The Camino : A Journey of the Spirit

Typical of MacLaine, this is a personal story with enormous adventure, a smattering of flashbacks, and a hefty serving of cosmic revelations. Like a true pilgrim, MacLaine travels solo, willing to strip herself down to the backpacking essentials and find deeper meaning in all the bizarre, frightening, and coincidental events she encounters along the way. It is no small feat that this sixtysomething woman walked the grueling path in 30 days. Readers can expect vivid stories of stalking paparazzi, icy showers, bouts of hunger, lost paths, a worshipping young man, a deranged woman screaming in a roadside shelter, saintly truck drivers, a fellow pilgrim in a wheelchair, bouts of constipation and diarrhea, and a cosmic crescendo that will knock the socks of MacLaine's fans. --Gail Hudson

Product Description
It has been nearly three decades since Shirley MacLaine commenced her brave and public commitment to chronicling her personal quest for spiritual understanding. In testament to the endurance and vitality of her message, each of her eight legendary bestsellers -- from Don't Fall Off the Mountain to My Lucky Stars -- continues today to attract, dazzle, and transform countless new readers. Now Shirley is back -- with her most breathtakingly powerful and unique book yet.

This is the story of a journey. It is the eagerly anticipated and altogether startling culmination of Shirley MacLaine's extraordinary -- and ultimately rewarding -- road through life. The riveting odyssey began with a pair of anonymous handwritten letters imploring Shirley to make a difficult pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain. Throughout history, countless illustrious pilgrims from all over Europe have taken up the trail. It is an ancient -- and allegedly enchanted -- pilgrimage. People from St. Francis of Assisi and Charlemagne to Ferdinand and Isabella to Dante and Chaucer have taken the journey, which comprises a nearly 500-mile trek across highways, mountains and valleys, cities and towns, and fields. Now it would be Shirley's turn.

For Shirley, the Camino was both an intense spiritual and physical challenge. A woman in her sixth decade completing such a grueling trip on foot in thirty days at twenty miles per day was nothing short of remarkable. But even more astounding was the route she took spiritually: back thousands of years, through past lives to the very origin of the universe. Immensely gifted with intelligence, curiosity, warmth, and a profound openness to people and places outside her own experience, Shirley MacLaine is truly an American treasure. And once again, she brings her inimitable qualities of mind and heart to her writing. Balancing and negotiating the revelations inspired by the mysterious energy of the Camino, she endured her exhausting journey to Compostela until it gradually gave way to a far more universal voyage: that of the soul. Through a range of astonishing and liberating visions and revelations, Shirley saw into the meaning of the cosmos, including the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, insights into human genesis, the essence of gender and sexuality, and the true path to higher love.

With rich insight, humility, and her trademark grace, Shirley MacLaine gently leads us on a sacred adventure toward an inexpressibly transcendent climax. The Camino promises readers the journey of a thousand lifetimes.

I've finished the book and my inescapable conclusion is that it does not represent the enlightened musings of a fellow Peregrino but is, instead, simply another airing of Ms. Mac Laine's very creative perceptions of her prior existences.

This book should be bought and read only by those who are interested in the author and her unique perspectives on life and spirituality. It really has little to do with The Camino except that the latter provides a stage upon which this popular actress can continue to articulate her, arguably, entertaining metaphysical balderdash--any or all of which is no better or worse than you or I might conjure up. By her own admission, she cherishes her role as actress. As an actress she "creates reality."Which, as any good actress knows, is the name of the game. I have no problem with any of that. I simply contend that this book is not about The Camino. It is very much about Shirley MacLaine.

This work is really a celebration of celebrity. A status which bestows on its members a right to opine, for profit, on all manner of issues without the normal encumbrances of other writers, i.e. authenticity and outside validation of the facts. The hubris of this author is startling. Before 20 pages have passed, the author-- who I assume would have us believe that she is a serious and erudite writer--feels compelled to share the fact that she intends to walk The Camino braless. My oh My. Talk about significant reportage. I guess she is just trying to get us thinking about the inevitable movie which will follow.

