Letter to Oprah

Dear Oprah,

I have now participated in two of the 21-Day Meditation challenges that you and Deepak Chopra have put together. I loved them, felt at peace at the start of each day, and learned a lot about myself and my relationships with other people.  The mantra meditation is perfect for a person like me because inevitably, two or three minutes into the music, the mantra is in the background of my ever-churning little mind. Towards the end of this 21-day session, I managed a few times to keep the mantra in the foreground of my thoughts and the busyness in the background instead of vice-versa.

According to Deepak's webside, more than 600,000 people participated in March. Six hundred thousand people!  Wow!  And according to an organization that I helped found, One Percent, there's a theory that “…if one percent of a population of more than 10,000 people practiced meditation [or contemplative prayer] it would have an impact on the collective consciousness of a society."  

I would say with the kind of numbers you and Deepak have going on, something ought to be shifting during those twenty-one days. 

But I'm really bugged by something, Oprah.  At the end of the twenty-one days (give or take some days) the only way a person can access the meditation series is by paying for it. And it's pricey - $50 for the old ones and $40 for the recent one, "Miraculous Relationships."  And darnit, Oprah, I don't believe for one minute that you and Deepak need the money from these CDs  You can afford to give them out for free. 

If one-fourth of the 600,000+ people who participated buy those CDs, you and Deepak stand to gross $6,000,000.  Six million dollars!!

I looked all over the internet to see if the profits from those CDs are maybe being used for a good cause, but I couldn't find a single word to that effect.

So Oprah, here's my request:

If you're so all-fired up about changing the world through 21-day meditations, make them available to everyone for free forever OR give the profits to something that matters.  

I just don't think you need the money. Although your numbers may be down a bit.

Fearlessly speaking my truth with love,

Mamie Potter