I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time.
Taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
I really do find it hard to believe that just three months after launching my talk show in 1986, there I was talking to Shirley MacLean on national daytime television about spirituality.
That kind of material, even more so than today, was really considered out there.
Not your typical talk show kind of subject.
I invited her to the show because I had read and loved her memoir out on a limb while filming The Color Purple.
The international bestseller, Detail, Shirley's lifelong spiritual quest and reading her story was life changing for me.
In fact, her writings helped inspire my own spiritual awakening.
Shirley has always felt a keen connection to the world beyond.
Over the course of her remarkable career, Shirley has appeared in more than 60 movies and she's been nominated for more than 100 various awards.
She has won an Emmy, seven Golden Globes, and of course, who could forget her Oscar winning performance as Aurora Greenway in terms of Endearment.
Today on the Cusp of 80, she's as outspoken, opinionated and sharp as ever.
Never one to accept the status quo.
Her latest book, her thirteenth, by the way, is appropriately titled What If?
Isn't it wonderful to be 79 and still so curious about life?
I'm like a child. I need to know much more sophisticated questions, of course, but I would say that's the reason for being alive, frankly.
Being able to ask the question.
To have the freedom of curiosity without being judged or told, oh, don't do that.
Don't you think about it?
Why not? If you've lived along and you're still walking upright, you have the right.
And you ask everything from what if there really is reincarnation to what if sex isn't meant to be monogamous?
Well, I got over that a long time ago.
So what happened that you came up with this new idea for what if, a lifetime of questions and speculations and reasonable guesses?
You know, now that it's out and everything, I think I had come to the point where I would let my humorous imagination run away.
Then I sat down and basically channeled it without filters.
When you first sat down to write out on a limb, did you think you were taking a risk?
You didn't. I didn't think this either.
You didn't think this either.
I don't believe I can be and why it works for me.
I don't even know what risks are.
A risk to me is walking. The risk is that people thinking, wow, she's out there.
That's not a risk to me. But then I'm in show business and the world is show business.
Do you? Yes, I do. We're all acting and singing and dancing our little parts.
Yes, in our own lives. But you knew what, a 10 that you were a mystic?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. How did you know?
Well, I didn't know that that meant mystic.
But for Christmas that year, I asked for a cross and a telescope.
My parents said, what is this?
I said, I don't know, but that's what I want.
I would lie out on the back lawn looking through my telescope, knowing that there were other, let's say, off-world civilizations up there.
When you look through the telescope, do you remember having the sense of, out there somewhere is where I come from or?
Yes. Or something like that.
Or have been there, would like to go back?
Yes. And you know, what is the difference between that and the mystery of religion?
Did you grow up believing in a God?
No, that was never imposed on me from my parents.
But then, you know, they were, dad was an intellectual who a master in psychology and philosophy at Johns Hopkins.
So that kind of religious stuff was not something they thought I should be, you know, imbued with.
You've written, I'm a dancer who loves to think.
What do you most love thinking about?
Who we are, where we came from, where we're going, how did it all happen?
Yeah, that's my fun. I consider it really fun.
Yeah. And whenever I'm with a scientist or a very kind of so-called left-brained intellectual person, that's what I love being with at dinner.
And then I, of course, I have to be fairly well read in, like, Genesis and the Bible.
The Bible is the book. It's right there.
It's written all about the otherness of otherworldly truth.
I mean, that's the truth.
As I see it, what is our purpose?
Why are we here? So religion is called into question now, and a lot of people say, but then what is the purpose?
What is the purpose of human experience?
I think curiosity. That's what saved me.
What do you now know for sure about our humans, our place in the universe?
I am sure we're not alone.
But you've been sure of that for a pretty long time.
Yeah. So you've spoken publicly about reincarnation and past lives forever, and your belief that no one ever— Literally forever.
Forever, really, probably many lifetimes.
No one ever really dies.
When did you start to know that?
I think when I first started having past life recall.
