Last Monday, I had trouble viewing the online class about "A New Earth" with author Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey due to technical difficulties. Like many who experienced the same, I was relieved to know that the class would be available for viewing the next day and for downloading. Feeling like a college student again, trying to catch up on the week's homework over a weekend, I found time today to go back and listen to the online class . I have to admit that on Monday night, I was wondering how beneficial for me the class would be: not because of the content, but because of the format. As an educator, the pedagogy of delivery didn't seem too appealing as I like to interact with my audiences as much as possible. (In all fairness to Oprah, it is difficult to interact with 700,000 people!) Much to my delight, I found the first class to be more than I had ever imagined it could be and ended up taking 8 pages of notes, and filled with an inspiration to write about it!

There were so many quotes and discussions from the first class that resonated with me. Rather than go into great detail here, I decided to share 5 moments from the class that really moved me.

1. Tolle says that we should ask "What does life want from me?" I prefer to ask "How may I serve?" but it's the same idea and I totally can relate to it.

2. "Practice inviting moments of stillness into your life." This is the key to awareness. It begins with small steps. While Oprah advocates the easiest way to accomplish this is by spending time with nature, the road to finding the stillness for me began by a series of traumatic events and changes in my life (which Tolle agrees sometimes happens to people). I had to reach one of my lowest points in order to turn to the power of prayer. The study of the power of prayer led me to meditation, which has since led me to rediscovering the beauty of nature that I once so highly valued as a child. As a child, I always appreciated nature and felt one within it. Now I am finding that my meditative practices have led me to many moments everyday where I am with nature. I live in New York City and I find everyday that I am in awe of the nature around me.

3. I LOVE the idea of "Be there as a witness." I find myself in what is becoming a consistent state of observation, so yes, I am a witness to it all! What a creative way of expressing being present, in the now! The idea of being a witness is one I will write about later.

4. Tolle says that "becoming still doesn't mean you go to sleep; it means you're more alert than when you were thinking." This to me was a brilliant way of clarifying that one! If you are not spending time being still, you may not understand the profound nature of how much more alert you become being still than when you were thinking. The only way to really know it is to start practicing it. Then you will know what he means.

5. I was really impressed Tolle's explanation of his ego dying at the moment he was about to take his own life. In explaining that his thought processes had created his own suffering and therefore, the ego was "the me: the unhappy story," he had an AHA moment when he went behind that and woke up and asked, "Who is that self that I cannot live without?" At the risk of sounding inarticulate, all I can say is WOW. This was my jaw-dropping moment from the first online class!