Free Live Online Gathering with Eckhart Tolle: A New Earth Youth Initiative

Foreign welcome. Welcome to this special Eckhart Tolle foundation online event. I'm so glad that you're here with us. Thank you. My name is Tammy Simon. I'm the founder of Sounds True, and I have had the great joy and and honor of working with eckhart tolle since 2001. And I'm also on the board of the Eckhart Tolle foundation and have been on the board since its inception. And it's a great joy to be your host for this special online event. During this event, you'll be hearing more about the Eckhart Tolle Foundation. Perhaps for some of you, this is the first time you'll be learning more about the foundation's history and its activities. And we're also going to introduce you to a new Earth Youth Initiative, which is a new program that the Eckhart Tolle foundation is sponsoring. And it brings Eckhart's teachings and the experience of presence to young people who very well would otherwise not have access to these teachings and the experience of presence in Eckhart and Kim's presence. And you're going to be learning more about that. Also, as part of this online special event, we have two surprise videos. Not going to say much more about it except that these videos are from some celebrated visionary humans who are expressing their support of bringing Eckhart's teachings to young people. Most of all, I want to thank each and every one of you for being with us. There's a kind of ripple effect that comes from us connecting together in this way with a shared intent to bring presence to more and more people without financial barriers to access. So it is so wonderful to be with you and to have this experience together. Oh, and of course, as part of our time together, you're going to hear from Kim and Eckhart. Did I forget to say that? Yes, indeed. That's going to happen, too. And now I'd love to introduce you to someone who is the president of Eckhart Teachings and the co founder and board chair of the Eckhart Tolle Foundation. This is someone who's very special to me personally. I've known this person for more than two decades now and watched her grow into her role with such beauty and dignity and the power of a generous heart, Erin Jacobson. Erin.

Thank you, Tammy. And thank you all for joining us tonight. I just wanted to spend a few moments and tell you a little bit about how we started and some of the inspiration for the foundation. I've been working for Eckhart Teachings since It began in 1999. And our mission has always been the same same. And that's to share Eckart's teachings with as many people as possible. Of course, back in the early days, we did not have a big team. We basically did everything by hand. You know, there's almost. It was the early days of the Internet, and I can still remember like it was yesterday, folding paper flyers in the living room and packaging audio and video cassette tapes. Being in charge of duplicating the audio and video cassette tapes, I was the one taking all of the phone, fax, and snail mail orders, packaging them up, and walking several blocks to the post office every day. In fact, our very first covers were actually black and white photocopies that we made at Kinko's. As you can imagine, over the years, we have received a lot of feedback from people who have been impacted by the Power of Now and A New Earth. And some of the most impactful feedback that we've received have been letters from people in prison writing to Eckhart and expressing their gratitude, as well as telling their stories. And we have been so impacted by these letters, and Eckhart keeps every single one. And even though we were impacted, it still made us think about all the communities with very little access that. And we were wondering, like, how can we help them? And giving back has always been a part of Eckhart teachings. And we've been doing so by giving those that can't afford to pay event scholarships, access to online courses. We have a lot of teachings available for free on YouTube and other streaming platforms. And even though that we've been giving individuals help, we still wanted a way to be able to focus and give back to underserved communities. So in 2016, we launched the Eckhart Tolle foundation. And we chose to support incarcerated people, hospice patients, and the underserved youth. We've had a couple of large conferences where all the proceeds went to fund the foundation. We've been giving tens of thousands of books away to prisons, hospices, and the underserved youth. We've brought the youth to learn directly from Eckhart and Kim in person. And we've been donating, we've given grants to these communities. And we also recently partnered with Adobo and they are providing tablets and access to Eckhart and Kim's teachings to over 250,000 people. And we're also planning for Eckhart to speak in a couple prisons soon in person. Tonight, we're highlighting the underserved youth because they need mental, emotional and spiritual support and not only for their own personal well being, but because they represent humanity's future and this world needs more conscious and aware people. We are committed to helping these communities and help them relieve the suffering caused by the dysfunctional egoic mind so that more people can show up in their lives, present and aware and in touch with their essential nature. If you're inclined to be a part of this impact, we have three ways that you can help. Number one, by sharing our social media posts about our book donation programs and our grant programs with your networks. Number two, we of course graciously welcome any donations. And number three, and it truly is the most important, my personal favorite quote of Eckhart's has always been the world can only change from within and that does mean that you being here, connecting to presence, and continuing to practice living your life from presence is the most essential. I'd also like to thank all of you, our incredibly generous donors and our dedicated board of directors for their service, our staff and our volunteers, and of course our Executive director, Ali Weibel. All of you are making this work possible. Now it's time for our first surprise video expressing their support for the work that we've been doing by bringing Eckhart's teachings to young people. This person's team reached out to me several years ago in hopes of connecting with Eckhart and little did I know at the time what their vision was and where this connection would go. I'm amazed by this person's commitment to sharing Eckhart's teachings with his massive audience. I would say that he is making spiritual teachings cool in the eyes of young people. He's definitely opening a meaningful conversation and he's using his art and his platform to not only share his own learning and wisdom, but also Eckhart's teachings. Eckhart was featured in his most recent album throughout his whole album, Almost Mr. Morali and the Big Steppers. He is a multi platinum Grammy and Emmy award winning artist. He was the first non classical, non jazz musician to win a Pulitzer prize for his 2017 album Damn. Here he is. Mr. Kendrick Lamar.

