Shirley MacLaine
I listened to Shirley read this book on the audio version and applaud
Shirley for the courage to complete this journey of the Spirit. I think
hearing her voice added to the impact of this story. Shirley's past
lives came to her as she made this grueling trek and they were, to me,
the meat of this audio/book. She once lived along the Camino, and there
are two amazing past life experiences in Lemuria and Atlantis. Shirley's
honesty and courage in telling her story is inspiring.
The reader also gains much food for thought. The lessons she learns and
fears that she has to conquer in order to complete the journey. "Never
ask yourself what it is you fear - instead ask yourself what it is that
concerns you. A fear thought, put out, will return, because all energy
returns to the sender. Any energy always makes a loop until it regains
the source. A concern thought will return also. At that moment discern
why you're concerned." Certainly gave me something to think about.
I got involved in past life regressions as a result of reading Shirley's
first and second books. We all have our own philosophy, of course, and
Shirley has given voice to another way of thinking that also needs to be
acknowledged in our world.
What can I say? This is Shirley MacLaine's best book since "Out On a
Limb." I was mesmerized by this most enthralling story, the ultimate in
Shirley's thrilling search into the story of her own soul. I was touched
when Miss MacLaine stopped her own narrative to warn the reader at one
point that what was to follow might be hard to swallow. I found it
absolutely fascinating and quite believable.
How many of us could have fully endured the sometimes painful and
wearying physical journey that was so important to her? Her prose is, as
always, a thing of beauty, the most readable memoirist in recent times.
Whether or not you find yourself agreeing with what has happened to her,
the truth is that Shirley MacLaine is a born storyteller, the highest
compliment you can give to a writer.
"The Camino" should rank high on the lists of metaphysical literature,
standing tall and proud next to the author's "Out on a Limb."
This is the story of a journey. It is the eagerly anticipated and
altogether startling culmination of Shirley MacLaine's extraordinary --
and ultimately rewarding road through life. The riveting odyssey began
with a pair of anonymous handwritten letters imploring Shirley to make a
difficult pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain.
Throughout history, countless illustrious pilgrims from all over Europe
have taken up the trail. It is an ancient -- and allegedly enchanted --
pilgrimage.
People from St. Francis of Assisi and Charlemagne to Ferdinand and
Isabella to Dante and Chaucer have taken the journey, which comprises a
nearly 500-mile trek across highways, mountains and valleys, cities and
towns, and fields. Now it would be Shirley's turn. For Shirley, the
Camino was both an intense spiritual and physical challenge. A woman in
her sixth decade completing such a grueling trip on foot in thirty days
at twenty miles per day was nothing short of remarkable. But even more
astounding was the route she took spiritually: back thousands of years,
through past lives to the very origin of the universe.
Immensely gifted with intelligence, curiosity, warmth, and a profound
openness to people and places outside her own experience, Shirley
MacLaine is truly an American treasure. And once again, she brings her
inimitable qualities of mind and heart to her writing. Balancing &
negotiating the revelations inspired by the mysterious energy of the
Camino, she endured her exhausting journey to Compostela until it
gradually gave way to a far more universal voyage: that of the soul.
Through a range of astonishing and liberating visions and revelations,
Shirley saw into the meaning of the cosmos,including the secrets of the
ancient civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, insights into human
genesis, the essence of gender and sexuality, and the true path to
higher love.
With rich insight, humility, and her trademark grace, Shirley MacLaine
gently leads us on a sacred adventure toward an inexpressibly
transcendent climax. The Camino promises readers the journey of a
thousand lifetimes.
In one life, she's the Gypsy lover of Charlemagne, who in this life was
assassinated Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, Shirley's
twentieth-century paramour. Going back even further, she was an
androgynous Atlantean, one of the first to separate into male and female
halves--in fact, she was Adam and Eve! MacLaine, with her usual good
humor, admits that even she is tempted to roll her eyes at some of these
claims, but there is no doubt she believes in her own visions, and
depending on one's spiritual orientation, she may convince others to
believe along with her, for fleeting moments anyway.
Early in her 500-mile pilgrimage along Spain's Santiago de Compostela
Camino in 1994, MacLaine began to hallucinate and see huge metal screws.
"I didn't know if that meant I had a screw loose," she writes.
Walking some 20 miles a day, subsisting on yogurt and fruit, dogged by
mosquitoes and the press, little wonder the otherworldly 66-year-old
entertainer had visions so strange she found "it took an act of control
not to roll my eyes at myself!" Her previously recounted past lives (as
a suicide in Atlantis and an Indian princess) were lively enough; this
time she witnesses the origin of the universe and meets the kindred soul
who was both Charlemagne and Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, with
whom she had an affair before his 1986 assassination. By turns fearful,
vain and hostile, MacLaine makes her eccentricity endearing, even if you
scoff at how the spirit moves her.
I got a tremendous amount out of "The Camino", and am appreciative to
the author for that. I feel that each of us on the spiritual path has
some or perhaps a lot of the truth, and we bounce off each other on the
quest for higher consciousness. No one has anything close to the "whole
truth," but in "The Camino" I found a lot of candor, wisdom, humor,
pithy insights, food for thought, along with a fine travelogue of what
the author experienced, both internally and externally.
I have traveled a lot and have grown spiritually from those experiences,
and I've also done a number of long distance events to get the
endorphins going.
I did get a lot from her discussions about androgyny in Lemuria and "sex
divisions" in Atlantis.
Another wonderful quote, "I had walked the Camino in order to understand
what we were capable of as human beings - such spiritual magnificence
and such destructive fragmentation of our own souls. Were we all
repeating such dramas even today because we hadn't remembered what we
came from?"
I urge everyone to read this fascinating book.
©2002 BILLY TWEEDIE
NOTE:
For the publishing company of this great book: Please produce CDs also.
I read the hard cover in July 2000, loved the book so much! I also
bought the Audio 'book' but noticed that it is not on Compact Disc...in
this day and age! I wish to have the CDs ........Cassette tapes do not
last long.......
Visit Shirley at her website
YOU CAN PURCHASE THIS GREAT BOOK AT YOUR LOCAL DEALER OR AT THIS LINK
CLICK HERE!
