Rating: 
Summary: Shirley MacLaine as New Age Catalogue
Review: After reading chapters 18 and 23 from Shirley MacLaine's 1983 Out on a Limb, I've come to the conclusion that Shirley's belief system is some sort of New Age stew. Her belief system appears to be a hearty mix of various philosophies and religious traditions. Within the chapter sampling, Shirley refers to UFOlogy, ancient Mayan religion, Christian apocalyptica, Buddhism, Indian epics, Tibetan writings, Eskimo mythology, and even the popularist science of Carl Sagan. She appears to use different belief systems as a spiritual shopping list.
After visiting her website, I see she embraces an numerous other New Age elements including Feng Shui, aromatherapy, chakras, ley lines, colour therapy, holism, astrology, angels, numerology, dream divination, etcetera. It looks like she has all her bases covered, and the end result looks like a big bunch of mumbojambalaya to me!
The direction Shirley MacLaine appears to be travelling in these excerpts seems awfully close to my understanding of Erich von Däniken's theories. He believes ancient Earth was visited by extraterrestrial astronauts, and so does Shirley.
The excerpts I read are thematically almost identical to the Castaneda excerpts I pored over not too long ago. A reluctant student is shown by a spiritual adept the ways in which that student's views on reality are blinkered. Then, by means of misadventure, knowledge is gained despite initial recalcitrance.
I guess this is a pretty common theme.
Shirley is a highly entertaining writer. Her prose is smooth and enjoyable to read, and she has a charismatic personality. This goes a long way toward explaining her immense popularity. Nevertheless, I still think she's a crackpot!
Rating: 
Summary: this book changed my life!!!
Review: First of all before I started reading out on a limb I regarded
Shirley Maclaine as an actress. That opinion was rapidly changed once I started reading out on a limb. I could not put the book down. The book prompted me to ask questions of who I am and who I was in past lives. This book opened my eyes to the fact that we are all in charge of our own realities, that we choose whatever happens in our daily lives. Upon completion of this book I went out and bought every single book by shirley maclaine which I read with rapid speed. When I finished out on a limb I felt more positive about myself and the world around me. I realized that happiness and change begin with me. Thank you shirley for the life changeing information that you chose to share. It has certainly changed my life for the better.
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Summary: I Too Am Searching for This Magical Gem of a Movie!
Review: I have had several special encounters with this enlightening film,since first seeing it during its original mini-series broadcast on TV years ago!It seems to periodically come up in consciousness to me,when I am sharing with others,my Spiritual journey,as they too become aware of a greater potential for their own lives!It has been over the years available at most larger video rental stores,ie.Blockbuster,etc.,but now has apparently been removed and no longer has any distributor to even be able to order a copy for purchase anywhere.It is very sad that a film with such consciousness raising and healing qualities to it would just disappear.I am hoping someone may be able to help me to acquire an audio-visually decent copy,so that it may continue to bless and inspire people,as it has done for all who have seen it in the past!Just for myself,I know what it has done for me,everytime I've watched it with whatever "new" person,I've recommended it to.It is the only movie that I have ever written notes from as I watched it,just from the nuggets shared between the characters in the dialogue!I'm so glad that I am not alone in the enthusiastic pull to get this film re-released,re-distributed and available once again to the general public!I don't know what we'd all have to do,short of writing a petition of sorts to Ms.MacLaine herself as a vote of confidence in this timeless piece of work but I feel that it is far too important a film to simply be satisfied in being just one of the many who remembers this uplifting movie with fond warmth and affection.If anyone would like to help those of us searching for a copy of "Out on a Limb" so that we may continue to share it for the "soul" benefit of all the others who haven't seen it yet,P>"If you want to get to the fruit of the tree,sometimes you've got to be willing to go "Out on a Limb"!"
Rating: 
Summary: More Answers Than You Would Expect!
Review: I read Out on a Limb when I was fourteen-years-old, and the book acknowledged every doubt and every idea that I had thought of growing up with Christian ideals: fate, the afterlife, the soul, etc. Shirley MacLaine introduces her personal faith from the beginning and systematically details her progression into the spiritual teacher that she is to this day. MacLaine also seems to possess a sixth sense as to the questions that her readers will encounter as they read her novel and answers them in a very clear and concise manner (if you're not careful, the material can be quite daunting). My only outstanding complaint about this novel is that MacLaine had to account for every facet of her and Jerry's relationship. It proved to be quite distracting and I did not feel that Jerry's extra-marital affair with Shirley was necessary for a book of this nature.
Rating:
Summary: More Answers Than You Would Expect!
Review: I read Out on a Limb when I was fourteen-years-old, and the book acknowledged every doubt and every idea that I had thought of growing up with Christian ideals: fate, the afterlife, the soul, etc. Shirley MacLaine introduces her personal faith from the beginning and systematically details her progression into the spiritual teacher that she is to this day. MacLaine also seems to possess a sixth sense as to the questions that her readers will encounter as they read her novel and answers them in a very clear and concise manner (if you're not careful, the material can be quite daunting). My only outstanding complaint about this novel is that MacLaine had to account for every facet of her and Jerry's relationship. It proved to be quite distracting and I did not feel that Jerry's extra-marital affair with Shirley was necessary for a book of this nature.
Rating:
Summary: Started me on a spiritual journey!