I believe people can, they truly can use. Well, not people, young people. Young people need to hear Aircraft's words the most because today we live in society where it's so many things pushing and pulling. You know, whether it's a lifestyle, social media, brands, trends, so many things consume young people and you know, their decision making and to truly crack that code and have that balance, you know, everybody want nice things, right? But to have that balance is to Also go within. As I said before, I wish I would have read these books when I was 16. When I was 13, I'd probably be far more advanced in my personal life and my daily interpersonal dynamics, not only with people, but with myself. But I'm fortunate enough to come across it in my 30s. But for the kids that's out there listening 12, 13, 14, 15, and up, I truly recommend that you get into them because it'll open your mind up further than you can even imagine, further than the things that you want, further than the things that you think that you need. You explore a whole new journey of self worth, passion, purpose, creativity and stillness within yourself. It's worth it a hundred percent.

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Only on the professional level, because I know everyone has dreams and goals and aspirations, but on a personal level, it plays the same rules. And when you intertwine the works between the two things are happened for you.

Kendrick Lamar saying Young people need to hear Eckhart's words the most. What a terrific surprise video. Let's learn more about the New Earth Youth Initiative. And to share with us more about the details, we have a fellow board member of mine on the Eckhart Tolle foundation board. One of the best parts of participating on the board is the type of allyship and friendship and creative partnership that I can have with somebody like Elizabeth Lesser, co founder of Omega Institute, author of several bestselling books, including Broken How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Cassandra Speaks When Women Are the Human Story Changes. Elizabeth, over to you.

Okay, thank you. Hey everybody. What a pleasure to be with you. It's a cold, chilly night here in New York and, and I imagine you're all coming in from all over the world in the country. It's just great to feel everybody on the Zoom and YouTube and wherever you're joining us. So I'm here to introduce our next guest. But first I want to tell you briefly about the foundation's youth initiative. We're calling it the New Earth Youth Initiative. And it's really meaningful to me to, to be working on something about young people and kids because I've been in education my whole life. I started out as a kindergarten and elementary school teacher and then I made worked my way up to working with grownups in education when I co founded Omega Institute 47 years ago. And it dawned on me as I worked with kids years ago that grownups also need to keep learning, that it's actually imperative for adults to learn how to grow and change and expand our consciousness as as we age. And not Just getting facts. But the important things like how do I quiet my mind and open my heart and relate to the mysterious parts of myself, my soul, my consciousness. And throughout my 50 almost years at Omega, I've had the privilege of being in the presence of educators of the mind and the heart and the soul. People like Eckhart Tolle, although there's really no one like Eckhart Tolle. And I get to. I got to really experience him in his full eckhartness back in 2008 when I helped Oprah produce a webinar focusing on a New Earth. The book, the 10 chapters, I don't know. Many of you may be tuned into that. Millions and millions of people around the world tuned into that webinar. I remember the first night we did it. It was one of the first things like it in the world and the entire Chicago Internet down because so many people were trying to get on. And I learned during that that his work wasn't just for serious spiritual readers and seekers. That anyone trying to figure out this tricky thing called being human could access the depth and the scope and the magnificence of his work. And that made me think, well then kids could also. And young people don't just need to learn how to read and write and do math. They need education of their hearts and their minds and souls. The way Kendrick Lamar was saying, if only he had had that learning way back in his early teens, what a difference it would make. And that's why we're doing this. That's why we are raising money and spending the money we raise to do things like bringing his books to schools and school libraries, creating programs specifically for young people. Like the lectures Eckhart did a few years ago with NYU students and offering grants to like minded organizations working with youth. And I'd like to introduce you now to a leader from one of those organizations. And he happens to be a dear friend of mine. He has taught at Omega Institute for many years and his work inspires all of us at Omega and here at the foundation greatly. His name is Andres Gonzalez and he's one of the three co founders of the Holistic Life foundation and the co author of Let yout Life Shine, which is a powerful book that documents the way yoga and meditation have transformed and empowered thousands of historically underserved kids in Baltimore. For 20 years, Andres has shared wellness, healing and present moment practices in public school systems and beyond. Breathing life back into a community destroyed by drugs, poverty and systemic racism. And what I love so much about Andres is how he personally walks his message in the world. He has this message that love can heal any heart, including our own. And he is that kind of healer. And welcome, Andres.

