The Top Ten Things Dead People Want To Tell You by Mike Dooley
Review By Pat Weeks
Mike Dooley
I didn’t start out reading this book with any intention of reviewing it. I saw it advertised in a Hay House email, and I thought that it would be an interesting book to add to my collection of books about life after life on earth. I thought its title was rather jingoistic and that it would be a quick, but superficial, read.
I have a feeling that the publisher or an editor suggested the catchy title so that people would be drawn to buy the book, thinking it would be of those trendy lists with quick-and-easy paragraphs of simplistic explanation that are so prevalent now. Instead, I found this book to be one of depth and substance, provoking quite a bit of thought and consideration. The author cautions that no passage or phrase contained in the book should be taken out of context—that you either read the book cover-to-cover or simply leaving it untouched or unread. He presents complex ideas in easy-to-read prose.
The author explains what most of us in Unity believe: there is no death. He states early in the book:
You, the formless and eternal, now temporarily possess a physical body, chemically and organically borrowed from the substances of earth, to channel your nonphysical energy and personality as you negotiate space, travel though time, and experience what has become known as life.
As in the Course in Miracles, the emphasis in this book is on our illusions about our life on earth and our reliance on time and space. He states emphatically that we are not alive to be tested, judged, and sentenced. We’re alive to live and learn “in unending spirals of love.”
He cogently addresses the so-called “evils” of the world. He contends that nothing justifies abuse of any kind—that it is wrong, undeserved, and criminal. But he also states that the long-term result is the opportunity for correction, balance, healing, growth and absolute gain. He feels that the long-term (in terms of the eternal) potential good always “wildly exceeds short-term setbacks and suffering.”
Our lives are a work in progress, and no isolated thought or experience is the be-all and end-all of it. No matter how you feel in any moment, there is nothing wrong with your life because you feel lost or incomplete. It only means that you are normal and growing. You are not handicapped by your challenges and desires, but you are blessed by them—even when it includes sorely missing a beloved who made a transition before you. You are blessed by missing such a person for the love you knew and still know. The greater the perceived lack in your life, the greater the dissatisfaction, the greater the comeback and future celebration.
He says that there is a life review after our transitions—but not for the purpose of judgment. Instead, the aim is to learn, to see, and to understand. One gains an understanding of other people’s actions. Those who have hurt you were lost in their own confusion and anguish. They didn’t set out to hurt you but to make sense of a world that was hurting them. You learn to drop all blame. The dead want to tell you that you were born to soar, to achieve, and to grow.
I highly recommend this book to Unity members because all the ideas we continue to study and apply in our lives are encapsulated in this book with humor, enthusiasm, and love.