The Beautiful Answer

Love Bunch

When you’re approaching a deadline of any kind, time seems to contract somehow, becoming telescoped and ever emphasized. I have a client who’s waiting for her first child to be born, and she tells me that every day seems like it’s twice as long, so fierce is her desire to see her baby’s face for the first time, and hold the little one in her arms. I have another client that’s waiting to hear back on what could become the defining moment of his life — an audition for a big part on Broadway. Either way, these are big deal moments. 

I, of course, have my own version of this coming up on Tuesday. I’ve been guided to step back from work a bit, to prepare myself for this moment but also so I can have the time and emotional space to enjoy it. For myself and clients alike, I’ve noticed the tendency to rush past these moments, thinking them not important enough to celebrate since they’re not “there” — wherever “there” might be. 

This one I fully intend to celebrate, with champagne and cupcakes. I’ve got some great joint venture partners offering free meditations, e-books and discounts of all kinds, so there’s plenty of incentive to buy the book on April 24th. The value of the incentives far outpaces the price of a paperback.

I’m just happy to have made it to this milestone in my life, and to extend the bunches of love I feel for everyone around me now. This shit is truly infectious when you work it. 

Confessions of a Buddhist Psychic

I’ve always known I was a little “different.”

A vivid imagination and near photographic memory of my textbooks saved on hours of study, making it easier to pass tests in school. Finding creative excuses for why I’d done this, or failed to do that, were as simple as tuning in to the wildest impulses of my mind.

Spiritually, my explorations were all over the place as I was led by curiosity to the study of Buddhism. I was trained in Mahayana, sitting in traditional Tibetan style shamatha vippasana meditation for a minimum of 20 minutes per day, then 30 or more. Dozens of lectures, sutras, teachings and chants later, I was a Buddhist, trying not to cling to the idea of being anything at all.

But when I found myself jobless in Los Angeles, I landed a job as a phone psychic, using my scant knowledge of tarot cards to gain the position. Far from being a haven for out-of-work actors or charlatans drunk on woo-woo juice, I found myself surrounded by gifted intuitives, each with his or her own area of specialty.

I soaked it up like a sponge.

Read the rest here, on Elephant Journal. 

Interview Season

First interview for the book is officially here — well, tomorrow, that is. I’ll be speaking with Shelley Overton who has a great online radio show called AstroEnergy. We’ll be talking about Searching for Sassy, astrology (I’m sure) and some other spiritual topics.

If you’re interested in taking part, or calling in with a question, the link to the show is here. Depending on where you are, you’ll have to adjust for your time zone to hear the show live. Or, I’m sure it’ll be archived after tomorrow. 

My thoughts on interview season, as I’ve already come to call it? Upbeat, ready to get in there and talk about the book and things that are important to me in the spiritual realm. It’s a strange, funny, moving story, and hopefully people will find something to connect to in the narrative. If nothing else, it celebrates the differences we all carry, and flies the freak flag high for those of us with unconventional paths. 

See you on the interwebs! 

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I think it was Tom Petty who drawled about how difficult it was to sit around the wait for things to unfold, to allow the natural course of events to take shape. I, like many people, would prefer to shape my own life, and sometimes I’m not that good at waiting, even after 15 years of steady meditation practice.  

I got my final proofs of my book cover, which I’m pretty sure I’m gonna go with: 

Not bad. Not bad at all, and that’s part of it. I’m excited for my new book to come out. Though it’s largely a story of my own life, with a few other things thrown in for good measure, I actually feel like other people might enjoy it or even be able to benefit from the struggle with being different, trying to fit and finally embracing your difference as something inescapable and even positive. But I have to wait until April 24th for it to come out, so I have to get used to that. Sigh. No use wishing time away. 

I also have something pretty important happening tomorrow, something pretty big for the book itself, and for me as its writer. I’ll write more about how it goes tomorrow, but for now, the waiting really is the hardest part. 

