An engaging story of an analytical thinker’s evolving relationship with his spirit guides.
An unconventional memoir about embracing a spiritual life.
Megargee’s debut opens at a pivotal moment in his life. The night before he went to court for his divorce proceedings, he was sleepless, and a vision interrupted his tossing and turning. He recounts that he saw an indistinct glowing portal and imagined a man named Elias floating over his bed. Megargee, a health care professional who describes himself prior to this point as conservative, cautious, and analytical, at first dismissed the vision as nothing more than anxiety about his divorce, but it nagged at his memory as he moved from state to state and from job to job. A group of Taiwanese monks living in Virginia opened his mind to the possibility that his vision might have been an invitation to broaden his consciousness. Later, in Pennsylvania, he met a woman he describes as a powerful oracle, and she helped him establish personal contact with a variety of spirit guides, including two beings named Lazadonton, or “Laz,” and Ucerous, or “U.” Both Laz and U, he says, are spirit guides who help humans along the path to self-awareness. Much of the book follows dialogues between Megargee, his oracle, and his spirit guides, whom he portrays as entertainingly mundane and funny presences, as apt to crack jokes as to dispense enlightenment. Megargee’s descriptions of the slow experience of getting to know his spirit guides personally (and them getting to know him) are the most enjoyable and, in some ways, the most surprising parts of his book. The advice both Laz and U give—about keeping perspective and clearing the mind of self-defeating clutter—will interest even those readers who typically naysay spiritualism and séances and the like. Fans of Carlos Casteneda’s Don Juan series will enjoy Megargee’s depiction of an everyday world rife with hidden spiritual activity.
An engaging story of an analytical thinker’s evolving relationship with his spirit guides.Pub Date: May 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5060-9117-4
Page Count: 232
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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