A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last (Paperback)

~ (Author) "As I have accompanied the dying to the threshold over the last twenty years, it has become painfully clear how often death takes people unawares..." (more)
Key Phrases: life review, original face, floating world, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Judgment Day

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Socrates believed that we should "always be occupied in the practice of dying" in order to appreciate our living. So imagine that you only have one year left to live. What would you do differently? For one year Stephen Levine (also the author of Who Dies?) consciously chose activities, relationships, and spiritual practices that reflected life's urgency rather than life's complacency. From his experience comes this year-long program of strategies and guided meditations to help us feel satiated when our numbers come up. Lessons include "Gratitude," "Disposing of the Corpse," "Finding the Lotus Before Winter," and "Beyond the House of Death." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

On New Year's Eve in 1994, Levine and his wife, Ondrea, vowed to live the next year as if it were their last. As a counselor for the terminally ill and author of many works on spirituality and dying, Levine has come to believe that preparing for or "practicing" death reminds one of the beauty of life. In this production of his book (Crown, 1997), Levine himself relates his experiences and emotions in his yearlong experiment in "conscious living." He emphasizes his philosophies about life and death rather than giving a month-by-month account. Drawing on the dogma of many faiths including Buddhism, Native American religions, and Christianity, Levine describes the dying process as a change of state. Laden with New Age terminology, Levine's prose tends to sound stilted. Recommended only where the author has a strong following.?Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1998 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: 192 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (April 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609801945
• ISBN-13: 978-0609801949
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,696 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars if you're New Age, 2 if you're not, 4 to compromise, May 22, 2003

By	Brad4d "bb" (United States) - See all my reviews

Stephen Levine has worked with the Dying for several years, and wrote this book as an exercise to prepare to die by preparing to live. He relates his personal insights of the dynamic process of dying, and suggests an exercise to be undertaken by one who knows they have... only one year to live.

This is an exceptionally difficult book to review. On the five-star side, the author has some exceptional credentials and the work has been well-reviewed by people with a wide variety of perspectives. Some of his exercises (such as his "soft-belly" meditation, his advice to carefully observe our thoughts-as-they-arise, and his suggestions to recall and bid farewell to our most pleasant memories and to forgive our worst ones) are simply wonderful. They have aided my own practice immensely. I commend his gentle assurances that, despite our fears, All Should Be Well (most religious leaders have said the same thing). I think the author has made a noble effort to tackle a hugely difficult subject.

On the dark side, however, I wouldn't give this book to someone imminently facing the Great Gulp unless they were pretty comfortable with the New Age view of Death. Many good people feel preparing for death requires much regret, repentance, suffering, uncertainty, angst, fear, etcetera, and this book might provoke outrage from those people at a sensitive time without any corresponding redemptive value (I indeed respect a terminally-ill reviewer who trashed this book). The author seems to feel death should be kind of a peaceable, emotionally blissy, blend-with-the-infinite, far-out sort of experience. I wouldn't exactly say he views death as the spiritual equivalent of a trip to Disneyland but ... you get the picture. I'm sorry to again be so totally crass, but you have several financial and material responsibilities in preparing your loved ones for your after-death experience, and this book glossed over them pretty darn quickly. The book is New Age Ambiguous -- I looked over one section and put negatives in place of the positives, and it read pretty much the same either way. I'm skeptical the author's theology or ontology improve on the Buddha, who was silent regarding The Ultimate Question. I also agree with other reviewers who pointed out the twelve-month exercise is ultimately artificial and can degenerate into shallowness. Finally, no bibliography, no index, and no backup data for some Pretty Big Assertions-As-Facts.

I finally suggest four stars as a compromise. I also gave a respectable rating because of the sheer value of some of his meditational exercises, and suggest the book for those reasons alone.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A new way to look and life and death, December 8, 2000

By	Sheri O. Zampelli "Author & Podcaster" (LA, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

We're all going to die. Levine's book helps us to view life and death from a broader perspective. Levine has spent considerable time working with terminally ill clients. According to him, people on their death bed commonly mourn their unfinished business. Be it unfufilled dreams, broken promises, or unresolved conflicts, life regrets are one of the most troublesome aspects of dying.

Levine's book gave me motivation to begin living each day as if it's my last. It made me consciously aware of the importance of not putting life on hold.

This book also encouraged me to be more accepting and conscious in daily life. Many of us do all we can to avoid pain. Levine believes that accepting and moving through discomfort is actually less painful than tensing up with fear. I believe this applies not only to physical pain, but also mental and emotional discomfort. Many times the events I've resisted and resented the most are the ones that offered the greatest satisfation and personal growth once I got to the other side.

Levine's book made me feel more comfortable with the ideas such as acceptance and humilty. In general, life is simpler and more peaceful when I live in line with these virtues.

34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Death is a good teacher., April 6, 2001

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

250,000 people die each day, like "deciduous leaves piled at the foot of the great tree" (p. 110). This is a wise book about reclaiming "our lives one step at a time" (p. 5) through the practice of dying. "I offer an experiment that amplifies your potential for healing by living the next year as if it were your last" (p. 3), Stephen Levine writes, "a year to live as consciously as possible, a year to finish business, to catch up with our lives, to investigate and deal with our fear of death, to cultivate our true heart and find essential wisdom and joy" (p. 4).

Levine knows death. He is a Buddhist meditation teacher who works with terminal patients. He tells us that we should not wait for a terminal diagnosis, though, "before opening to the potential grace and wonder of this living moment" (p. 17). His book offers several guided meditations on embracing the mystery of death, including "soft-belly" (pp. 32-33), fear (pp. 49-50), "life review" (pp. 82-86), forgiveness (pp. 89-92), gratitude (pp. 96-97), body awareness (pp. 104-5) and "original face" (120-21) meditations. "Trust the process" (p. 63), Levine advises us. "No one can afford to put this work off any longer" (p. 17). In the end, as the book's title makes clear, this is not so much a book about death, but a book about conscious living.

G. Merritt