I’m currently working with a student who has had an awakening, and they’re seeing themselves differently, the world differently, life differently. They’re noticing they aren’t controlling everything. That things are happening, without a “doer”. This is liberating…and unsettling.

When my teacher talked about waking up, he never did it in a way that sounded far off or impossible. This was something human beings had done for years, and it felt possible. One day I just knew. As I began meditating and would touch moments of what he spoke of in his dharma talks, I knew that this was possible.

It’s a fall night in 2010. The air is now cooler here in Los Angeles. Not by much. But the slight change is palpable. I feel sick to my stomach and know what I have to do. I look down at my black, hightop, Converse shoes, part of the get-up of your average stand up comic at the time, and I steel myself. I hated having to do it before a show, and I loathed the taste, but I open the glove box and pull out the bottle. I had found a parking spot at the top of a hill off Sunset Blvd., a secret known only to a handful of comics. I sit in the car, looking down at “the Strip” twinkling back at me with such carefully calculated charm. Yes, LA, you have me. I’m yours.

About a dozen years ago, something happened that changed everything. A monumental shift in perception and identity occurred. I had been meditating quite a bit. I knew something was coming, and yet…it still surprised me. This radical shift is known as a spiritual awakening, a satori, a path moment — all kinds of words to describe the indescribable.

Standing up for ourselves, saying no, demanding respect, and walking away from abuse, are all powerfully spiritual acts. Letting others find their way, refusing to take on other people’s problems as your own, and simply being a presence of love and care — but not losing yourself — are important steps we take for ourselves and for others.

You are not separate from life. There can be a contraction away from life when in pain, in order to separate from the pain. But the pain is in the separation, my friend. Not in the pain itself.

Make friends with anger, fear, doubt, worry, and confusion. Make friends with those old timers that have been around before you were born, and will continue to be here long after your body is making fertilizer for flowers, like uncertainty, yearning, change, and paradox.  So make friends in isolation. Hell, make friends with isolation itself. With the quiet, with the unknown, with yourself.

The world has gotten strange, hasn’t it?  At times like this, I am so grateful that years ago, I began a meditation and spiritual practice. A staunch atheist at the time, Buddhism made the most sense. The Buddha talked about seeing through the filters of the mind and all its chatter — a most unreliable narrator, that mind — and realizing the pure presence, clarity, and wisdom that we truly are. 

Working in entertainment, and working with spiritual practitioners, I’ve found the same thing. Everyone thinks they’re supposed to be somewhere different, experiencing something different, and being different. Where the hell do we all think we’re supposed to be?  This is the malady the Buddha spoke of as the cause of our suffering.

Stillness wants to move. Silence has a lot to say. Emptiness wants to fill up and express itself, again and again. If we can rest in the stillness, relax with the emptiness, and allow for a saturation of silence…we can create from our deepest places. Empty the well so that you may be full again. Trust in the empty space. It’s your doorway into what’s waiting to be expressed.