Editorial ReviewsAmazon.com Review
Socrates believed that we should "always be occupied in the practice of dying" in order to appreciate our living. So imagine that you only have one year left to live. What would you do differently? For one year Stephen Levine (also the author of Who Dies?) consciously chose activities, relationships, and spiritual practices that reflected life's urgency rather than life's complacency. From his experience comes this year-long program of strategies and guided meditations to help us feel satiated when our numbers come up. Lessons include "Gratitude," "Disposing of the Corpse," "Finding the Lotus Before Winter," and "Beyond the House of Death." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
On New Year's Eve in 1994, Levine and his wife, Ondrea, vowed to live the next year as if it were their last. As a counselor for the terminally ill and author of many works on spirituality and dying, Levine has come to believe that preparing for or "practicing" death reminds one of the beauty of life. In this production of his book (Crown, 1997), Levine himself relates his experiences and emotions in his yearlong experiment in "conscious living." He emphasizes his philosophies about life and death rather than giving a month-by-month account. Drawing on the dogma of many faiths including Buddhism, Native American religions, and Christianity, Levine describes the dying process as a change of state. Laden with New Age terminology, Levine's prose tends to sound stilted. Recommended only where the author has a strong following.?Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
In his new book, Stephen Levine, author of the perennial best-seller Who Dies?, teaches us how to live each moment, each hour, each day mindfully--as if it were all that was left. On his deathbed, Socrates exhorted his followers to practice dying as the highest form of wisdom. Levine decided to live this way himself for a whole year, and now he shares with us how such immediacy radically changes our view of the world and forces us to examine our priorities. Most of us go to extraordinary lengths to ignore, laugh off, or deny the fact that we are going to die, but preparing for death is one of the most rational and rewarding acts of a lifetime. It is an exercise that gives us the opportunity to deal with unfinished business and enter into a new and vibrant relationship with life. Levine provides us with a year-long program of intensely practical strategies and powerful guided meditations to help with this work, so that whenever the ultimate moment does arrive for each of us, we will not feel that it has come too soon.
Book Description
In his work with the dying, Levine observed the radical life changes people can make in the face of death. He challenged himself to live an entire year as if it were his last, thus beginning an investigation into spiritual practices unlike any other: those designed to explore how death is cut from the same fabric as life, and why it is never to be feared. Carefully planned as a series of month-by-month practices and meditations, this audiobook brings the dying process into the full light of awareness. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.