"Be Still & Know that I am God" - Psalm 46:10

Wow! Chapter 9 started with a bang & certainly did not end with a whimper. Despite Eckhart appearing again a little under the weather (perhaps the unwanted side-effect of all the fame & attention), Chapter 9 was by any measure the finest program in the series.

With 52 seconds of silent meditation on an Old Testament Bible quotation from the Book of Psalms, Eckhart fires the opening salvo on the recurring theme that has developed in these programs -- integrating contemporary Christianity with direct spiritual experience.

The show has barely started & Eckhart is reminding his audience that many contemporary Christians do not associate silence with their faith & yet for contemplative Christians this has been their principal form of worship for 2 millennia. The silent meditation on Psalms 46:10 immediately followed to prove the point.

There can now be no doubt that Oprah & Eckhart are openly responding to e-mails, Skypers, & callers with the specific purpose of inviting them to integrate their Christianity with the Power of Now.

It's not so much that they took the gloves off with fundamentalists, it's more like they don't care. Both made it clear that A New Earth may not be the book for people who believe the earth is only 6,000 years old.

And even though fundamentalists have accused Oprah on her message boards of being a sinner and a Scientologist, she goes right ahead on the very same program talking about her visit to the Colorado mountain retreat of her friend Tom Cruise -- a vocal Scientologist.

And once again, Oprah responded to our question from Monday's blog about there being another series of webcasts when A New Earth completes next week, May 5th. She announced her new webcast, the Soul Series, premiering May 12, which we will also cover on this blog as well. How wonderful to ask this question on the Monday morning blog & get the exact answer you are looking for Monday night -- another living proof of what Eckhart taught tonight: "Things fall into line when you are in alignment."

The Pope, President Bush, Oprah, & Eckhart

The Pope just completed his visit to America, looking to the vitality of religion (& evangelical fundamentalism) as a sign of hope for Catholicism. With apathy rampant among the Catholic faithful in Europe, Pope Benedict was met with jubilation by tens of thousands of Americans.

At the same time our Oprah Eckhart YouTube videos continue to be inundated with apocryphal warnings from fundamentalists who warn of hell & damnation for those who listen to Eckhart's teachings & Oprah's exploration of them. Here are what some New Earth readers are saying on a message board thread called: "Why are Christian Fundamentalists dominating the message boards?":

"I am sure they are not reading the book because if they were, their arguments would be based on facts and not mythology."

"It is because of the ego trip that is religion. I used to wonder how intelligent, educated people could believe any of the religions. They use religion to feed their egos."

"To be quite candid and honest ... I think that there is growing evidence here that there is a collective pain body for this group of folk ... I would also point out that many are not even reading the book ... and the majority of these hold to the inerrancy of the Bible ... the pain bodies of this group are very active ..."

"You folks obviously understand how popular Oprah is. Many Christians are very hurt that she would host such an outlet for secular spirituality. Hundreds of thousands of people logging on to the internet on Monday nights to get whatever ya'll get out of it. That's why there is so much opposition."

So this is the world we find ourselves in. A place where the largest free webinar conducted by the most influential black woman about spiritual freedom & autonomy from all religion is simultaneously juxtaposed with a conservative new Pope. A Pope who is greeted at Andrews Air Force base by President Bush & then goes to Yankee Stadium denouncing abortion and rejecting "a false dichotomy between faith and political life," a reference to the Church's position that Catholic politicians cannot support abortion or gay marriage in the name of pluralism or democracy.

Perhaps the Pope needs to have, as Eckhart says, "the right relationship with present moment."

Know Thyself!

Last night's show, Chapter 7, was advertised as the program to understand who each of us really are. In the process of this discussion a lot happened during the webcast:

1. The opening moment of silence grew to an all time record of 54 seconds!

2. Oprah caught Eckhart's cold.

3. There were many interruptions in the feed to our Southern Arizona location. Interestingly, instead of completely stopping, the feed went from 450 kbs to 30 kbs. A very blurry Oprah & Eckhart could be seen while their voices degraded to a bad cell phone connection. Not good, but much better than the picture freezing with no sound that has happened in the past. Maybe they are trying to increase the number of viewers without increasing bandwidth.

