Oprah & Deepak New 21-Day Meditation Starts March 16: Manifesting True Success

Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra are joining together for a new 21-Day Meditation Experience called “Manifesting True Success,” starting on March 16, 2015 — the 7th in the series. During the three-week journey, they will guide listeners with a new meditation each day focusing on moving from limiting beliefs to discovering within that successes can be infinite.

Participants can sign up FREE at www.chopracentermeditation.com.

“What I know for sure is that our manifestations in life are directly connected to the energy that you are putting out in the world,” said Oprah Winfrey. “All of us need a vision for our lives and as we work to achieve the vision in ‘Manifesting True Success,’ we use stillness and the defining principles of success to lift you up to your next best place.”

“Manifesting True Success,” offers an audio meditation each day and a series of thought-provoking reflection questions designed to anchor the teachings with a centering thought and mantra. Through a private, interactive journal feature, meditators are able to record and view their progress, giving them an invaluable picture of their personal growth and development. The meditations are easily accessible from a tablet, computer, or the new mobile companion app, available in iTunes or Google Play.

Here is what participants can expect out of Oprah and Deepak’s 21- Day Meditation Experience: Manifesting True Success:

Week One- Starting Within
In week one, the aim is to begin creating success from the inside out. Lessons include how to define your own success, align with your inspired path, make it an everyday reality, increase the feeling of love and creativity around your goal, and harness your emotions to work for you and open up infinite possibilities.

Week Two- Making Every Decision A Success
In week two, the focus is on making dynamic choices. Lessons include how to avoid static decisions, expand your comfort zone, measure your goals, record your progress, embrace your innate wisdom, identify what really matters the most, and pay attention to the gift of inspiration when it strikes.

Week Three- Putting It All Together
In week three, the intention is to establish order in our busy lives, move away from judgment and put all of these qualities together to manifest true success. Lessons include mastering how to map out your time, turn fear of unpredictability into a welcoming attitude, develop trust, fall into a non-judgmental state of self and others, and release defensiveness.

Super Soul Sunday: Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“Sufism is about love. It’s about the heart. It’s about this extraordinary secret of human beings that within our heart – not our physical heart but our spiritual heart – we have a direct connection to God. And we can experience that directly within the heart through love,” Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee told Oprah in a recent episode of Super Soul Sunday on the OWN Network.

Author of the book “Sufism: The Transformation of the Heart,” Vaughan-Lee sat down with Oprah in the garden of her home and explained Sufism is a belief in oneness and love. Not matter what religion a person may practice, Sufism can be a part of that, the author said.

“You can be a Christian, you can be a Buddhist, it doesn’t matter … what matters is how you live your relationship to God,” Vaughan-Lee told Oprah. “God is everything. This is one of the basic experiences not just of Sufism but the core of every mystical path is oneness. Everything is God. There is nothing other than God. We are all part of this great mysterious outpouring of love that we call creation. Everything in creation is an expression of this incredible love. If you go to the core of your being, into the very center of yourself, what do you find there? Either love or longing for love.”

In the book, Vaughan-Lee explains in Sufism there are three journeys – the journey from God, the journey to God and the journey in God. The first – the journey from God – is about forgetfulness because when we come into this physical world, we forget our Divine nature. But for many, there comes a time when something wakes them up, and they begin their journey to God, he said.

Reaching the journey in God is realizing there is nothing other than God. This can be an experience of oneness or even an experience of love, the author explained. “You live what God wants you to live without an eye that says what about me.”

Oprah pointed out that for many, the journey to spirituality can be painful, and often it is a tragedy or trauma that opens the door to the spiritual path. Vaughan-Lee believes this is because the heart needs to break open.

“Most people are so closed. They are so contracted, it’s all about me, me, me … one has to learn humility. You have to learn patience. You have to learn that it isn’t about you, and those are all painful lessons, and we don’t learn them so easily [as] human beings,” he told Oprah.

Both Oprah and Vaughan-Lee pointed out the world is in a state of longing, as are most people. Many look to material things or situations around them in order to fill this void, but what they are truly seeking is love.

