A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last [Paperback]

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.

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.

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.

"For over twenty years Stephen Levine has worked creatively to help thousands of people approach their own deaths with equanimity, truth, and an open heart. I can think of no one better qualified to help us enrich our lives through
embracing the mystery of death."
--Ram Dass

Stephen Levine, teacher and spiritual mentor, has worked closely with the dying. In doing so, he discovered how full life becomes when death is certain. Levine mesmerizes the listener as he reveals how the quest for fulfillment surpasses all other desires and inevitably satisfies the soul for the remaining days of life. Hypnotic and soothing, Levine's words penetrate the listener's curiosity about dying and arouse interest in his or her own mortality. Levine provides a month-by-month procedural format anyone can follow to live a more meaningful existence. He convincingly promotes living as if there really were only one year remaining--eliminating dead-end jobs, loving with gusto and doing things never done before. Levine vows that quality of life will improve immensely. B.J.P. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.