Well, Shirley is always entertaining! And that's the thing. She's an entertainer. Her life is amazing. I loved reading what she's "over," what she's not over, and what she's semi-over. From religion to vanity, from family to exercise. From sex (she's kind of over it, but good Lord, she had enough with enough people for 50 lifetimes) to her now happy life of semi-seclusion in New Mexico with her dog.

I'd love to have dinner with Shirley. I'm sure we'd be friends. Even with the things I'm not quite over about her — like the amoral power-sexcapades. It's not just that she was married (a "very liberal arrangement") and slept with stars of stage and world politics abounding — it's that she never cared about the other people that her somewhat narcissistic behavior effected. That the Prime Minister of Sweden was married was merely a "technicality" to Shirley. "He was technically married." Technically. O.K. So was she. Technically. How marvelous. And on it went. She never carried about who might be hurt in her wake, and that is disturbing —especially for a woman spouting Karma on every other page. Karma's only for other things I guess. A blind spot? Perhaps.

I'm not over Shirley's inability to "get" why she's not given the same spiritual credibility as the Dalai Lama. Seriously. She is clearly bothered that the Dalai Lama can speak without being ridiculed, while when she speaks about reincarnation, past lives, UFOs and other New Age passions, she is the subject of snickers, hoots, and yes, at times, ridicule. Though not as much now as 20 years ago. And she's met and spent time with the Dalai Lama. (She's met everyone, that is well established.) A bit of jealousy over the chasm between her spiritual cred and the Tibetan spiritual leader's. Shirley finally attributes the difference to "wardrobe." And she is bothered enough by this to repeat it several times in the book. Perhaps if she wore a monk's robe she'd be taken more seriously. Well, there's something to that. The Dalai Lama's credibility is bolstered in part by NOT sleeping with movie stars and female heads of state galore, even though, as a powerful man, he had the charisma and no doubt opportunity to do so.

Shirley argues that everyone would be as promiscuous as those on film sets and political campaigns given the opportunity to partake. It just is the way it is. Somehow I can't see the Dalai Lama doing that on any film set, or any campaign. Or some other folks who are a bit "over" the orgy part of politics and movies.
What would Buddha, Jesus, or lots of other folks do?

Shirley is fascinating, as much for her blind spots as her entertaining ways. She speaks about the development of doctrine in Christianity, for example, as if she actually knows what she's talking about, citing only one person, and one council, to blame for the exclusion of reincarnation in Christian tradition. She overlooks that it was never part of the Hebrew Tradition from whence came Christianity. And while touting the Church Father Origen for his belief in it (he called it the trans-migration of souls), she fails to understand that Origen in his own time held a fringe belief among Christians and was considered a gnostic or a heretic in his own time by many. He held a minority belief. It wasn't Theodora of Byantium alone who did away with the teachings of Origen (and others) in Constantinople in 553, three centuries after Origen's death. Even while speaking of trans-migration of souls, Origen was not teaching reincarnation as such. A bit complicated for Shirley, its seems. She's no scholar, that's certain. That's why her dogmatic statements about spirituality can be off-putting. She's not a scholar, and her self-directed studies are skewed. But darn it, even the Peruvian Shamans get the credibility (deserved) that she so craves. Must be the wardrobe.

Here's the thing: whether you believe in past lives or not, history and blame according to Shirley, are off.

So read the book for the entertaining aspects. Consider she has some wisdom and much to offer. But be discerning: take the good, leave the dross, enjoy the ride with Shirley MacLaine.