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WWW, Marquette, MI--Oprah and Eckhart’s free 10-week www course, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, wraps up this Monday. The course, featuring dialogue about awareness and life purpose, is being attended by millions of viewers. Together, how can Oprah and Eckhart go wrong? My experience included some resistance to Eckhart’s A New Earth book, starting on page 1, where Eckhart proclaims a flower has "no perceiving consciousness." A flower has "essence," according to Eckhart, but no awareness. Throughout Eckhart's book, human dominion somewhat overshadows the good messages of “acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.” My husband, TC, believes Eckhart delivered his book through human maleness "because it's the only way the Godly public will accept the awareness of acceptance.” Maybe so. |
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Eckhart’s major concept--that “awakened consciousness” is “arising now” (p. 309)--is an oxymoron. How can “awakened consciousness” be “arising" now? Awareness is…always has been…always will be. Eckhart claims: “On our planet, and perhaps simultaneously in many parts of our galaxy and beyond, consciousness is awakening from the dream of form” (page 293). It is “awakening,” he claims, “through awakened humans who have learned the meaning of awakened doing” (page 294). Eckhart describes Buddha as one of “humanity’s early awakened teachers” (page 14). Eckhart maybe missed Merlin Stone’s 1976 book, When God was a Woman, documenting widespread Goddess-awakened people back to 25,000 BC (pages 9-10). |
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Eckhart believes women share a "collective female pain-body...in part due to the ‘three to five million women…tortured and killed by the ‘Holy Inquisition,’ an institution founded by the Roman Catholic Church to suppress heresy’” (page 156). “But things are changing rapidly now,” Eckhart announces on page 157. “A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!” These are Eckhart’s final words of A New Earth. His “evidence” of “a new species arising” was presented in web cast Week 9, when he said he just “knows.” |
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Given my natural resistance to Eckhart's "human male" delivery, I accept Eckhart's book for the best of what I trust it is: a message encouraging humans to be aware of stillness—of space—within everything, and to seek stillness through acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. No particular religion or church required. In fact, no religion or church at all required. |
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The power of A New Earth global course is the togetherness of Oprah and Eckhart teaching within Oprah’s web-based platform. Oprah and Eckhart succeed in their grand aim of connecting humans worldwide for dialogue and contemplation about awareness, life purpose, spirituality, and religion. The authentic and ancient A New Earth message is always worth repeating: Universal awareness is within you and without you. Oprah and Eckhart are giving human beings worldwide a free platform to explore transcendence together. Are humans evolving into a new species? Maybe so. We discontinued our satellite TV and increased our Internet reception.
We're looking forward
to Monday night, Week 10! Together, how can Oprah and Eckhart
go wrong? |
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References: Stone, Merlin, When God Was a Woman (Harcourt Brace: 1976). Tolle, Eckhart, A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Plume: 2005). |
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Followup 5/6/08 - During Monday night's finale, Eckhart backed off from his "a new species is evolving" theory in the final moments of the web cast by saying, "it's almost as if" a new species is evolving. The good message last night remained the same as it has been throughout the course: Be here now. Oprah's global communications platform delivered a free leap forward for Internet students worldwide. The A New Earth www course flew by. We enjoyed the ride.
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