“It’s a hunger for something that is real. All these things, all these material things, they don’t satisfy our soul. They may give us a moment of pleasure … they don’t nourish our soul,” Vaughan-Lee explained. “There is this longing and people sometimes mistake it for depression … we have lost the understanding of longing and so [people] project it. They want a new pair of shoes. They want a new boyfriend. They want something, and they do not realize it will not satisfy this hunger in the heart.”

The author also spoke about the ego, and what he called “crucifying the ego,” in order to know God. In Sufism, they talk about dying before death, and this is about the ego.

“For most people the ego is the king … [But] there is something else. There is this Divine part of you that you can be guided by, you can connect with, that can give you the help, the grace, the nourishment, the meaning that you need. It’s the soul that gives us meaning in life,” he explained.

Right now the world and our planet are in a moment of crisis, said Vaughan-Lee. We have forgotten that everything is sacred – every leaf, every tree and everything around us, he noted, explaining he would like people to remember the world belongs to God, not to us.

“Part of my practice, and the practice I try to teach people is in your prayers remember the world to God, feel it in your heart, the suffering world and offer it to God because God is the greatest power. God is the greatest healer. God is the only real truth. And then maybe out of this world of forgetfulness there can become remembrance, and then the world can respond and something can be born again.”

If you missed the episode with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee you can watch it at the Super Soul Sunday Web site.

Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday: Sarah Ban Breathnach

Every Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, Oprah Winfrey brings audiences a new inspirational interview on her OWN Network with the show Super Soul Sunday, and this Sunday she interviewed the  New York Times best-selling author of “Simple Abundance” Sarah Ban Breathnach.

Although she sold 7 million copies of the book worldwide, the author shares with Oprah how she found herself completely broke and on her sister’s doorstep with only one suitcase and her cat.

While she had appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show nine times, and Oprah credits her for being “the reason I write in my gratitude journal to this day,” 15 years after her success she lost it all. “It took moving everything to help her find herself,” Oprah said.

She shares her experience and the lessons she learned in her book “Peace and Plenty: Finding Your Path to Financial Serenity.”

“I think that I speak truth, and I speak it lovingly, and that I acknowledge my own mistakes,” Breathnach told Oprah about writing the book. “I’ve made every money mistake a woman could make personally and in business.”

Once a freelance writer living paycheck to paycheck, she wrote “Simple Abundance” about finding gratitude in every moment, and it spent more than two years on the NY Times best-seller list.

“What simple abundance did for me is to ritualize, to bring into my life on a daily basis the experience of practicing gratitude,” Oprah shared.

But one day, after 119 weeks on the NY Times list, the call that came every Wednesday to report she had made the list again … did not come.

Looking back, as wealth hit Breathnach, she realizes she was not prepared for it, and also admits she never thought it would all go away.  “I really thought it would continue because I was putting out the best that I could do. I did not slack,” she told Oprah.

She now says “wild spending,” including the purchase of Isaac Newton’s Chapel as a home for her to write, bad investments and a costly divorce contributed to her downfall.

When she wrote “Simple Abundance,” she explained she was only looking to change her own life, and had no idea she would touch the lives of so many women. She took the same approach with her book “Peace & Plenty.” Her goal was to save her own life. “It was written to be a healing to myself,” she said.

Breathnach also shared how her tumultuous and emotionally abusive marriage contributed to her downfall. “He told me I was no good with money… he was very forceful and he said his background was in money, but he wasn’t earning any money… I didn’t realize it. He said he was an independent businessman.”

She admits she started to believe the “angry, vicious” things he would say to her, and she “didn’t want to admit that I had made a disastrous mistake.” Once she finally asked him why he was being so cruel, he admitted the money was gone, and she realized that was the reason he was with her.

Finally, her daughter came over and surprised her for Christmas and told her she was worried about her. She said: “Mom he is sucking the life out of you. He is not making you happy” Breathnach explained. When she responded “I don’t know how to help myself,” her daughter said, “Mom, you’ve helped millions of women. I’ll help you help yourself.”

That is how she ended up on her sister’s doorstep. “I have really learned about surrender. I have really learned that lesson now,” she said to Oprah.

So what is her greatest spiritual lesson? “Guard your heart. Watch your treasures. For what is your treasure will be your heaven on earth,” she said.

