Todd Havens: April 2008 Archives

Welcome back to Week 9 of the Oprah Winfrey/Eckhart Tolle "A New Earth" web event. There's only one more class to go in the ten-week course, if you can believe it! Monday night's class, based on Chapter 9 "Your Inner Purpose," is now available for viewing at Oprah.com or here at Beliefnet.

Monday night's class proved to be quite relevant for me on several fronts as Oprah and Eckhart Tolle discussed finding one's inner purpose, a topic that seems to affect so many people these days. If I had a dime for every time a friend has told me that they don't know what they want to do with their life or asked me for advice on discovering the career that will truly make them happy, I'd be a venti latte richer by now, for sure!

Maybe it's because I live in Los Angeles where everyone dares to dream big but then, often, has to amend those plans when years of struggling have left them disillusioned and defeated. I'm not going to blame this over-reaching zeal on the entertainment industry, however, because this idea of finding one's purpose feels more like every American's inherent birthright.

So just what is our inner purpose? And what does it have to do with the notions of the white picket fence, 2.5 children, and a career that's both personally fulfilling and financially rewarding?

Wow! We're already at Week 8 of the Oprah Winfrey/Eckhart Tolle "A New Earth" web event. As usual, Monday night's class, based on Chapter 8 "The Discovery of Inner Space," is now available for viewing at Oprah.com or here at Beliefnet.

This is a great chapter and web class for getting all of us in touch with our own inner space, or inner spiritual dimensions, but what does that mean, exactly?

Inner space can also be called stillness or presence or peacefulness, but it's much vaster than any one word or the definitions of that word.

If you've ever been in a stressful situation (life-threatening, even) where you suddenly felt a calm and knowing wash over you and obliterate all fear and anxiety, that was a glimpse of what Eckhart Tolle calls "inner space." It is that dimension between each of our thoughts, beyond the high and low-tide wash of emotions, where a person's true power resides. It is the eternal part of our identity beyond any form or label and, although it sounds odd or perhaps dramatic to say, it's the very ground of Being.

And it's all right here. And always has been!

Welcome back to week 7 of the Oprah Winfrey/Eckhart Tolle "A New Earth" web event. Monday night's class, based on Chapter 7 "Finding Who You Truly Are," is now available for viewing at Oprah.com or here at Beliefnet.

This week's class really digs into the fundamentals of why people are responding to the book and its subject matter, I think. Basically, are you a curious person? Do you strive to know who you are, yet always feel that words, labels and well-defined roles don't quite suffice? Or are you confident in a self-definition?

If you think you know who you are, you're defining yourself by outside forms which are ever-changing. That may work for awhile, but by mooring your identity to external categories and concepts, you will eventually find yourself at a loss (unhappy, devoid of peace, etc.) when things "out there" inevitably shift around.

So who are we truly?

The Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Alabama holds 1500 of the country's most violent offenders. Inmates there have been convicted of murder in every degree among other senseless acts of extreme violence that will haunt the victims' (and the inmates') families for years. Donaldson houses it all.

Besides wondering myself whether such criminals can ever be rehabilitated, the fiscal conservative in me asks whether that's even the taxpayer's job to fund. My answer to either question probably depends on whether I'm in an Old Testament eye-for-an-eye mood or leaning more New Testament-y and willing to try and love my (incarcerated) neighbor as myself.

Enter "The Dhamma Brothers," a new documentary that hits select theaters this Friday, which takes a stab at that very question of whether people can ever really change their behavior. The film centers on a fascinating social experiment that took place at Donaldson in 2002 where inmates were given the chance to take a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat, replete with total silence, within the confines of the prison. Just what happens to this group of prisoners when their minds start screaming louder than their mouths ever could?

She's sassy and flirtatious, vivacious and mischievous. I'm not writing about Hollywood's next ingénue du jour, I'm actually referring to 92-year old Eileen Hall, one of the most captivating members of ‘"Young@Heart," a new film from Fox Searchlight about a New England senior citizens chorus of the same name that covers songs by everyone from James Brown and Prince to Sonic Youth and The Clash.

What I had initially feared would be a one-note joke, that of watching seventy-, eighty-, and ninety-something retirees struggling to learn and perform modern, mostly hip and kinetic, pop standards obviously beyond their generation's grasp, ended up being a wonderful testament to the human spirit. Whether we're talking one's lifelong relationship to religion, spirituality, or just being part of something bigger than one's self, the tell-it-like-it-is crooners of Young@Heart have much to teach us about faith, devotion and the importance of maintaining a strong sense of community.

This 24-person troupe (with its ever-changing roster) has apparently been entertaining audiences for the past 25 years and with this documentary's arrival in theaters, the Young@Heart members may reach mass audiences beyond their wildest dreams. I'd like to think that any resultant fame they achieve will single-handedly counterbalance the charges of ageism levied against Hollywood for, oh, let's say the last fifty years.

Here we are already at week six of the Oprah Winfrey/Eckhart Tolle "A New Earth" web event. Monday night's class, based on Chapter 6 "Breaking Free," is now available for viewing (at Oprah.com or here at Beliefnet). Something really struck...

Welcome back to the fifth week's commentary, the halfway mark, on the Oprah Winfrey/Eckhart Tolle 'A New Earth' Worldwide Web Event. Monday night's class, based on Chapter 5 "The Pain-Body," is now available for viewing (at Oprah.com or here at...