Sunday, January 18, 2009

Inauguration "We Are One" Concert Mysteries Revealed: Don't Forget the Lyrics

When watching the Inauguration Concert today, Josh Grobin was singing, "America" with... who did he sing with? Anyway, as verse two started, I realized that I only knew one verse. Sad to admit.

Did you know there were FOUR verses to the patriotic standard? Me neither. So here they all are:

"AMERICA" VERSE ONE

My country 'tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
Land where our fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride;
rom every mountainside, let freedom ring.

"AMERICA" VERSE TWO

My native country, thee,
land of the noble free, thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills;
my heart with rapture thrills, like that above.

"AMERICA" VERSE THREE

Let music swell the breeze,
and ring from all the trees sweet freedom's song;
let mortal tongues awake;
let all that breathe partake;
let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.

"AMERICA" VERSE FOUR

Our fathers' God, to thee,
author of liberty, to thee we sing;
long may our land be bright
with freedom's holy light;
protect us by thy might, great God, our King.

So now you know... Sing along. FREE rebroadcast of the Inaugural "We Are One" concert tonight at 7:00 PM EST and 11:30 PM EST. It was awe-inspiring, flawless, moving, and meaningful. Catch it!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Real-Time Transcript of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Bio-identical Hormones with Christiane Northrup and Robin McGraw

Read real time transcript of The Oprah Winfrey Show for Thursday, January 15th. The topic was bio-identical hormones, hormone therapy, with guests Robin McGraw (Dr. Phil's wife) and Dr. Christiane Northrup. Guest appearance by Dr. Oz too! Real-time transcript is on Twitter...

https://twitter.com/oprahtoday

Today on the Oprah Winfrey Show: Bioidentical Hormones, Hormone Therapy, Menopause, Dr. Christiane Northrup, and Robin McGraw

Today on Oprah...

On The Oprah Winfrey Show Today: Menopause and the Hormone Replacement Debate

Today on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah talks to women about menopause and the hormone replacement therapy that did or didn't work for them.

The average age of menopause is 51, which means there are more than 10 million women in the U.S. that are probably experiencing menopause symptoms right now. Hormone replacement therapy seeks to ease the symptoms of menopause. Some say it works. Others say it's dangerous.

I wonder if bioidentical hormone therapy is going to be discussed. My understanding is that bioidentical very different from synthetic hormone therapy, which makes the difference between whether it has harmful side effects or not.

We'll see when the show airs today...

Tune into Twitter for a real-time transcript of today's show at 4:00 EST... http://twitter.com/oprahtoday

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Quotable Quotations from The Oprah Winfrey Show January 14, 2009: Michael Beckwith, Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, Rev. Ed Baker and show guests

Here are some quotable quotes from The Oprah Winfrey Show January 14, 2009. The show was focused on spirituality, and how to transcend adversity and find the spiritual gift on the other side of it. These quotes are from some of Oprah's favorite spiritual teachers:

"Life is always and only here and now. So to be spiritual is to live in that state of openness to what is." - Eckhart Tolle

"Become aware of the aliveness of this moment, no matter where you are. A dimension opens up that is deeper than thinking. Out of that comes creativity, joy... Increasingly you become rooted in the aliveness and the fullness of the now moment." - Eckhart Tolle

"Spirituality is where you lay claim to a ground of being within yourself." - Marianne Williamson

"We think that we're not happy because of what we're not getting. We're really not happy because of what we're not giving." - Marianne Williamson

"Spirituality has to be practiced... where we stop, take a breath, and become still inside." - Rev. Ed Bacon

"Everyone is spiritual whether they know it or not. Begin to notice what you have to be grateful for." - Rev. Michael Beckwith

"You become a more open vehicle coming from the spiritual part of your being." - Rev. Michael Beckwith

Here are the quotations from the "real life" guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show today. Glen and Connie's son was killed in a motorcycle accident just before his 21st birthday. Nine years later they see that the experience broke them down, but also broke them open to a new way of living, centered in spirituality.

"Was I a failure? It stopped me dead in my tracks. It broke me open. I had to sit and think about what was important." - Glen

"You never get over it. It's always there." - Glen

"The way you see things is changed forever." - Glen

[ABOUT GRIEF] "We must do it well because we are the only role models that our children have." - Glen

"It's a process and a journey, and you need to be gentle," - Glen

"We took the time we needed to grieve and then we took a leap of faith," - Connie

"Hospice is about the living. It's about helping the people left behind." - Connie

The twin brother of the young man who died in the accident compared his grief to a picture on the wall that got thrown on the ground and it smashed into 1,000 different pieces. No matter how long you look at it, there's no way to put it back together. For a time he kept looking at the broken pieces. But eventually he decided to make a new picture instead of looking at the broken picture of the old picture that will never be.

