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

Spiraling

I've got to get some clarity on a few things. Monday I woke up at four a.m. worrying about my week ahead.  I had lunches and dinners with friends, a program on the bookstore to present to a civic organization, taxes and bills to pay at work, a workshop to get ready for, a women's group meeting, reading to do for a book club presentation.

I walked into the kitchen and started getting a little crazy talking about it all to my husband. I even got off on worrying about what is going to happen to all my stories that are waiting for revision: Is someone going to have to finish them after I die? I asked.  He's mostly calm and objective so he just listened. He didn't say, WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF? or tell me that I was making too much of it all.  His serenity was no match for my madness though.

At work, we met with our computer person and insurance person.  Both of them seemed stressed.  At dinner my friend was talking a mile a minute and that's not really like her.  All day I kept running into people on overload. I wondered if my stress was contagious.

I started thinking about ways I could eliminate the parts of my life that stress me out and increase the time spent on what I love -- writing mostly and getting groups of people together to learn things.

I know the things that take up too much time with not much payback.  I justify them in all sorts of ways but I'm realizing that the bottom line is they aren't making me happy.  As my friend said at dinner the other night, we're too old to be doing things that don't fill us up.

I'm doing the Deepak/Oprah 21-day meditation challenge.  Yesterday I meditated at the end of the day and realized that it helped some. Today I decided to put the meditation first in my day.  We were told that we innately know what is right for us.  I'm going to tap into that intuition for a few weeks and see what floats to the top. Not so deep down I know what those things are.

Standing Still

I'm not a regular meditator, but I've done it quite a bit. And I've blogged before about how holding my body still for a short period of time is helpful for me. I find now that I call on that stillness more often.

I'll walk into my work space, a thousand things on my mind--stories, cards, photographs, laundry, phone calls. I have music playing in that room all the time, and I'll stop and listen to a song. I'll feel the emotions that the song evokes--nostalgia, joy, longing, loneliness, contentment.

When I have something to write, a story or an essay, I pause for a few minutes and I find I write much clearer and quickly.

 In the middle of an argument, I stop talking and steady my thoughts.  Things don't escalate as often.

I'm a fidget by nature, a brain-racing multi-tasker,a cooker-upper of ideas and plans. This new ability, to pause my physical actions, rest and listen, to cool down on short notice, is a habit I'm glad to have developed.

Do you meditate? If so, how has it changed you?

Meditating on Opposites

My "Can I Do It" challenge this year was to commit to an exercise program. Using The Kaizen Way, I asked myself what I could do that I wouldn't resist.

I signed up for two yoga classes, one beginning and one more advanced, and a meditation class. This was a lot of commitment, but I have stuck with it. The beginning class starts my week off with gentle exercise, and the advanced class pushes me.

The meditation class, though, has been the one I love the most. We have learned many forms of meditation - guided, counting, breathing, walking, chanting. Most of them I was familiar with, but last night we tried something new for me.

We were to start out with a word that might have negative connotations for us and then think of its opposite. Breathe a few times on each of them. Sit with them. Then move on. Naturally, with all that has gone on with me lately, the first word that came to my mind was "death". So I then thought, "Life". Next because of my dad, my cancer, and my friend's cancer, I thought, "Sickness," and of course, "health" came to mind.

But the last one didn't go exactly as one would have thought. The word "sorrow" popped into my head. And as I breathed into the word, "gratitude" arose big and important. And for the rest of the meditation time, I breathed into the fullness of how gratitude could be the opposite of sorrow.

In practicing that form of meditation, I experienced a situation where my rational mind wasn't in control anymore. I felt peaceful at the end of the meditation, and again gave thanks for where I am with all that has happened in the last few months.

10-Minute Solution

I think it is appropriate that I am finally getting around to posting, and it's 10:10. Why is that significant you ask? Because I have decided that I will adopt a new way of self-care, ten minutes at a time. You know, sort of like the 10-Minute Solution that is in every magazine in the world in the month of January.

There are three things that I would like to regularly incorporate into my life: disciplined writing, regular exercise, and time for meditation.

You may remember a few weeks ago, I posted about writing in ten-minute intervals. Yesterday, I thought, Why not adopt the ten-minute interval for everything you want to do?

I've read and heard that exercise done three times a day for ten minutes is as good as one thirty minute session. And I know I can meditate for ten minutes without getting squirmy (I've actually done as many as forty minutes), so that should be manageable too.

Who can't spare ten minutes three or four times a day? I spend that much time checking Facebook, reading blogs and horoscopes, playing solitaire, daydreaming on and off all day. I figure too that once I start writing/walking/meditating for ten minutes, it'll be so enjoyable that I'll want to do it a little longer.

I'll keep you posted, but my plan is to start on New Years Day. And since I made that other change in my life four years ago, I won't be hungover. Nice feeling. Really.