision and then she is reminded: “God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are” (212). Liz wants to be the “quiet” girl because she isn’t. She can, however, demonstrate her devotion by improving herself, by altering her talking habits: curse less, talk less about herself, stop interrupting. The lady at the ashram’s Seva Center tells her the nickname for the Key Hostess is “Little Suzy Cream-cheese” because the job requires you to be “social and bubbly and smiling all the time” (213).

In her new job, Liz hosts a series of retreats for about a hundred devotees who come for a week to 10 days of meditation and devotional practice. She is the only problem solver for them in the ashram. They come from all over the world. The job of Key Hostess utilizes all the intuition and listening skills she has gleaned from the experience of a lifetime. She loves these people for their bravery to face whatever manifests when they go into the silence of meditation for seven days. She knows they are all afraid because when they go into silence, they go alone.