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	Out on a Leash: Exploring the Nature of Reality and Love Shirley MacLaine Atria, 2004 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An utterly charming, witty, and ultimately wise memoir of a truly remarkable woman, Out on a Leash is an irresistible bonbon for Shirley MacLaine's fans and for dog lovers everywhere.

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Look Deeper -- It's Here

I've decided to write a review after perusing all the ones already written, and after reading the book myself. I want any future potential buyer to know what's what. Disregard all those comments that say Shirley MacLaine has lost it, is fuzzy-minded or too sentimental. While "Out On a Limb" remains Shirley's best book so far, this one is clear-headed as can be and deals with a different subject, a magical animal. What those other comments indicate is the readers' lack of a sense of humor.

You know some people are so darn literal, right? In truth, there are wonderful insights and wisdoms throughout the book. If you don't like animals, or if you think a dog is a dog is a dog, then you probably won't relate that well to the book, unless you recognize truth when you see it. This experience Shirley is having with a canine is rare. Her dog, Terry. is not your father's four-legged pal or your mother's cutsy, cuddly snookums. It's not about 90% of what most of us have experienced with a family dog or an adorable, sweet, or smart dog or cat that we loved and remember fondly. No, this is that rare 10% of animals that come into one's life that transcend the ordinary pooch or pussy. You have to experience it to understand it.

Shirley is NOT ga-ga in her dotage over a pet! She has been gifted with one of these transcendent animals and she is right: they do speak to their humans in many ways, and they love you like no man or woman has ever loved you (unless you're very, very lucky) before. I'm not talking about devotion. That's ordinary, expected. I'm talking about the real thing: unconditional love. We use that expression too much these days and most of us are lying about it. Frankly, we don't know what we're talking about. It's something we want to do, something we want to get, but we seldom come close. When we do, it's unforgettable whether it happens with man, woman or beast. It's a spiritual experience to be treasured and Shirley is one lucky lady.

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5 stars for Terry the Leasher & none for un-true-full Starlette Shirley ...

Her previous book The Camino had 36 pages (my number again) with the word love in it & on p.146 "yellow ... deals with personal power." and on p.130 "Wisdom was represented by what we stood upon - our feet" and most animals are firmly grounded in unconditional love since they do have 4 feet and the snake is even more so by crawling with no feet. Being both of yellow skin and born under the snake sign, here is what I saw in:

This present book at least has 4 pages where unconditional love is mentioned, p.182 "It will be difficult to live without Terry's constant reminders that I am capable of unconditional love" which is quite close to the last page 199[a step before 200 or t(w)o zero or to oneness nothingness.) Shirley is still in the receiving end of unconditional love. Unless Shirley BE-comes UNCONDITIONAL LOVE or the state of GRACE, I will say that Shirley will not reach stardom in this lifetime. Since Shirley is still seeking for outside for-give-ness (e.g. neutering Terry) instead of GrOwING WITHIN or BE-ing it. Please shift from RE-act-ing as in all movies and BE a real god as played in "All my Reviews" by facing each own and chosen 'fall from heaven story'.

As far as i understand when each one of us is born, a physical star is also born in our universe. And both death are synchronous. This is one way to weave the relations between all entities and how the universe celebrates our passing through as in Osho's epitath. That's why there is the song "Wishing upon a star" because we all are. On p.167 (as seeks heaven) Terry, her dog states "Since my Mistress Mother is my child i hope i can teach her that growing up is essential to aging well. And the older she gets the further inside herself she should look. The more deeply she learns to love, the younger she'll be when she dies."

on p.166 (as seeks first perfect number & part of my number representation as Osiris) "Even now, while Terry is still in my life, I find myself WANTING to surround myself with animals ... I would be happy living with a menagerie... they point the way to a state of being we humans can only aspire to." To aspire is to hope and not be present. As far as I know at least 6 millions or 0.1% of humans are in that state of being.

on p.191 Terry states "The answers that MM seeks are hers to create." To create rather than react (a play on word) is to be god. This book mentioned twice that god is dog backward.

Dis-playing with my own example: I am creating situation where i am in synch with whatever the god in Neale Walsch's books (other books are in All my Reviews) & what Terry proclaimed here since 1996. The mundane was described in my letter to Jimmy Carter with my review of Prescription for Global Enlightenment. With that letter I realized that his Carter Center binds Jimmy in chains by being an institution, so will Shirley's animal menagerie.

On p.178 Shirley is closer to being Unconditional Love when she questioned "Should I have adopted the children I wanted to when I was younger? Is that the impulse Terry is bringing out in me? Or is she bringing out a desire to adopt children now? ...No, I've earned this peace and quiet" Shirley with all her 70 years of experience still question her own intuition and defaulting to the Western mind's cop-out.