And then, of course, I got into the scientific study of it and did many regressions.
And what was so fascinating was in the regressions of the past lives that I have experienced, I realized the people who showed up in those experiences were also in my life today.
Really? Yeah. And that became very educational.
Oh, that's why they're acting like that.
Look what I did to them then.
That's when I understood the laws of karma.
It's an inspiration to try to figure out what's going on here.
I look at it as an adventure in understanding the science of the spirit.
Of spirit, yeah. That's what I'm interested in now, in every way.
How do you feel about where we are now?
I think we're in big trouble.
How so? Tell me. I think we don't know or have any comprehension of what we're doing to nature.
Now, those who are scientists and the Al Gore's of the world and stuff, yes, of course.
But what's happened to the rest of us, we're so materialistic.
Our values, that's our religion, is materialism.
So we've become addicted to the materialism and have no sensibility of what is that doing to the very sustenance of our lives, which is nature.
And everybody knows we've got to fix it.
And yet we're all leaving it up to somebody else to fix.
Yes. Back in the day, when Hollywood was Hollywood.
The glory days. The glory days.
The rat pack days. The rat pack in you.
Yeah. I look at that now with real nostalgia.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've thought a lot about that because I miss it.
You do? But what I miss, I realize now, is the spontaneity and not giving a damn that those guys were imbued the talent with.
So they didn't care and they always were very well dressed, made certain that they were hats and the ties and et cetera.
So they basically knew they were on the whole time.
And nobody really protected them.
What protected them was their spontaneity.
And they didn't care what other people thought.
Of course, there was this mystery behind them anyway.
You're talking about the rat pack.
Yeah. But Dean and Frank and Sammy and all of them.
Were you happy during those days?
Did you realize they were the glory days?
When you were in those days, did you realize they were the glory days?
God, I look back on that now and I say, this was it.
This is what everybody wishes they had back.
And I don't know if Dean and Frank and the rest of them realized it because they were much older and much more accustomed to this kind of attention and celebrity.
And I wasn't. I mean, I met them when I was 22 or something and it all happened to me very fast.
So that was the natural way of things.
I looked back on, oh my God, why didn't you realize?
If I had realized, I might have become a different person.
My saving grace has been my naivete.
And now as I'm older, I look back and I'm starting to evaluate what does memory mean?
Interesting. What are the component parts of memory in relation to how you do comprehend the past?
Why am I remembering this and not that?
And what does it all mean now?
I mean, you can look back and say, wow, those are the glory days.
Those were the glory days.
Not just because the world had not seen stars before like that, nor will ever again because the era that we now live in was instantaneous everything, including Instagram.
And no mystery. So there can never be a star like that again in this culture.
In 2012, the American Film Institute recognized Shirley's contributions to our culture with their highest honor, the AFI Life Achievement Award.
This annual event celebrates Masters of Film, artist whose accomplishments have elevated American cinema.
Shirley's award ceremony was truly the night of a thousand stars as friends both old and new sang her praises, longtime pals like Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, as well as new friends like Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston, all paying tribute to Shirley's six amazing decades in film.
So tell me about the AFI experience.
Well, you know, a couple of my buddies said, oh my God, it's got to go into your own funeral.
You won't like it. It's very interesting to go through it.
And I was surprised that I enjoyed it.
I thought they didn't like me.
And then they are there saying all these wonderful things.
So you go through that examination of your past and your opinion of yourself.
That's really what goes on.
And I was rather surprised I had a high opinion of myself.
I wasn't sure that would happen.
I had a good time. You had a good time.
You had a good time. When others, never mind who had said, I went to your own funeral, you're sure you want to do that?
And you know that sense when I walked up the stairs at the end, they're supposed to go on the stage and say stuff.
And when Jack put his hand out and helped me up the stairs, it was a moment of, oh God, I really am getting old.
I adore this man. And when you have that kind of on-screen personality, which you could say is spiritual, that's a really spiritual mix, me and Jack Nicholson.