Quotable Quotations from Oprah Winfrey on the Oprah Winfrey Show today, January 14, 2009

Here are some quotable quotes from Oprah Winfrey from the Oprah Winfrey Show today... Oprah is never more passionate than when she is talking about spiritual topics on her show. You can tell she feels a real calling to inspire people, and with her words she does it so well!

"Spirituality is that yearning for something more... a seeking for something higher than your mind and body."

"Spirituality is the grounded awakening you can have in your life."

"You are a spiritual being having a human experience."

"Let's take all the pain from 2008 and CRACK it open so that we can live our best life in 2009."

"When you have the most devastating things happen to you, those are your holiest moments."

"If you don't have a minute [for meditation], then you're not on the path."

"I would say it's paying attention to life because your life is speaking to you all the time. We are powerful energy fields and each of us is drawing things to us. Pay attention."

"For me spirituality is the essence of everything. I'm hoping that today's show will open up greater possibilities for you and your spiritual path this year."

Quotable Quotations from Elizabeth Lesser on The Oprah Winfrey Show Today

Here are some quotable quotations that were from Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of Omega Institute and author of "Broken Open" today on the Oprah Winfrey Show:

"Spirituality is an instinct... It's inside every person. That's why religions were formed - to respond to that instinct."

"If you don't take the time to grieve and feel what happens, you just put a scar over it and it turns into something else like bitterness, anger, or blame."

"Grief is evidence that you loved well."

Here are some excerts from Elizabeth Lesser's book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow:

"Everything can change in a moment; we have little control over the outer weather patterns as we make our way through the landscape of a life. But we can become masters of the inner landscape. We can use what happens on the outside to change the way we function on the inside."

"The practices I use most often to stay on track during a Phoenix Process are meditation, psychotherapy, and prayer. These tools continually encourage me to keep my heart open and my mind awake when I would prefer to shut down or go back to sleep. "

"Meditation is a matter of slow and steady experience. It is not a cure. It is not a set of moral values. It is not a religion. It is a way—a way to be fully present, a way to be genuinely who we are, a way to look deeply at the nature of things, a way to rediscover the peace we already possess. It does not aim to get rid of anything bad, or to create anything good. It is an attitude of openness."

"Close your eyes, feel your body, observe your thoughts, experience your breathing. If your body aches, be with it. If you are tired and cranky, be with that. Don't layer flowers on top of a bad mood. Don't use a peaceful pool as a Band-Aid over your anxiety. Be right where you are and who you are. Why? Because if you can do that, then when you are really by a pool, gazing at a beautiful flower, you will be fully present. You won't be worrying about what is going on at home or wondering if there is a nicer pool somewhere else. And when you are with a person you love, you will really be with him—you will be less distracted, less judgmental. When you are at work, you will show up for those around you; you will bring the gifts of attention and equanimity. And when you are confused or unhappy or sick, you will stop fighting your feelings and just rest with them for a while. You will then know what you feel when you are feeling it, what you think when you are thinking it. You will know the peace of being present to whatever is happening."

"There is no right or wrong way to pray, and no one tradition that is favored in the heart of the Great Spirit. "

"The minute an authority figure claims to be perfect, I say run fast in the other direction. That is something I have clearly learned from my close association with religious leaders, spiritual teachers, and healers of all sorts. Power corrupts, whether you are in politics, a healing profession, or a religious organization. It just does. I have seen it so many times that I have made my peace with that fact. It is a law of nature, like gravity. Drop a rock from a tower, and it falls to the ground. Give someone a lo approach other adversities with a different attitude. Change and loss may still knock us off the horse, but soon we are back in the saddle, stronger and wiser than ever. As life progresses, and we continue to transform and refine our consciousness, we gain more insight and humility, greater strength of character, and deeper faith in the meaningfulness of life."

"When we have been through a trial and survived it—or better still, transformed its terrors into revelations—then we begin to approach other adversities with a different attitude. Change and loss may still knock us off the horse, but soon we are back in the saddle, stronger and wiser than ever. As life progresses, and we continue to transform and refine our consciousness, we gain more insight and humility, greater strength of character, and deeper faith in the meaningfulness of life."

More from Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Elizabeth Lesser on Oprah & the Omega Institute She Co-founded

Elizabeth Lesser has become part of Oprah Winfrey's "team" of experts, with a prominent seat on Oprah's couch today and a starring role in Oprah's worldwide webcast on Spirituality tonight.

