The intriguing story of how one man harnessed his dreams and changed his life.
Desautels, in his debut memoir, tells of a lifetime of prophetic dreams.
The author writes that when he was 5 years old, he started having intense, frequent dreams that foretold future events. As he grew older, the power and precision of these dreams steadily increased. “I found myself projected into airliners that crashed,” he writes, “and I saw homicides and suicides before they occurred. More than once a dream saved me from serious injury.” He began attending study groups centered on the writings of famous 20th-century psychic Edgar Cayce, and he attempted to attune himself to a phenomenon Cayce described as the “superconscious,” Desautels later realized that he was part of a long tradition of dream interpreters stretching all the way back to the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. In this short book’s concise, clear chapters, he describes the many variations of his dreaming experience, including lucid dreaming and using dreams to explore reincarnation. The actual content of his dreams varies, and sometimes they require highly imaginative interpretations; for example, the author once had a dream about Babe Ruth, which he connected to a night of too much rich food and wine. His dreams have even predicted the specific outcomes of sports events, including victories of the Miami Heat basketball team in 2013 NBA Finals. More often, however, the dreams have more general, holistic interpretations. “I wanted to change because I wasn’t happy with the life I was living,” he writes. “I looked into the mirror of the dream and saw what was reflected back to me.” Readers of spiritual and self-help books will appreciate how Desautels frankly says that his dreams only point the way to action; in dreams regarding his diet or exercise routines, for example, he notes that the actual waking-world work is all up to him. This practical turn makes the book consistently rewarding.
The intriguing story of how one man harnessed his dreams and changed his life.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493518524
Page Count: 138
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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