Oprah ended the interview with a the Q & A segment transcribed below:

Oprah: What is the soul?
Breathnach: The soul is the spiritual essence of who we really are.

Oprah: What is your definition of God?
Breathnach: Everything.

Oprah: What is the difference between spirituality and religion?
Breathnach: Religion says there is only one way to heaven, spirituality says choose the one that brings you joy.

Oprah: What does prayer mean to you?
Breathnach: Prayer is simply a conversation with God. Prayer is the constant conversation with God. And it is the most passionate conversation I have with anybody?

Oprah: Where do you feel most at home or at peace with yourself?
Breathnach: With my animals.

Oprah: What do you think we happens when we die?
Breathnach: I hope I get to say “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow,” – for me that is the greatest gift (Steve Jobs) has given to me personally because I thought if Steve Jobs could say “oh wow” as he is going towards heaven, then wow.

To watch clips from the interview, visit the Super Soul Sunday Web site, and tune into OWN next Sunday for Oprah’s interview with DeVon Franklin.

VIDEO: Oprah Talks Transcendental Meditation

During a recent interview on The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah told Dr. Oz about her recent experience with learning Transcendental Meditation, and how she is “one thousand percent better” when she centers herself using the technique each day. She also shared it with her staff, who has seen improvements as well.

Watch the interview below:

Oprah Talks Transformation and Meditation with Dr. Oz

By now you may have heard that Oprah Winfrey is coming back to television. Her new show “Oprah’s Next Chapter” is premiering New Year’s Day on the OWN Network. Oprah recently sat down with Dr. Oz to talk about how she is working through the new changes in her life, and what others can learn from it.

So what does Oprah miss most about doing her show? “I miss the audience, I miss the people…what I miss the most is talking to people,” Oprah said, as reported by EmaxHealth.

Her new show takes her out of the studio and on the road, which will allow her to connect with people once again. “The most important thing for me was to be able to make the transformation to something really different, so I wanted to get out of ‘the chair,’” she said. “I think that for 25 years I’ve felt like, ‘I’m in the chair, I’m in the chair.’ And so, I’ve been out of the chair and out into the world just talking to people who I thought were interesting.”

Some of these include talking to George Lucas and Cuba Gooding Jr. about a movie that tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen; eating a meal with members of a Jewish Hasidic family who had never heard of Oprah before; fishing with Paula Deen at her home in Savannah, Georgia; discussing drug use with Steven Tyler in his home; and, fire-walking over hot coals with Tony Robbins. She also plans to visit India with Deepak Chopra and Haiti with Sean Penn.

“I believe that there are multiple ways of reaching people…and I believe that my calling—and everybody in here has a calling—has been since I was three years old and speaking in a church in Mississippi, was to be a sweet inspiration where I could. And to literally allow people to see for themselves how your life can be better—and I can do that through telling stories,” Oprah said on the Dr. Oz Show. “The purpose of the network is to create a space where people can come and get little pieces of light, little pieces of inspiration that will lift them up. I always wanted to have a platform where people could come in and see the best of themselves.”

“How do you know when you are ready for transformation?” Dr. Oz asked Oprah. She explained that we all go through patterns of change and growth and we reach a point where we have gone as far as we can emotionally and spiritually, and we need to move on toward another level to begin growing again. This is the point she reached with “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Dr. Oz also asked Oprah how she manages to stay true to herself and what she believes in when she has so many people with differing expectations of her.

“It’s about knowing steadfastly who you are and knowing what your vision is for your life and holding onto that… I have a vision for the future and I am steadfast in pursuing that until at some point I recognize that I should be pursuing something else,” she said. “You are not defined by what other people say about you. You are not defined even by what you do. But you are defined at this moment, by the hope and the light that you bring to this moment.”

Oprah also shared that she and her staff have begun meditating daily after visiting a town in Iowa where one third of the entire town is focused on transcendental meditation. “You cannot imagine what’s happened in my company,” as a result of meditation, Oprah explained. “People who used to have migraines—don’t. People are sleeping better. People have better relationships. The one thing I want to continue to do is to center myself every day and make that a practice for myself because I am 1000 percent better when I do that—when I take myself back to something bigger than myself.”