So then there was the Kennedy Awards, the Kennedy Center Awards, where you say that really was not an award for not even lifetime achievement, not even for acting, but really for a life well lived.
Yeah, that's what I felt about it.
I think I've had a fantastic life, oh my goodness.
In 1994 at age 60, Shirley MacLaine set her sights on what is known as El Camino de Santiago.
It's a 500 mile long trail that crosses from France into northern Spain.
This ancient pilgrimage can take as long as six to eight weeks to complete, as travelers make their way on foot to their final destination, the cathedral where the remains of St.
James are said to be buried.
The people who've completed the walk say it's an arduous but deeply spiritual journey.
What did you go through when you walked the Spanish trail?
How long were you out there?
How many days? 30 days. By yourself?
On purpose, you know, it's a spiritual Camino.
That's what I wrote about in my book.
I had a lot of past life memories during that time.
And they say, and I think it's true, you start your Camino after you're finished.
Because while you're on it, it was a trying, you know, the point is to go alone, don't make friends.
That's really hard for me.
And don't spend any money.
You have to beg for food.
And live in refugios, which are refuges, they're places that you just throw down.
It's 500 miles. So you're doing 20 miles a day.
So I was in touch yet again with blisters on my feet, my physical condition.
I was 60 when I did it. The hardest thing was for me not to make friends.
Because everybody's going through the same thing and you want to share what you're going through about your life.
What was fascinating? I think I thought about love affairs and men and what to do about all that.
Maybe an hour combined.
Really? So I was kind of finished with it and had such wonderful memories, but no regrets and no sense of wanting when I'm going to find the right one, none of that.
Really being rather satisfied but a legion to who I was and who I wasn't.
And when I got back to London, I found that I had to walk in Hyde Park about four hours a day.
And that's when I got in touch with how everything we do becomes habit if we're accustomed to it.
Because you walk so many hours a day on the trail.
Is there anything left for you to be afraid of?
Are you done with that fear thing?
No, I'm not done. I'm not afraid of death.
I would not want it to be slow and lingering.
I think I'm afraid of lightning because it happens so fast if it struck me.
And I wouldn't have a chance to adjust to what it meant.
But it's sort of like my memory.
I'm having a real adventure with my memory.
Are you? No, you're too young yet.
Yeah, I'm turning 60. I know.
I just turned. It's the only age I actually ever thought about.
Oh, well get ready. Get ready.
You'll think that when you're 65 and you'll think it when you're 70.
It's funny what age the priorities you begin to examine.
It's so interesting, isn't it?
Because I thought in my 40s I would be releasing that whole need to please.
It still took me a while through the 40s to lose some of that.
But it's so interesting that as you get older, your perspective on what really matters, what is important, it does shift.
It's supposed to though, isn't it?
Yeah, but people pleasing is a kind of endeavor all in itself.
And I am so free of that. But that's where I'm finding my really dark-spirited humor.
Because I don't give a shit.
And but trying to do it kindly and trying to do it with a sense of sensitivity and all that stuff.
What do you think the purpose of aging, what is that there to teach us?
To learn why you came in in the first place.
And so we are the creators of whatever reality we are pleased with or not.
And I'm pleased with the lessons I've given myself to tell you the truth.
I am. No. I sleep well. Because it's well with your soul.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. What is it you feel now, or do you feel now a sense of not urgency, but that you would most want people to know?
Oh, that's such a good question, Oprah.
Yeah, because in a way I feel responsible having been so curious and had the freedom to explore these things and find answers for myself.
What I would like to do is have 10 or 12 people who are really as curious as I am and do seminars where we share and ask each other questions.
Joseph Campbell used to do that.
Yeah. I feel like, I mean, like that's what you know you love to do.
And I would love that too, to sit with people who are similarly inclined to be as curious and have little trips with their imagination and try it out on each other.
I would love to do that. I want to amalgamate with people.