Review: I spent years in church listening to pastors make fun of Shirley MacLaine and call her a kook. I never thought much about it. I enjoyed watching her in movies and thought she was "amusing", but it never occurred to me that she actually had something valid to say that would influence and change my life. Needless to say, one day I picked up one of her books and started reading it out of curiousity. It changed my entire direction in life. She makes the comment in her book that "one book generally leads to another" which was certainly true. I started reading every book I could find on reincarnation and spirit guides, etc. I feel so much calmer and more balanced now, and I feel a great lack of fear concerning the future. The one thing I would like to see Shirley address in future books is her relationship to other people as far as a "helping" capacity. In the two books I've read, we know that she's had plenty of love affairs, and she gives us the history between herself and her parents, etc. Generally, a knowledge of our relationship to God and to ourselves will result in compassion and a desire to reach out to mankind and help in any way we can. Shirley certainly accomplishes this in providing us with her life narratives. It would be interesting to know how she incorporates this into her personal life and relationships with others.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, fun and enlightening.
Review: I watched the four hour version and felt it was time well spent.Good acting and a very good story. One of my better movie investments and a keeper for my collection.
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Summary: Tremendous courage to show this on US TV!
Review: I've had OUT ON A LIMB on video tape since the original showing in 1987. Tonight for some reason I pulled it out to watch after an absence of at least 10 years (I have hundreds of video tapes so it was easy for this to recede into the darker corner of the closet).
I am most amazed at Shirley's incredible courage (others might call it arrogance or gall) to present material that is so antagonistic to the mainstream middle American mind set. After watching this excellent time capsule of New Age Thought from the mid 1980's, I felt a wee bit sad, since I realize this mini-series could never be shown on network TV today! After decades of Republican rule and the subtle but merciless pressure of right wing Christian religion in the US, the beliefs that Shirley presented in this film are much MORE controversial today than they were back in the benignn 1980's. How dare she have an affair with a married man? How dare she claim to be God? How dare she hobnob with channelers who are in the hands of Satan? I can hear all the babble on TV and right wing talk radio if that poor woman were to try this today!
Even if every concept presented in this film is false, it is a tremendously rewarding adventure.
However, I do have to state that after this film was made, Shirley admitted on a talk show that the book/film are NOT literally true! She created composite characters like David to represent her spiritual research. So it might come down to her NOT having any personal metaphysical adventures at all outside the confines of her book reading, but she created such adventures, e.g., having an invisible alien drive a truck in Peru that she and the make-believe David were in, to jazz up the topic a bit. I think a lot of people lost faith in Shirley when she made the confession that her books are NOT literally true!
Nonetheless, Kevin Ryerson is a trance channeler and is still out there charging $275 for a 90 minute consultation. Why go to law school when you can charge prices like that for your services?
I may seem like a skeptic. Well, I am skeptical of some of the more cartoonish aspects of the so-called New Age. We have grown more jaded since 1987. However, there are underlying spiritual truths within the film/book that make it worthwhile, although this film/book certainly contains no revelations that cannot also be found in a bounty of spiritual oriented books on the market today.
So in one sense, you may enjoy this film/book as a nostalgic throwback to a time when the New Age was "new", not the butt of comedians and the horror of fundamentalists. To call someone "new age" now is considered practically an insult, like calling someone a "liberal". That shows how reactionary and scared our culture has become since those heady times.
Take time from worrying about terrorism and the fact that George Bush believes that his fundamentalist Old Testament God is telling the US to invade other countries. Pop OUT ON A LIMB into your VCR or read a copy of the book. It may make you wish you could time travel back to those exuberant times!
Rating:
Summary: A significant voyage of self/discovery
Review: Shirley Maclaine's books have all been bestsellers and rightly so. She bares her soul in her writing, besides displaying exemplary courage and honesty in her confrontations with the esoteric side of life.
So much has been said about Shirley Maclaine's books that anything more seems superfluous. However, this book could be of renewed interest to those new readers who have, or have had an interest in Sweden during the late seventies and early eighties. This is because the identity of the politician she had a love affair with, is revealed in her later book, 'The Camino'. That information makes this book and its sequel, 'It's All in the Playing' more significant and evocative of the times.
Rating:
Summary: Just great
Review: This is one of those books that is so good that, when you finish it, you feel sad. Because you know you will be hard pressed to find a better one to follow. However Shirley wrote several books to follow this one, that if even if not as fabulous, are still great...so no need to be too sad: Shirley's adventures continue on.
The book is riveting because it describes in such an entertaining a gripping writing style, full of humour and insight, Shirley's exciting adventure of spiritual awakening. It is an autobiographic book of a very small but intense time of Shirley's life, in which, as many who have had an awakening will be able to relate to, life becomes brilliantly alive, full of synchronicities and magic. Shirley is lead from book, to teacher, to channel, to places across the globe as she follows the promtings of spirit that lead her to glimpse and explore realities that break down her previous belief structure about the world. And as she travels and learns, a completely new way of viewing life emerges for her- and a completely new Shirley!
Spiritual insights aside, just the way in which this book is written is superb - Shirley has a real gift for bringing to life her experiences on the page and the book reads as an exilarating adventure novel. I loved it and re-read it occasionally when i want to recapture that feeling.
If you like metaphysics and new age writings, this book is quite a gem and well worth reading. You will cerish it, you will love it and probably read it again and again.
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