ashram-yoga-class-SadRetarded-Bulldog(As much as Sad Retarded Bulldog wanted to raise his hand, he simply felt very unenlightened that day)

In 2005, Elizabeth Gilbert got divorced, dropped everything, and went on a year-long vacation through Italy, India, and Indonesia, paying for the trip using money from the advance for the book that she planned to write about it (nice work if you can get it).  Oprah gave Gilbert’s book her meaty paw of approval, women everywhere warmed to the vicarious thrill of eating gelato till you puke and doing yoga all day, and the rest is history.  But according to a shocking new scientific study conducted by the New York Post, actually trying to copy Gilbert’s example is liable to leave you poor, jobless, and unhappy.

Marta Szabo’s spiritual journey started off a lot like Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling 2006 memoir, “Eat Pray Love.” “I was at a point in my life,” recalls Szabo, now 53, “when I didn’t have a lot of options.” Like Gilbert — who’s played by Julia Roberts in the movie, out Friday, based on the book — Szabo had endured a bad breakup. Like Gilbert, she was a writer in her 30s, unhappily living in New York City, unsure what she wanted to do with her life. She, too, needed to find herself.

Both Gilbert and Szabo discovered an international organization called Siddha Yoga — specifically, its gorgeous, charismatic female leader, known as Gurumayi. “My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face,” Gilbert writes, in her book, of the first time she saw a photo of the guru. “Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced, ‘I want a spiritual teacher.’ ”

Holy shit, this book sounds way worse than I imagined.  Hey, how about after your heart finishes cleaning its sh*t up, you tell it to stop mixing metaphors.

Both women ended up at the group’s ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth, in Maharashtra, India. Getting a guru: For Gilbert, this decision was a lifesaver. For Szabo, it derailed her life for more than a decade. Szabo, who moved from those regular meditation sessions to an eventual staff position in India as Gurumayi’s personal assistant, says ashram attendees often end up broke, and broken. Rather than using their inner-peace revelations to spur them on to happier lives, they become enlightenment junkies, spending all their time and money in pursuit of what they come to believe is the path to happiness: more and more meditation and Guru worship.

Wait, so you’re saying quitting my job and moving to India ISN’T a good idea?  F*ck, what am I going to do with all these bindis?  (*begins vajazzling Japanese sex pillow*)

And for thousands of women entranced with the “Eat Pray Love” phenomenon — it could fall somewhere between overpriced self-help and good old-fashioned fraud.

“It’s almost like it’s become a sport that is dependent on paying the most money to go to the best ashram, to write the most amazing experience,” says Texas journalist Joshunda Sanders, who coined the term “priv-lit” (for “privileged literature”) in a recent article for Bitch magazine about Gilbert’s book.

Ah, right, it’s totally become a worldwide phenomenon.  See, this is what people in the journalism business call “the bogus trend piece.”  Anyway, let’s wrap this up:

And it’s never been a better time to compete in the Enlightenment Olympics. To coincide with the release of the film, numerous travel agencies are offering “Eat Pray Love”-themed tours to Italy, India and Indonesia (the three countries Gilbert visits in the book). Even Lonely Planet, the handbook for cheapskate travelers, offers suggestions on its Web site for re-creating Gilbert’s trip at Roman gelaterias, Indian meditation courses and Indonesian surf beaches. [NYPost]

Phew.  Oh wow.  Yes, that felt good.  At the very least, it’s nice to know one doesn’t need to travel to Rome and gorge on gelato in order to puke.