She can break this impasse by choosing to adopt both animals and children. In my letter to Jimmy the statistics to my question "IS LOVE CONDITIONAL or UNCONDITIONAL?" is only valid in China. Among my 35 College Classmate in the US the ratio is far far lower. Only one, named very appropriately Violet, chose that Love IS Unconditional, although she can't do it either. The most common answer i get in US is that Unconditional Love can be for children.

Naturally that declaration by itself is a lie, as though, one can separate love into all different kinds. A very simple example will show the different Western & Eastern mindset. In Asia most mothers choose to sleep with their children since birth, thus be one with the infant (or Terry.) Westerners choose to put their children in a cradle and even in a separate room as in Disney 'Lady and the Tramp', which my 3 year-old son Imagine is watching everyday for the past week with 'Sleeping Beauty'.

Imagine is not happy when the masters put the puppy Lady out of the house in the beginning, and happy when Lady sneaks back in to the warmth of human bed. Initially when Kite found she was pregnant, I defer unconditionally to her choice. By the 3rd month she lost 20lb and then re-gained 30lb and we had inter_course until delivery day.

If the choice was given to me, I would have chosen to abort because I thought I didn't need to go through being a father. I'm delighted Kite gave us the chance to experience what it's to love a child unconditionally.

I have slapped Imagine on the hand or butt a few times before and always immediately apologized to him without excuses.

3 real child-rearing unconditional love examples to free your self:
. Whenever Imagine cries, Happy, i and Kite never told him to stop. I sometimes even play along and ask him to cry louder. Naturally after checking he's not in physical pain or hungry.
. Whenever Imagine falls down I always come closer and notice if he got physical scratch, otherwise I simply tell him to get up by himself.
. When faced with what we normally term as dangerous, unlike the dead Bush by 2006/3/7 and other un-secure/winning mentality, i turn that into a shared learning experience in unconditional love as in my review of "Lifelong Happiness."

One important thing I can find out with Imagine is to confirm that i can choose to be as young as i choose to be. This is in synch with how Kite sees me as neither male nor female, and my chosen epitath of 'a good person is not really that good and a bad person is not really that bad', since it's all a matter of enlarging perspective and be one with it all.

Whenever i declare my love to Kite and Happy or talk about Imagine, I always say that i also love every one else. Because we are all truly equal, as god in disguise, and we can learn a lot from our best teachers, the children, before their own 'fall from heaven story.' To die with children around is bliss, this is one reality check for Terry's statement of "The more deeply (Shirley) learns to love, the younger she'll be when she dies."

My own litmus test is to ask "what do you choose to do, if you knew you are going to be dead tomorrow". If you don't want to face the question, let me rephrase it without the 'if' which is in the past:

"Do you know you are not going to die tomorrow?" Which is from the present.

For people living for the future i'll rephrase the question as "Ever since human have been born into this world, there is one thing, and only one thing, coming from the future right into our face"

That's really the only leash we're all in, as equal as, in our own choice of 'fall from heaven story' too and choice of birth and death and everything in between. On the other side is timeless all-that-is unconditional love and we all are a facet of that oneness. So choose either to re-present fear or be unconditional love. Place your bet, rien-ne-vas-plus.

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Typical Shirley

I have followed Shirley's spritual path since she started writing about it. I read this book in a day and loved it. For anyone who has a spiritual connection with a 4 legged being, or any non human being, this book will touch your heart.
It is whimsical and real. It will make you smile and bring a tear.

I fell in love with Terry and Shirley's connection with him. Though she has many animals and loves them all, she has a special bond with Terry that only someone who has known that bond can understand. Keep writing Shirley!


Great Story

Great love story. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I happened to get my own puppy soon after reading this book and wow - I have experienced the love firsthand.

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storyteller

Somehow I missed this book and even after reading the reviews I wasn't really sure I would enjoy it. However, I was very wrong. I haven't had a dog since I was a child but Shirley's Terry brought back all the memories of my own part-terrier part-mut Fluffy. As always, Shirley MacLaine never disappoints me. I enjoy her insights into her own aging as I am going through mine. I agree with her views on unconditional love and how my views about everything change and mellow as I age. Her worry about traveling to Ireland without her Terry was for nothing really. The universe had more important things for her to do. I love the discription of her beautiful new ranch and her role in preserving it. I am an Earth sign also and feel deep connections to land and sacred spaces. The most important things in life are often the simple ones. I am grateful to have learned that lesson very young and still practice it every day.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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