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Title: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year As If It Were Your Last by Stephen Levine ISBN: 0-609-80194-5 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent in theory, difficult in practice
Comment: I am currently almost halfway through my "Year to Live." My mother, her best friend, and her best friend's oldest daughter are among a larger group of people all over the nation who are actually trying to do exactly what this book discusses: Treat this year as if it were your last. It is easier said than done.
I will say that it has brought my mother and I closer together, which I did not think was possible, and it has forced me to examine one of my deepest fears: losing her. This work is deep, intense, and harder than you might think... but the rewards are great.
Rating: 4
Summary: 5 stars if you're New Age, 2 if you're not, 4 to compromise
Comment: Stephen Levine has worked with the Dying for several years, and wrote this book as an exercise to prepare to die by preparing to live. He relates his personal insights of the dynamic process of dying, and suggests an exercise to be undertaken by one who knows they have... only one year to live.
This is an exceptionally difficult book to review. On the five-star side, the author has some exceptional credentials and the work has been well-reviewed by people with a wide variety of perspectives. Some of his exercises (such as his "soft-belly" meditation, his advice to carefully observe our thoughts-as-they-arise, and his suggestions to recall and bid farewell to our most pleasant memories and to forgive our worst ones) are simply wonderful. They have aided my own practice immensely. I commend his gentle assurances that, despite our fears, All Should Be Well (most religious leaders have said the same thing). I think the author has made a noble effort to tackle a hugely difficult subject.
On the dark side, however, I wouldn't give this book to someone imminently facing the Great Gulp unless they were pretty comfortable with the New Age view of Death. Many good people feel preparing for death requires much regret, repentance, suffering, uncertainty, angst, fear, etcetera, and this book might provoke outrage from those people at a sensitive time without any corresponding redemptive value (I indeed respect a terminally-ill reviewer who trashed this book). The author seems to feel death should be kind of a peaceable, emotionally blissy, blend-with-the-infinite, far-out sort of experience. I wouldn't exactly say he views death as the spiritual equivalent of a trip to Disneyland but ... you get the picture. I'm sorry to again be so totally crass, but you have several financial and material responsibilities in preparing your loved ones for your after-death experience, and this book glossed over them pretty darn quickly. The book is New Age Ambiguous -- I looked over one section and put negatives in place of the positives, and it read pretty much the same either way. I'm skeptical the author's theology or ontology improve on the Buddha, who was silent regarding The Ultimate Question. I also agree with other reviewers who pointed out the twelve-month exercise is ultimately artificial and can degenerate into shallowness. Finally, no bibliography, no index, and no backup data for some Pretty Big Assertions-As-Facts.
I finally suggest four stars as a compromise. I also gave a respectable rating because of the sheer value of some of his meditational exercises, and suggest the book for those reasons alone.
Rating: 1
Summary: How dare he write this book?
Comment: I was diagnosed by Mayo Clinic with a malignant brain tumor in 12/2002. Having undergone two brain surgeries, radiation and 16 months of chemotherapy, I feel uniquely qualified to write this review.
In my case, and with hundreds of other brain tumor patients I know, the first year is spent in sheer terror, on a roller coaster ride of emotions and medical changes. For the incredibly lucky few that are still alive at the end of the first year (50% of malignant brain tumor patients die within six months of diagnosis), the terror gradually gives way to a bipolar life in which the patient simultaneously lives life as best s/he can, given physical / emotional / spiritual defecits, while living the emotional pain of knowing that in three months they could be dead; their spouse without a partner, their children without a parent.
Through this year, the lucky ones that live are able to reconsider their lives and determine in which baskets their proverbial eggs should be placed.
Levine, who has experience working with patients diagnosed with chronic illnesses, should know better. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME.
One can no better pretend to have one year of life left than they can pretend to live one year without the force of gravity. It simply can't happen. To give Levine the benefit of the doubt and allow him to use "A Year" as a metaphor is to do a disservice to the reader since "A Year" is an organizing concept of the book.
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Title: Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying by Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine ISBN: 0385262213 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: January, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Guided Meditations, Explorations and Healings by Stephen Levine ISBN: 0385417373 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Gradual Awakening by Stephen Levine ISBN: 0385262183 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: January, 1989 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Healing into Life and Death by Stephen Levine ISBN: 0385262191 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: February, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Turning Toward the Mystery : A Seeker's Journey by Stephen Levine ISBN: 0062517457 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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