Learning to Fly: Reflections on Fear, Trust, and the Joy of Letting Go [Paperback]

Sam Keen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

The acclaimed author of Fire in the Belly presents an exhilarating memoir of his late-blooming love affair with the flying trapeze--and a provocative look at the potential it offers for growth, transformation, and overcoming deeply rooted fears.

An unprecedented adventure of the soul and psyche, Learning to Fly teaches us to soar on the wings of possibility as we watch Sam Keen and his students progress through breathtaking exercises on the trapeze which they use as a vehicle for exploring the challenges and dilemmas of life. As he describes takeoffs, knee hangs, and thrilling midair catches, Keen imparts moving revelations about risk-taking, trust, bravado, living more passionately, true strength, falling, and letting go. Guiding us on a remarkable inner journey through the "circus of the mind," Learning to Fly reveals the grace of ascending in body and spirit--and living with levity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For as far back as he could remember, Sam Keen had dreamed of flying. And so just before his 62nd birthday, Keen enrolled in a trapeze class at the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, thus becoming "the oldest student at the circus." In this richly written memoir, Keen uses the details of trapeze training to frame his spiritual understanding of the world. Not surprisingly, the flight metaphors work--giving room for chapters titled "Leap of Faith," "A Fledgling Among the Eagles," and "On the Wings of Spirit."

As a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Keen is a fine memoirist--able to step outside himself to tell a good story and willing to share his humiliations and inner fears as he became a student of flight. "My failures have taught me there is always a second chance.... Failing gives fallible human beings a chance to start over. And that is why every man, woman, and society needs a safety net." He now leads an "Upward Bound" trapeze program for abused women, drug addicts, and inner-city school children. --Gail Hudson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Of all the writers and pundits who shaped the immensely influential men's movement of the 1980s, Keen (Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, Bantam, 1992. reprint) is perhaps the most able. His new work, a gracefully written account of his experience at the trapeze training program of the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, should please his avid readers and perhaps earn him many more; he delivers unobtrusive lessons in the arts of fear, strength, and trust as natural corollaries of a real and vividly described experience. This charming and worthy work should make a fine addition to most collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767901770
• ISBN-13: 978-0767901772
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

SAM KEEN'S VITA I was over educated at Harvard and Princeton and was a professor of philosophy and religion at various legitimate institutions for 20 years before becoming a contributing editor of Psychology Today, a freelance thinker, lecturer, seminar leader and consultant. I am the author of a bakers dozen books, a co-producer of an award winning PBS documentary, Faces of the Enemy. My work was the subject of a 60 minute PBS special Bill Moyers-Your Mythic Journey with Sam Keen.

When not writing or traveling around the world lecturing and doing seminars on a wide range of topics on which I am not necessarily an expert but a skilled explorer, I fiddle with growing things on my farm in the hills above Sonoma, and practice the flying trapeze.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Part memoir, part metaphor., November 28, 2000

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Learning to Fly: Reflections on Fear, Trust, and the Joy of Letting Go (Paperback)

At age 62, Sam Keen learned to fly. In 1993, he started his training on the flying trapeze at the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. The fact that he was the oldest student at the school did not deter Keen from pursuing his "strange passion" (p. 15). "Over the years," he observes," I have discovered that it is hazardous to ignore passing fantasies and emerging passions. To begin with, in the degree that I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears. When passion no longer waters and nurtures the psyche, fears spring up like weeds on the depleted soil of abandoned fields. I suspect the major cause of depression and despair and the appetite for violence in modern life is the result of the masses of people who are enslaved by an economic order that rewards them for laboring at jobs that do not engage their passion for creativity and meaning" (pp. 16-17).

Part memoir, part metaphor, Keen's book is filled with daring leaps, midair turns, somersaults, and catches. For Keen, the trapeze is a good teacher. From his six-year love affair with the trapeze, he derives insights into fear, trust, letting go, and what it means to live life passionately. If we learn to live life as a "ten-ring circus," he writes, in "a world ruled by enchantment--where magic existed before morality, wonder before worship, pleasure before piety, and amazement before practicality" (p. 24), then we will be "transformed, changed back into children whose horizons are open" (p. 25). "The Great Path is a spiral journey," Keen notes. "Every day we begin again, knowing that danger and death may be lurking, that we will be fearful and will need to cultivate courage. We will need to keep our balance and discern when it is time to wait and when to act. We will take leaps of faith, fall, and rise again. If we are diligent in our practice, there will be unexpected moments of grace and joy and a gradual growth of mastery in fashioning our lives into something of beauty" (p. 241).

Keen's LEARNING TO FLY is inspirational and insightful. Although reading it did not inspire me to attempt a triple somersault, it did encourage me to find a flying trapeze in my own life, and then to practice it, knowing that "practice is perfect" (p. 237).

G. Merritt

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars With "the greatest of ease", Keen has soared once more!, May 28, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Bucks County, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learning to Fly (Hardcover)

Towards the end of this fascinating book Keen shares a pearl of wisdom passed on to him by his friend and mentor Howard Thurman,"The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open...over the years you carve yourself into a given shape. The challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge." With literary grace and the usual "keen" insight this author has been blessed with, we go on a magical mystery tour to see and experience Sam Keen's "green growing edge" in this, his sixty eighth year. I read this book in one sitting. I have had the pleasure of taking a few baby steps on a trapeze rig, so much of what is here was re-living my short foray into the "the beyond". Even if you are only metaphorically taking leaps of faith each day, you will find a feast of insights, awarenesses, giggles, philosphical koans, and other assorted presents brought to you by one of today's liveliest minds!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life Lessons, March 28, 2000

By 

Linda L (Gerrardstown, WV, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learning to Fly (Hardcover)

I read a passage from the book at my daughter's wedding and then I wished them wings and flight. I found this book to be absolutely fascinating and, at age 57 myself, found inspiration to try new ideas. Learning to Fly is never boring. I found the chapter-beginning drawings helpful as I tried to follow Sam Keen in flight, literally as well as figuratively. A real winner!