4. The preponderance of young women as questioners has now grown to the overwhelming majority. So much for the mid-lifers - Oprah.com was not interested in their questions last night.

On the brighter side, Eckhart introduced a wonderful new interpretation of the Christian cross. He explained that the horizontal bar represents daily life and the vertical represents spiritual life. The spiritual vertical is the Timeless Now and the daily horizontal brings the stress that comes from "not being in the present moment."

So once again Eckhart indirectly hammers away at the negative connotations of Original Sin & the Crucifixion by saying "negativity is never a good way of dealing with a situation". You'll see all of this and more in this week's webcast.

Eckhart, are you Perfect?

This was Oprah’s final question to Eckhart at the conclusion of the 6th web cast. An interesting finale (as we reported on Tuesday) to a less than perfect program.

You’ll find Eckhart’s answer to Oprah’s question in the final Chapter 6 video segment below, but here are some striking things to look for. When Oprah asks Eckhart very direct, personal questions -- something she’s very good at -- 2 things happen:

1. Eckhart answers her in a very direct and sometimes non-politically correct way, evoking an atmosphere of openness, almost tenderness.

2. Oprah’s verbal responses & facial expressions soften as she appears to genuinely be touched by his reply.

To us this is repeated living proof that there is some kind of special connection between these two, & as we commented in the first post on this blog, we believe that Eckhart has personally touched Oprah in a way that compelled her to change the rules of her book club & select the Little Leprechaun over a more media savvy spiritual pundit like Deepak Chopra or Neal Donald Walsh.

Several times in this very interchange, Oprah is so amazed by Eckhart’s response she looks over at a camera person with a silent expression of “Can you believe he said that?”

Breaking Free or Breaking Down?

The 6th webcast was a surprise of disjointed callers & content. Perhaps a clue was the repeated jitters in the feed and drop-outs during the Skype phone-ins. Or maybe it was Oprah cutting off the moment of silence, backing off from her 50 seconds silence zenith last week to just over half a minute.

Eckhart seemed mostly over his cold but Oprah was back to riding shot gun like in the 1st program. What happened?

The subject matter for tonight's class was "Breaking Free of the Pain Body" & yet a caller from Dubai got into a meanlingless dialogue with Tolle about whether she should wait for her boyfriend to commit.

So even though it looks like the Oprah-Eckhart team kind of jumped the groove they had so powerfully settled into there still were some jewels in the media desert. Oprah kicked off the show with a beautiful reading from Eckhart's tiny tome Stillness Speaks.

Despite the thousands of e-mails of protesting Protestants, Eckhart gave a beautiful description of Jesus on the Cross symbolizing humanity's limitations & deep sufferings. He then contrasted that with just the cross symbol by itself symbolizing the Divine. He went on to say that being trapped in Ego = Evil and that another word for Satan is Ego.

Many viewers will agree, but I fear that the fundamentalists have been given even more cannon-fodder. And so are, for that matter, psychotherapists who are trying to give all of us a bigger, better, kinder & gentler ego.

Oprah-Eckhart is only for Midlifers? Well, "If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"

When Tom Ewell had his midlife crisis with Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch, he was 35 years old. That's because life-expectancy was much lower back then. Now mid-lifers are age 40 & up!

Those of us who are children of the 60's expected the Oprah-Eckhart predominant demographic to be 45 and older.

Instead, teenagers as young as 13 have called into the show along with a lot of folks in their 20's & 30's with careers & young kids. We were wondering if the Harpo Production team that preps and screens every call-in was skewing the numbers by cherry-picking younger callers to make it appear that this material appeals to a broader demographic.

Not so! In a thread on the Oprah message boards called "POLL; If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?" over 3,000 volunteered their age.

Only 2% are in their 70's -- even though retirement and grown children make them the perfect spiritual seeker candidate. Only 5% are in their 60's, the official Baby Boomers born after WWII. 31% are in their 50's -- the largest and most expected segment. Yet, 2% more of the Oprah-Eckhart students are in their 30's (26%) than are in their 40's (24%) with a shocking 11% studying the book while in their formative 20's.

For those of us who are now retiring from the job market & looking forward to more grandchildren, this is good news indeed for the prospects of the next generations!

You'll see this in all the segments, including the most recent, Chapter 5.