The Five Invitations
Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully
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The Five Invitations
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Narrated by:
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Frank Ostaseski
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By:
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Frank Ostaseski
About this listen
Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most.
Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart, and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. As a renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. In The Five Invitations, he distills the lessons gleaned over the course of his career, offering an evocative and stirring guide that points to a radical path to transformation.
The Five Invitations:
- Don't wait
- Welcome everything, push away nothing
- Bring your whole self to the experience
- Find a place of rest in the middle of things
- Cultivate "don't know mind"
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 165
You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Listen to a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides - a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable - but she also explores its intimacies and joys.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I thought I had more time...
- By Alyssa on 09-09-19
By: Sallie Tisdale
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A Year to Live
- By: Stephen Levine
- Narrated by: Stephen Levine
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 234
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 179
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Story4 out of 5 stars 172
If you only had a year to live, what would you do? In his work with the dying, author Stephen Levine observed the radical changes people can make in the face of death. Levine challenged himself to live an entire year as if it were his last - and in this revealing narrative he shares what he learned.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Thought provoking and useful
- By Shawn Wheeler on 03-15-03
By: Stephen Levine
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Die Wise
- A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul
- By: Stephen Jenkinson
- Narrated by: Stephen Jenkinson
- Length: 18 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 345
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 311
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Story5 out of 5 stars 313
Die Wise does not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to make dying easier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working with dying people and their families, Stephen Jenkinson places death at the center of the discussion and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful book!
- By Kate on 12-22-16
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The Art of Dying Well
- A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life
- By: Katy Butler
- Narrated by: Katy Butler
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 165
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 162
An inspiring, informative, and practical guide to navigating end-of-life issues, by a groundbreaking expert in the field and the New York Times best-selling author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door. Katy Butler argues that we have lost touch with the “art of dying” as practiced by our ancestors, yet we still hunger for rites of passage and a sense of the sacred, especially in the important life transitions of aging and dying.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Me too
- By Clif Green on 01-04-20
By: Katy Butler
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With the End in Mind
- Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial
- By: Kathryn Mannix
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Carling, Kathryn Mannix
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 192
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Story5 out of 5 stars 187
Modern medical technology is allowing us to live longer and fuller lives than ever before. But with changes in the way we understand medicine come changes in the way we understand death. Once a familiar and gentle process, death has come to be something from which we shy away, preferring to fight it desperately than to accept its inevitability. Palliative care has a long tradition in Britain, where Dr. Kathryn Mannix has practiced it for 30 years. In this book, she shares beautifully crafted stories from a lifetime of caring for the dying.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful book!
- By Randall Roth on 01-29-18
By: Kathryn Mannix
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Walking Each Other Home
- Conversations on Loving and Dying
- By: Mirabai Bush, Ram Dass
- Narrated by: Ram Dass, Mirabai Bush
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 454
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 386
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Story5 out of 5 stars 379
We all sit on the edge of a mystery. We have only known this life, so dying scares us - and we are all dying. But what if dying were perfectly safe? What if you could approach dying with curiosity and love? What if dying were the ultimate spiritual practice? Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying reunites lifelong friends Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush, who speak on the spiritual opportunities in the dying process. They share intimate personal experiences and timeless practices for every aspect of this journey.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow - the love comes through
- By Dan Lentine on 09-13-18
By: Mirabai Bush, and others
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The Wild Edge of Sorrow
- Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
- By: Francis Weller, Thomas Hübl, Michael Lerner - foreword
- Narrated by: Derek Botten
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 327
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 273
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 269
The Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world—and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive. Profoundly moving, beautifully written, this book is a balm for the soul and a necessary salve for moving together through difficult times. Grounded in ritual and connection, The Wild Edge of Sorrow welcomes each grief with care and attention, opening us to the feelings, experiences, and sacred knowledge that connect us to each other and ultimately make us whole.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Grief for Dummies
- By August on 08-14-17
By: Francis Weller, and others
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On Death and Dying
- What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Family
- By: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- Narrated by: Carol Bilger, cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 548
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 436
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 439
Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross created her classic seminal work, On Death and Dying, to offer us a new perspective on the terminally ill. It is not a psychoanalytic study, nor is it a "how-to" manual for managing death. Rather, it refocuses on the patient as a human being and a teacher, in the hope that we will learn from him or her about the final stages of life.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Terrible narration
- By Nassir on 06-25-05
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That Good Night
- Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour
- By: Sunita Puri
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani, Sunita Puri
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 231
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 207
As the American-born daughter of immigrants, Dr. Sunita Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents' experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality. Interweaving evocative stories of Puri's family and the patients she cares for, That Good Night is a stunning meditation on impermanence and the role of medicine in helping us to live and die well, arming listeners with information that will transform how we communicate with our doctors about what matters most to us.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Never needed 1.25x more... GREAT BOOK THOUGH!
- By Viejo Mzungu on 04-30-19
By: Sunita Puri
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Stages of the Journey
- By: Ram Dass, Frank Ostaseski, Joan Halifax
- Narrated by: Ram Dass, Frank Ostaseski, Joan Halifax
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
In this lecture from 1975 "Stages of a Journey", Ram Dass discusses our journey through plains of consciousness and degrees of fate towards simplicity and quietness - to a kind of joy that is beyond time - a journey where we leave behind all our models of who we are. It is a journey that involves the transformation of our beings such that our thinking mind becomes our servant rather than master.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Baby is crying
- By Awriter on 04-07-25
By: Ram Dass, and others
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Being with Dying
- Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death
- By: Joan Halifax, Ira Byock MD - foreword
- Narrated by: Claire Slemmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 165
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 163
The Buddhist approach to death can be of great benefit to people of all backgrounds - as has been demonstrated time and again in Joan Halifax's decades of work with the dying and their caregivers. Inspired by traditional Buddhist teachings, her work is a source of wisdom for all those who are charged with a dying person's care, facing their own death, or wishing to explore and contemplate the transformative power of the dying process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tender and honest perspective
- By D. Chin on 09-15-16
By: Joan Halifax, and others
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Notes on Grief
- A Memoir
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Length: 1 hr and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 316
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 273
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Story5 out of 5 stars 271
Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Grief is the price we pay for love
- By Finfin Krzanowski on 06-23-21
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Who Dies?