You know how your mind just starts to do the weirdest things, creating all kinds of positive scenarios, reaching into the future to see what will happen, and then reaching back into the past to see if you can really trust what might happen? And never staying around much in the present moment? I suppose I should be used to this after watching my mind for 15 years. But maybe you never get used to what it does when you’re lot looking. 

To reframe my need to wait, yet my desire to do nothing of the sort, I did some yoga. OK, part of that was fitness-based, but I wanted to see if it also had a bit of a patience boosting effect. It did, a little. Then, a few hours later, I still had some energy, so I went to a Pilates class. These are hard, as anyone who’s one them will tell you. But I wanted to see if moving my focus to my body would get me out of my head. 

This actually worked. And I’m ever so slightly fitter in the process. My body is sore, but I’m sure I’ll sleep tonight, which will come in handy. And from there, all I can do is watch my mind, work with my thoughts and cross my fingers for a good result.

Wish me luck. 

Now They Are

You know when you were a little kid, and everything seemed like a ghost? Lights on the wall, the moon, creaks on the floorboard — even your night light could seem haunted and magical. I had really vivid dreams as kid, seeing them almost projected onto the walls of my bedroom. Some nights I was afraid to move, if the dream was scary, while other nights I could run around and cavort with squirrels, chipmunks and butterflies. 

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately about my book Searching for Sassy, which tells the story of coming to Los Angeles to escape a bad breakup, falling backwards into a job as a phone psychic and having that completely change my life for the better. People always want to know what it’s like to be a phone psychic, if it’s real or if they’ve just hired a bunch of actors to perform the fake readings. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for the people at my line, who were all very gifted. I refused to believe I was psychic for the longest time, and finally gave in when my fellow psychics basically took me under their wings kicking and screaming. 

Luckily, I listend to them. Or they wore me down — either way. I learned everything from tarot to energy work and astrology, with some mythology, Greek literature, psychology and more. I read everting I could get my hands on, in line at the store, on the bike at the gym, in traffic, you name it. My native curiosity just took over and I let it drive the bus for a while. 

I’ve been thinking about that, that knowledge or wisdom can be there and then not there. There as potential and then developed into something you can talk about and practice, not there if you decide to change your mind or even allow ignorance and darkness to flower. I’ve been thinking about ghosts from the past, literal ones who used to haunt the crap out of my apartment in the Ravenswood, and figurative ones that cling to all of us, as beliefs we hold rightly or falsely. Reframing this, I’ve decided to give those ghosts a new home. My ghosts that have no more use in my life. I built it up in the hills of Laurel Canyon, a pretty spot with a view of the Strip when the weather is clear. I’m sending the thoughts, patterns, beliefs and memories that no longer serve me into a retirement home. It’s a cool one, but still for stuff that’s going off to die. 

WOO HOO!

I can finally let the cat out of the bag, the news I ‘ve been trying to be good in not telling anyone before I promised I would. My book, SEARCHING FOR SASSY: AN L.A. PHONE PSYCHIC’S TALES OF LIFE, LUST & LOVE, won the recent Hay House Pitchfest in New York, which means that I get to meet Paula Wagner, former producing partner of Tom Cruise and (super yay) executive producer of one of my favorite movies ever, The Others. So many ghost stories get it really wrong. This one gets it right in every way possible. 

Of course, nothing is written in stone. Making a movie or TV show is always a slog in Hollywood. Convincing people to get on board can be tough. But it’s exciting to know that my pitch was successfully received, and that all the work I put into making it entertaining, brief and cohesive worked out. I can’t wait to talk to Paula. 

So maybe this reframing stuff is working. This day, filled with a big piece of news, is definitely exciting. But it feels the same somehow as any other day. Don’t want to sound like I take this for granted. Not at all. But I’ve done so much work to achieve some kind of balance and non-reactivity that this feels right. 

After I let everyone know, and received a while lot of well-wishing emails and Facebook posts, I thanked the universe, my guides and angels, for watching out for me every day. I thanked whatever Powers That Be for my life and the ability to do what I love for a living. And I promised not to waste this opportunity. Not now, not ever.