Peace or Drama?

Getting started on The Best Life program was fairly easy. "Get a grip on emotional eating, eat breakfast, have an eating cutoff time, drink plenty of water and abstain from alcohol." Check.

Next, I got warmed up to the idea of becoming more active, simply by moving more - which for me translated into doing an extra "lap" around the living room-dining room-kitchen circuit of the house each time I went for another cup of coffee during working hours. (I office at home.)

Ten weeks into the program, I'm officially in Phase 3 of Bob Greene's exercise plan - which involves a minimum of five days aerobic exercise (150-249.9 minutes) and two days of strength training
(6 exercises each day). But once I found out that building muscle turns you into a fat-burning incinerator, strength training became appealing enough that I now do three sessions a week. And the payoff has been a loss of nearly 25 inches!

One thing that has sort of caught me off guard is how losing weight can leave you feeling exposed, vulnerable. This journey eclipses a mathematical formula of burning more calories than you eat. The real transformation happens inside, where you peel back layer after layer of stuff - most of which is a mask for what's really been hiding underneath a cocoon of fat.

Sarah Ban Breathnach declares it takes tenacity and daring to travel to the darkest interior of one's self:

"Our dragons are our fears: our day stalkers, our night sweats. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failing. Fear of starting something new and not finishing. Again. Or the real rear, the one that sends shivers up our spines: the fear of succeeding, of becoming our authentic selves and facing the changes that will inevitably bring. We might not be happy with the way we are living now, but at least it's safely familiar."

If you're following Oprah's "A New Earth" webinar with Eckhart Tolle, you're familiar with the illusory identity of the ego.

"Can you feel that there is something in you that is at war, something that feels threatened and wants to survive at all cost, that needs drama in order to assert its identity as the victorious character within your theatrical production? Can you feel there is something in you that would rather be right than at peace?" (Insert the nagging negative voice in your head.)

Dear friends, we are doing far more than losing physical weight. We are losing the trappings of what was not really "us" at all. By taking up the swords of Love and Light on behalf of our true selves, we are revealing the "what-I-AM-is-wonderful" us. And that makes it all worth the effort.

Quotes from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
and A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle

Inspiration: Meet Dr. George Monta

"I think I've become sort of like an ancient teddy bear to a lot of folks," George told me on the phone last week, speaking of his busy counseling schedule. It's been a tough year since his wife of 64 years, Adaire, passed away last summer.

Dr. George Monta is the sort of mentor everybody wishes for. I met him at a conference in Little Rock, Ark., nearly 15 years ago. In 2006, he ordained me to Christian ministry. Ironically, the book he and Adaire gave me to commemorate that event is Eckhart Tolle's
"A New Earth," the subject of Oprah's current 10-week webinar.

Dr. Monta, 83, is uniquely spiritual, but almost entirely non-religious. His counsel, while simple, is profoundly thought-provoking. Here's one of his classics: “When WATER is written on paper, it has an intellectual meaning, but is not useful in and of itself. All written truth becomes real only when lived out by experience.”

For today's inspiration, I hope you'll enjoy "meeting" one of the most important voices in my life. (Please excuse the short, but rather awkward introduction, which probably should have been edited out. The doting female voice is not mine, by the way.)

[Click the green arrow below to begin. After that, you can use your cursor to slide the green bar to the right to :59, where George begins talking.]

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A New Earth - An Oprahtunity to Grow

When I was formally ordained to ministry in 2006, my mentor, Dr. George Monta, gave me Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.


This month, the book soared to new heights as Oprah's Book of the Month Club recommendation No. 61.

Beginning March 3, Winfrey and Tolle are teaming up to present a 10-week webinar to explore the tenets of the book.

"We will be studying A New Earth, but not as an academic subject or in order to acquire new theories or beliefs," says Tolle. "Our aim is to explore through the teachings of the book the most important question you can ask: What is the purpose of my life and how do I fulfill that purpose? It will be a course in self-exploration and awakening. It will help you see what the dysfunctional patterns are within yourself that create unnecessary conflict and suffering and prevent you from finding true fulfillment. Hopefully, it will also help you access a dimension within yourself that perhaps you didn't know existed or only caught glimpses of on rare occasions. Don't be trapped for the rest of your life within the narrow confines of your personal history and your conditioned personality and allow your life to be transformed from within, through the power of consciousness itself."

Want to join us?