To anyone who is seriously interested in The Camino, I would only offer the thought that Ms. MacLaine's experiences are the product of her own very talented and creative mind. To view her musings as a cause and effect model of what The Camino imparts to those who trod it is simply wrong. There is very little of value in her book to the aspiring Peregrino. If you so aspire, look elsewhere. In the final analysis, however, The Camino experience will be a unique one for each pilgrim. As the days pass and the experiences multiply, there will be an increasingly clear sense of the development of the deepest of personal truths. This intensely satisfying awareness is the essence of the solitary, unencumbered environment that is The Camino.


The Camino   June 2, 2000
Kelly
53 out of 54 found this review helpful

One of my friends at work gave me Shirley's new book, and I was thrilled. In the traditional Christian world, Shirley MacLaine is one of those people who would be on the "LIST"---forbidden to any God-fearing, Bible believing Christian. I used to carry Shirley's books around in brown paper bags and pull them halfway out and read them when nobody was looking. Our preacher would be talking about how "Shirley MacLaine has lost her mind," and I'd be reading her books under the pews and thinking, "She makes more sense than the preacher." In Christian college, I got called on the carpet when somebody decided to investigate one of my brown bags to see if I was sneaking alcohol. GOD FORBID, he found something WORSE--one of Shirley MacLaine's novels, which would surely send me to hell faster than booze. Needless to say, my days in the traditional Christian experience were short-lived.

I think Shirley MacLaine is amazing! I think she's one of the bravest women alive. She has never been afraid to share her spiritual journeys for the benefit of those who can "receive" them and at the cost of personal ridicule from those who cannot.

People are criticizing this book and saying it was not about the Camino but about her own inner journey. I would have been disappointed had it not been. I don't care if Shirley walks the Camino, the Appalachian Trail, or walks to the corner drugstore. I want to know what happened to her spiritually along the way.

This is a wonderful book for all fellow "Pilgrims" and "Sojourners in a Strange Land."


A Fascinating Quest!   July 31, 2000
Judith E. Pavluvcik (Dreaming of the beach in California, but living in the reality of the desert in Arizona!!)
34 out of 36 found this review helpful

"There are many ways to experience one's spiritual education." This quote from Shirley MacLaine sums up this incredible book perfectly. This is Shirley's journey of one finding themselves, or re-discovering themselves on the centuries old Camino - a 500 mile spiritual trek across Spain.

I found this book to be wonderfully enlightening, illuminating, and I applaud Shirley for the courage to complete this journey of the Spirit. Shirley says, "The Camino itself helps facilitate the resolution of emotional issues."

The reader is treated to flashbacks of Shirley's past lives as she once lived along the Camino, including an amazing past life in Lemuria and Atlantis. I found Shirley's honesty and candor refreshing, and many of her insights hit directly home with me. I do believe that the reader will also gain as many insights as I did and stop and let it all sink in. We are treated to her lessons and fears that she has to conquer as well.

I really resonated with her thoughts on fear: "Never ask yourself what it is you fear - instead ask yourself what it is that concerns you. A fear thought, put out, will return, because all energy returns to the sender. Any energy always makes a loop until it regains the source. A concern thought will return also. A that moment discern why you're concerned."

I began my spiritual questing with Shirley's first book and have devoured everything she has written. She is not afraid to speak her truth and she is not afraid to seek to deepen her spirituality and then share the rest of that with humanity. I am sure that I am not the only one who she has deeply and positively affected. We are spiritual beings having a human experience and once again we are reminded of our mission - to reconnect to the Divine source - to love - to God.

Another wonderful quote, "I had walked the Camino in order to understand what we were capable of as human beings - such spiritual magnificence and such destructive fragmentation of our own souls. Were we all repeating such dramas even today because we hadn't remembered what we came from?"

I urge everyone to read this fascinating book. You too, will want to trek the Camino after finishing the book.


Once again MacLaine expands the mind...   May 16, 2000
John Thomsen (New York)
29 out of 32 found this review helpful

I have been reading and studying Ms. MacLaine's works since her release of "Out on a Limb" and I must say that this is her best work since then.

Call her whacked out if you want...but (just like "Out on a Limb") you can't help but to feel that there is an unmeasurable amount of truth in every word shares with us. And if anything...even if you are not a believer in reincarnation, Lemuria, Atlantis or even God, she will make you seriously contemplate your position here on earth with the rest of us and why there is so much turmoil and pain.

Shirley - if you are reading this...I love you! Thank you for opening my eyes and expanding my mind for all these years!