Dirt, TRUTH, Music and Bungee Cords

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.