Can I wax any more lyrical about Neale Donald Walsh today? Having just reviewed Conversations with God book IV, I have already reached heady heights of enthusiasm but this one is almost a stand alone book deserving of an extra star or at least something to make it even more visible. If I was able to recommend only one book by NDW or, indeed, one book by anyone, I would have to seriously consider this for the honour since it is a game changer. Really! I know so many books (and people writing reviews about books...) claim this, but it feels univerally true in this case.
After all, what is the most universal "thing" niggling at the back of everyone's thoughts, whether they consciously acknowledge it or shove it to the back of their mind, if not "death". Our whole culture is built upon avoidance of death, upon fear and dread of it and the myriad situations that lead to it; if not cancer or war than the one that gets us all in the end, old age. Can a book promise to dispel such universal fear and get away with it? Well, this one can...or could, if its viewpoint could only filter through into all our popular mindsets and teaching on the topic, the things we tell our children about death and how people of all ages react when loved ones pass on. If this understanding, this higher viewpoint, could only become our norm, our clarity, our circumspection on the topic then, I suspect, the whole of humanity would relax and we would start to focus on different things...upon making the most of what we have instead of what we don't...and upon what we can best do with the time we have while we are still here!!
Akin to all NDW's books, there was a sense all the way through of "no surprise, I already knew this" and yet...had I ever made it fully conscious or dared to believe it was so? No. The description of what death is, what it looks and feels like, how it is our choice at every stage...these topics are not shied away from or glossed over, they go deep and go "memorable" to the degree I have felt quite different about death since reading them. Really! It has allowed me to reframe the death of my mother in what felt like tragic circumstances, my father, even pets, in a whole other way that feels more complete than over twenty years of DIY processing had allowed me to do. I have ceased dreading my own death and that of my partner because of the death itself (the only fear is how it would feel to the remaining partner once left behind...and yet the certainty of reunion feels far more real to me now).
None of this is explained through the eyes of "religion", having nothing whatsoever to do with this. Moreover, it ties in seamlessly with the ever increasing stockpile of science around the study of death, in particualr Near Death Experiences. What is described makes so much more sense, even to the left-hemisphere, than the idea that we live, we die and simply return to dust. One of the profoundest rememberings I had, as I read this, was of the confusion of the birth experience given how this is just a version of the death experience, only in reverse...and of feeling like I knew so much more than I was meant to know about myself, even had a much broader perspective of life than I was "meant" to have, as a very young child undergoing the usual cultural conditioning about life, death and our suposed limitations. In short, this deeply profound book makes so much sense and is just so much comfort and reconciliation, all in a relatively short book. A must read, I would say, for everyone - one I truly wish they issued in schools!