| Shirley MacLaine - A teacher, a companion |
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| Shirley MacLaine - A teacher, a companion |
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Wednesday, September 18, 1996
Some years ago, 8 to be exact, I was lying on my parent's bed watching a miniseries that I found fascinating. Shirley MacLaine and Charles Dance were living an impossible love affair and somehow a spiritual search for inner understanding was beginning, and not just on the screen, but also in my heart. That was "Out on a Limb".
Some years later, about 1992, I saw the miniseries again and a tiny speck of curiosity began to itch at me. I went down to a bookstore and asked for books by Shirley MacLaine, surprisingly enough, there were a few. I decided upon "Dancing in the Light", because the title appealed to me. On the way home on the bus, I began to read. And I found myself doing so until very late in the night. It was refreshing, and very insightful. I discovered it was just adequate for my spiritual development at the time, hence I understood why it had appealed to me so much.
The next year, my father went to New York for a business trip and he bought "Dance While You Can", "It's All In The Playing" and "You Can Get There From Here". I read them in that order. "Dance While You Can" was a very different feeling from the first two I read, and the first book that was actually biographical almost in whole. I learnt a lot about Shirley's history and most of it for the first time, since I've no idea of her biography besides what I read in her books.
"It's All In The Playing" was again a trip inside myself. This book is one of the few that I've read only once. I think that's because it's too personal, Shirley bares herself a lot in this book, and I feel sometimes I'm intruding in someone's life more than I'd want to. "You Can Get There From Here" is another I've only read once. In this case it is because it is a harsh book. It exposes feelings very coarsely and experiences that she narrates are not at all "pleasant". This is the first book Shirley wrote and thus is further back in her spiritual path, so it returned me to stages of my life I'd rather forget, but I owe myself another reading of these two books, I'll get around to it soon enough.
In 1994, on the annual book fair in Bs. As., I bought "Out on a Limb" and practically gulped it in just a few days. I found it to be a little different from the miniseries, specially on episodes I had paid very much attention to. It was somewhat disappointing, but I gathered that writing a movie script requires a bit of spice that a book doesn't need. This book helped me remember and re-live the first stages of my spiritual search, when I was 15 or so, and some things came together, like reincarnation, channeling, coincidences, soul mates, twin souls, etc.
Last year I bought "Don't Fall Off The Mountain", another I've only read once. It deals with acting, an essential element in Shirley's life, and her attitude towards it. Of them all it is one that has created little impact on me.
Any one who's reading this and knows a bit of Shirley's books, might notice I haven't mentioned anything about "Going Within", that is because that book has been eluding me since the start. But now, thanks to Internet, I have it with me. I bought it over at Amazon Books, and I received it last evening. Also I bought the tapes which I heard last night too. I suggest this book to be read at last, because it is the wrapping up of all spiritual learning in general. It deals directly with what to do: meditation, exercises, and such, to achieve spiritual balance. And it also deals with the search for femininity, which is the main search of my life.
Over all, Shirley MacLaine has been both a teacher and a companion in the last few years of my inner search, and I recommend her books to anyone who's interested in finding him or herself.