- An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying
- By: Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2
The first book that explains how to open to the immensity of living with death—and how participating fully in life is the perfect preparation for whatever may come next. In Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, the Levines provide calm compassion rather than the frightening melodrama of death. A meaningful insight how to participate fully in life as the perfect preparation for whatever may come next, be it sorrow or joy, loss or gain, death or a new wonderment at life.
By: Stephen Levine, and others
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No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
- By: Thích Nhất Hạnh
- Narrated by: Ken McLeod
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 324
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 279
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Story5 out of 5 stars 272
"Our biggest fear," says poet and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, "is that we will become nothing when we die. If we think that we cease to exist when we die, we have not looked very deeply at ourselves." It is possible to live every day without being afraid of what happens when we die. Through a close examination of who we are, how we exist, and how we live, we can conquer our fear to live a freer and happier life. Through stories and lucid teachings, Thich Naht Hanh brings peace of mind to a difficult subject, and shows is how to live a happier life, free of fear.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A true blessing
- By Eric on 03-21-19
By: Thích Nhất Hạnh
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Staring at the Sun
- Overcoming the Terror of Death
- By: Irvin D. Yalom
- Narrated by: Gregory Gorton
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 708
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 596
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 587
At 74, Yalom has penned a book that is the climax of his lifework, focusing on the universal human issues of mortality and death. He suggests that what he calls the "awakening experience" can help us acknowledge, accept, and utilize our fear of death in a very positive manner. Such an awakening experience can be as simple as a dream, or quick as a sudden insight. It is often a loss, a trauma, or just plain aging that can prompt an awakening experience that is a turning point for a more meaningful life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Positive & Life Affirming
- By Sara on 02-25-15
By: Irvin D. Yalom
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The Bright Hour
- A Memoir of Living and Dying
- By: Nina Riggs
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 633
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 561
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 556
An exquisite memoir about how to live - and love - every day with "death in the room", from poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the tradition of When Breath Becomes Air.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awe inspiring legacy of A Brave Young Woman.
- By Julia on 06-18-17
By: Nina Riggs
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How We Live Is How We Die
- By: Pema Chödrön
- Narrated by: Olivia Darnley
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 276
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 232
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Story5 out of 5 stars 232
As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear what the beginning holds. In How We Live Is How We Die, Pema Chödrön shares her wisdom for working with this flow of life—learning to live with ease, joy, and compassion through uncertainty, embracing new beginnings, and ultimately preparing for death with curiosity and openness rather than fear.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Dealing with disappointment!
- By Sabine Blanchard on 10-19-22
By: Pema Chödrön
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Preparing to Die
- Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition
- By: Andrew Holecek, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche - foreword
- Narrated by: Karen White, Neil Shah
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good book, badly read.
- By kahali on 11-13-15
By: Andrew Holecek, and others
What listeners say about The Five Invitations
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Damon
- 05-25-21
Life-changing
Ostaseski identifies the essential qualities of a fulfilling life by embracing the dark along with the light. His approach is both refreshing and insightful. This book changed how I feel about death and what is important in life. Living fully aware, sober, appreciating the little things, in the present moment, loving without restraint, forgiving both inwardly and outwardly, having the courage to experience the full brunt of our fears, and to find a place of rest in the middle of it all in quiet thankfulness.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 04-16-20
Incredibly moving and insightful
This is quite possibly the wisest, most beautiful book I have ever read/listened to. The author’s voice is truly peace itself. Highly recommended !
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- DAVID F. RYAN
- 10-06-18
powerful!
life changing. read this book! and give it to a friend too. I loved it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Randell Smith
- 08-12-17
beautiful, and life changing.
I was a house orderly in a large city hospital, and his stories really moved me,and having just lost my mother,I was comforted by his loving stories.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- William H Fiege
- 05-25-22
Insightful
Thanks for all the views on transcending. A nicely woven tapestry of recollections, quotes, final thoughts , and insights
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- werner brandt
- 10-05-22
Exploration into the Unkown
A must read for anyone exploring the journey as they approach aging, illness and death. A lesson on living fully. A caregiver’s handbook.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- N
- 02-22-23
Such an impactful book!!!
I loved this book and would definitely recommend this book! It has been one of the most impactful books I’ve ever heard. I loved it so much I cannot wait to get a physical copy of this book! After having listened to this book I feel I’ve learned to live a more fulfilling life, to embrace change and not live in the fear of it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Joy Letsinger
- 02-13-23
Wisdom filled
This is the most beautiful, wisdom filled book. I have ever read in my 76 years on this earth.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Brian Pidgeon
- 12-28-24
Learning from dying
Loved content and the performance - probably the most soothing voice ever. Each chapter has relevance.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Andrei Gavrila
- 02-09-20
I'm so glad I got this audiobook and not the book
First, I think this book got into my top 5 favorites of all time. It was a fantastic journey to listen to this. I felt I got connected with Frank and with the stories he shares, with some of the emotions they had, with my emotions.
I highly recommend it.
Also if you want to live this experience the second time differently - I recommend you listen to this book on 1.5x-1.6x. Frank's voice gets filled with even more compassion, a familiar sad-calm-optimism,
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9 people found this helpful