I want to hear and feel what they're thinking and wondering about and afraid of and cautious about.
That's where I get my real sense.
And what is it you want to leave them with?
Okay, excuse me, but I'm going to say it.
The notion that all you really need in life is some fresh water, a good hat and a really good pair of shoes.
It's about all I've concluded that I can say.
Fresh water, a good hat and a good pair of shoes.
They're laughing, I can hear them laughing back there because everybody expected a different answer.
No, I know. No, no, no, no.
I don't have any answers.
Honest to goodness, I don't.
Maybe learn more than you think you can from your animals.
Yes. That's the way I feel about my dogs.
Like my older, you know, Terry, I've written a book about Terry.
Yes. She's been a really extraordinary teacher for me.
How long have you had her?
She's almost 15. Okay. She cannot see a thing.
She cannot hear a thing.
And she's functioning on a level that is a miracle to me.
So I'm watching her get down and judge how much she can jump.
She doesn't even know where the floor is anymore.
She's smelling it. Smelling it, but there's another sense of knowing it.
I'm interested in that other sensibility.
How would you describe your spiritual practice, Ms.
McLean? Do you have one?
I have to say no. Except perhaps, no, I guess it's not a practice, but it's a state of being.
I let things happen. I allow things to happen.
Who have been your greatest spiritual teachers?
The ones who have hurt me the most, the ones who have had the biggest difficulties with.
I can't say that I've had a great spiritual teacher like Eckhart or, I love Gary by the way.
I have you. Yeah, but what I do for you is what you want to do anyway, which is to really get into it and you want to really understand.
Yes. So what has taken you the longest to learn here?
Oh, patience. It's patience.
I don't think learned one I out of patience, but I am learning to look at it.
I am learning to be cognizant of the fact.
Are you happy? Is there a level of contentment, a sense of peace with you?
Oh yeah. Yeah. And that Derek Wall caught point where he talks about sit and feasting on your life.
Were you able to do that?
Not so much my life. I sit and feast on the now.
Oh, good. I really do that.
I really do that. And so that's why I'm so intertwined with nature and my animals and the thoughts of other people when I'm with them.
I'm really feasting on the now of who they're trying to be.
What an entertainment.
One of the things that you say in what if is you question whether the human race may have simply gone too far to clean up.
Are you optimistic about the future for your grandchildren?
It depends on them. I would say if they would take responsibility for honestly the investigation of who they are, yes.
The people who don't are in for the, I think, inevitable.
If you don't take responsibility for what you're doing, somebody else will.
Is that the first step in learning to step into a well-lived life, taking responsibility?
Probably, yeah. That's how you have the adventure.
What if you could live to 150?
You said you have a good 15 left.
What if you could live to be 150?
You mean what I choose to?
What would you want to? That's a good question.
It depends on what the human race collectively decides to do.
I think we're in that process.
The adventure of it all to me, and I have to answer it that way, is that that is a real unknown.
You have to be happy. You have to be willing to be compliant with not knowing.
Do you consider yourself a spiritual trailblazer?
Do you think we would be here, seriously, where we are as a culture, with so many books written about the soul, the proliferation of people talking about spirituality, about all the things yoga, meditation?
Do you think we would be here without you?
Oh, oh, Pro. That begs a huge question, which I've been thinking about rather seriously and intimately.
We are all one. I am everybody who's seeking, and everybody who's seeking is me, so I make no differentiation.
Imagine that. I mean, that means...
But do you consider yourself a trailblazer?
And are you proud of that role that you've played?
Are you proud of... That's a better question, as I'm thinking on the fly here.
Are you pleased with the role that you've played as a spiritual trailblazer for our culture?
I'm pleased with the fact that I saw a trail and I walked down it and didn't know what I was going to find.
I accept that. Thank you.
Okay, I'll take that. I'll take it.
I'll take that. That's great.
I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to SuperSoul Conversations, the podcast.
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