Thank you so much. Elizabeth. It's so good to see you. It's been a while. I hope you're staying warm where you're at because it's chilly here in Baltimore as well. So before I get to just a few of the topics that I wanted to address, I really just want to give a shout out to the Eckhart Tolle foundation for all the amazing work they do. You know, the Holistic Life foundation has been going for 20 years and recently they've been supporting us not only financially in terms of giving us funds to help run our Holistic Roots program, which is a mentoring program. It's really helping these underserved kids in the city, but also they've donate books to us, countless amounts of books. I mean, books on top of books on top of books that we can give them to the youth, to the adults, to teenagers, to anyone that we run into in all of our programs. They're accessible and they're there to spread his message and his truths. And just amazing what they're doing. And this new initiative as well is incredible. And it's so needed. And I've seen it through the work I've been doing for over 20 years now all across the nation and across the world. And I wanted to start by talking about a metaphor and how important this work is. Our teacher, Uncle Will used to use this extended metaphor to describe how important breath work or meditation is for people in general, but I think in particular for our youth and the transformation that it can have on them when they start using these skills and techniques to learn how to self regulate. The way he would do it, he'd say, you know, our body's like a boat and the world is the ocean. And more oftentimes than not, our waters are calm, right? We can set our sails and go whatever direction we want to go. But if you think about it sometimes, and actually now I think about it most of the time, right, our waters aren't calm, Right. We're bombarded by external and internal stimuli. Externally, we have what's going on in the world. You, your family, you have your friends, your parents, your loved ones, significant others, you have co workers, bosses, you have society, social media, politics, right? We're so that's smacking us around externally, that's moving our boat around. We're trying to set our sails. It's getting tougher. And then internally the bombardment we have our fears, our doubt, stress, worry, anxiety, trauma that we faced, whether it's, you know, our personal trauma, secondary trauma, intergenerational trauma. So really those waters, this world is chaotic and we're bombarded by this all the time and it's pushing us around all over the place. So it's hard for us to set ourselves. And our teacher used to remind us how the breath or meditation, that that is our anchor that allows us to steal ourselves, which in turn will still our waters, which will allow us to set our sails and go in whatever direction we want to go and achieve whatever it is that we want to achieve. And I've seen firsthand the amazing transformation this has with kids. So we were based of Baltimore and we're in Northwest Baltimore, so where the Wire came out, like the hood of all hoods, right? And there's a young lady in elementary school we got with her. She was from the same projects that Freddie Gray was from. And for some reason people would bully this girl, right? She didn't have, you know, the cool clothes or the backpack. She was kind of, you know, had a little less material wise than anyone else did. So they, they picked on her, they made fun of her, they said stuff to her and we're always confused why. They chose her because her brother had showed her how to throw her hands a little, right, so he know how to box and he showed her. So I was always confused like why you keep picking on this girl, she's gonna beat you up. She's stronger than you.

She.