Elizabeth co-founded the Omega Institute in 1977 with Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D. Omega is a non-profit organization with a mission "to awaken the best in the human spirit." Both onsite at its Rhineback, NY campus and offsite at wellness conferences, Omega presents programs in holistic studies that are attended by more than 20,000 people each year.

It's Elizabeth's own personal spiritual journey that led her to write the book that's featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show today, "Breaking Open." After she got divorced, she experienced a "death" of sorts, losing her identity, her financial security, and her sense of what it mean to live a "good" life.

This was a strangely poignant show for me because of supernatural connection between the topic and the guest and my own personal life. Less than a year ago, my sister passed away and I found myself delivering her eulogy on her 50th birthday. My sister was easily the most important person on planet earth to me, and the only person I knew for certain accepted me completely and never wanted me to be anything other than what I was. When she passed away - quickly and unexpectedly - the loss was devastatingly incomprehensible.

The past nine months has been a process of reidentification for me. Instantly my life didn't make sense to me any more and the things that I thought were important instantaneously were not. Somehow I lost my sense of identity. Even though we didn't live in the same place and we didn't interact on a daily basis, I didn't know who I was without her. I'm not sure that I've completely found my new identity, but I do feel like I have emerged from the dark night of the soul with a depth of spiritual understanding that only comes having been drop-kicked into a new reality.

One of the things that my sister and I did together was to attend Omega workshops and conferences. She was truly my "soul sister" and we went to the workshops together because everybody else in our conservative Catholic family thought we were a little bit wacky. But I do remember those times we spent together enjoying the superior Omega programs. And I am extremely grateful to Elizabeth and her entire organization for making those experiences available to us.

My sister and I also loved Oprah and attended Oprah events more than once together as well. I was aware of her presence today, and I know her spirit was smiling at the "full circle" moment we got to share again because of Elizabeth and Omega.

Special!

Real-Time Transcript of The Oprah Winfrey Show with Elizabeth Lesser, January 14, 2009

Read real time transcript of Oprah and her guest, author Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute in New York on Twitter...

https://twitter.com/oprahtoday

On The Oprah Winfrey Show Today: Oprah Brings Spirituality to TV with Elizabeth Lesser, Co-founder of Omega Institute and Author of "Breaking Open"

Oprah features Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder and senior adviser of Omega Institute, and author of the book, "Breaking Open."



Today's show focuses on how to transcend the broken moments and use them as opportunities to "break open" to a new spiritual awakening.



Elizabeth is also being featured on Oprah's Spirituality webcast tonight, which you can participate in for free at 9:00 EST.



Oprah has been criticized in the past for bringing spirituality onto her talk show. The criticism seems to come mostly from conservative Christians who have a view of spirituality that is more narrow and non-inclusive.



I think it's much to Oprah's credit that she ignores the criticism and follows her heart.



Her show is part of her mission on planet earth, and to deny the impulse that she feels to raise the consciousness of the planet would be to deny her very essence. The reason Oprah has been loved and admired for all these years is because she inspires us. Those who can't honor and respect what inspires her should just turn the channel and tune back in for a celebrity interview.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Quotable Quotes from The Oprah Winfrey Show Today from Kate Winslet

Here are some quotable quotes from guest Kate Winslet on the The Oprah Winfry Show today:

"It was an out of body experience" (to win the second Golden Globe).

"Revolutionary Road took me to places I've never been before."

"The anticipation of a scene like that is often far worse than the reality," Kate said about her nude scene in The Reader.

"For me, and for most of us, he is a leading actor of his generation. Everything he does is flawless." Kate said about Leonardo DiCaprio.

Real-Time Transcript of The Oprah Winfrey Show January 13, 2009

See real time transcript of Oprah and her guests Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mickey Rourke, Meryl Streep and Ron Howard on Twitter...

https://twitter.com/oprahtoday

Power Couple Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio is on the Oprah Show today. Did you know that Oprah and Leonardo DiCaprio were a Power Couple in 1999? That's the year that they were both in the Top Ten on the Forbes Celebrity "Power List" in 1999. How old was Leo then? 12?

Actually Leonardo was 25 at the time. How he got to be so "powerful" at such a young age is another unexplainable phenomenon of Hollywood.

In 2008 Oprah was #1 on the Forbes power list (duh) but Leo has fallen to #44. I wonder how Leo feels being less powerful than 16 year-old Miley Cyrus...

On The Oprah Show Today: Leonardo Di Caprio, Kate Winslet, Ron Howard, Meryl Streep, Mickey Rourke, and Oprah's Favorite Movies

On the Oprah Show Today... Leonardo Di Caprio, Kate Winslet, Ron Howard, Meryl Streep, Mickey Rourke, and Oprah's Favorite Movies.

America loves Oprah's Favorite Things... do we also love Oprah's Favorite Movies?