The Camino : A Journey of the Spirit

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Known as the Camino, the Santiago de Compostela Camino is a famous pilgrimage that has been undertaken by people for centuries across northern Spain. It is said that this 500-mile path lies directly under the Milky Way and that it reflects the energy of the star systems above it. Facing her sixth decade of life on earth, writer and actor Shirley MacLaine decided to go on this trek. She wasn't sure why, she only knew that the Camino had been traveled for thousands of years by "saints, sinners, generals, misfits, kings and queens. It is done by the intent to find one's deepest spiritual meaning and resolutions regarding conflicts in Self."

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The Barnes & Noble Review
On the path of The Camino, Shirley MacLaine wanders through puzzling visions. Often, these visions seem to her too strange to share; at one point, she wonders: "Could I ever tell my dream visions to anyone without seeing his eyes roll? It took an act of control not to roll my eyes at myself!" MacLaine is right to worry about revealing her premonitions. Skeptics too easily dismiss spiritual groping as vague-headed silliness, while they joke about subjects they cannot fathom. Despite the danger, however, MacLaine boldly records her spiritual wanderings in The Camino. In it, as in each of her bestselling memoirs, MacLaine relates her experiences in simple, forthright terms. She braves the critics and their eye-rolling to allow us a share in her spiritual struggles.

MacLaine's many books have chronicled her life's metaphysical stretches: In Out on a Limb, for example, she surprised readers by revealing her faith in past lives. In each of her revelations, MacLaine explores the connections between her public and private worlds. For MacLaine, the spiritual realm is connected to physical matter -- and she willingly traverses the paths that connect them. In The Camino, she describes her thoughts and adventures along the Camino trail, a 500-mile pilgrimage that begins in France and cuts through northern Spain to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The Camino presents a physical challenge, even for a lifelong dancer like MacLaine: It is filthy, dangerous, and tiring. MacLaine walks it alone, beset by dogs, deceptive tourists, and the violent taunting of the press. She wears blisters into her heels; she carves ten pounds off her lean dancer's frame; she walks miserably through walls of bees. The Camino, as an exercise, pushes MacLaine to her physical limits.

But the hike also pushes MacLaine spiritually. Throughout the brutal trek, MacLaine confronts a series of visions in which she begins to investigate both her solitude and her personal relationships. In many of MacLaine's visions -- or memories -- she sees herself in another life, as a Moorish girl who had once ridden across the Camino. In this persona, MacLaine listens to a monk named John the Scot, who describes the healing possibilities of the pilgrim's trail. She explains: "He said the Camino accentuated feelings of unresolved issues&.the dreams and visions of people walking the trail created footmarks of past truth, which created reminiscences, which were part of the human subconscious lurking within each of us as foreshadowings." MacLaine and her ghostly mentor hint, that is, that visions can help each person understand her past distress. And by understanding this distress, somehow she can make room for a pleasure that can ease life and death. MacLaine and John write: "The joy comes when the cup of sorrow is emptied. Therefore, the joys and the sorrows along the Camino are the rediscovery of your own soul."

MacLaine's journey moves her through episodes in her Moorish life, where she finds herself accepting Christianity along with her own magical powers of healing. This inner journey culminates with a prolonged vision of the beginnings of the world, in which MacLaine explores her desire to be alone and her powerful need for human connection. In this final vision, MacLaine sees herself in another era of human evolution, in which androgynous persons become sexed in order to approach God in their reconnection. She dreams of civilizations in which total connection is possible and then reawakens to her own solitude on the trail.

For MacLaine, these visions need not be material to be meaningful; they need only encourage moral growth. She shrugs: "The Camino&seemed to be a walking meditation on what I had learned internally&.If the Garden of Eden had indeed been lost, I would seek to find it again. If other terrestrial species had sought to achieve that balance themselves, then I would give more attention to UFO sightings and why they were here&. And if we had once been androgynous, then I would cease to stereotype any person's sexual orientation or preference. If the Camino's energy had amplified all those memories for me, then I would trust it." Most importantly, then, MacLaine's imagined worlds (or memories) guide her to explore her beliefs more deeply and to speak about them more honestly.

In this latest chronicle of discovery, MacLaine bravely and openly explores her own imagination, memories, and heart. In doing so, she pushes her readers to think more freely about their own spiritual journeys. MacLaine's progress encourages us to connect dreams with physical life, to develop our bodies morally. The journey is incredible. (Jesse Gale)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Following a centuries-old tradition, entertainer MacLaine walked nearly 500 miles across northern Spain's Camino Santiago de Compostela. This memoir of her formidable journey, like her other books, is a likely candidate for bestsellerdom as well as for ridicule in some quarters. An effort to "feel human again," her physical feat was daunting: she hiked for 10 hours a day on her own, often in intense heat, and slept in refugios--crowded, dirty shelters. Though she observes the small villages, historic cathedrals and other trekkers along the way, MacLaine is most interested in her interior journey. The actress, who has written before about her numerous past lives in such books as Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light, senses that she's walked the Camino before as a coffee-colored, dark-haired woman of Charlemagne's time. Visited in dreams by a spiritual guide, she connects her various lives and soul mates, revealing that her former lover (in this life) was Olaf Palme, the assassinated Swedish Prime Minister. As the journey progresses, she revisits the origins of the human race in the edenic Lemuria, then the dawn of Atlantis and on to ADAMic civilization. On the earthly plane, MacLaine seems to enjoy evading the press, which she compares to fearsome dogs, and whose pursuit escalates as she gets closer to the end of the journey. Though she completed the Camino in 30 days instead of the planned 40, her arrival in Santiago lacks a Hollywood finale. Instead, she slips into the famous cathedral and leaves immediately for Madrid. Major ad/promo; author tour; 20-city TV satellite tour; 20-city radio satellite tour. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

MacLaine's eighth book confirms her gift for storytelling; her pitch and timing are perfect. She wryly blends her spirituality with self-deprecating humor. While working in Brazil, the actress received a handwritten, anonymous letter urging her to make a pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain. She discussed the letter with friends, gave some thought to the notion, and promptly forgot all about the idea. Several years later, again while working in Brazil, MacLaine received another anonymous letter in the same handwriting again urging her to make the journey. Eventually, she determined that the time had come for her to make the trip. People from St. Francis of Assisi to Dante and Chaucer have taken this 500-mile walk across the highways, mountains, cities, villages, and fields in Spain. The government offers protection for spiritual seekers, and villagers routinely offer food and shelter. MacLaine, who is in her sixth decade, found the trip to be both an intense physical and spiritual challenge. She reveals her dreams, fears, and humiliations with honesty and insight. Recommended for libraries with large biography and spiritual collections.--Pam Kingsbury, Florence, AL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

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