After that, here’s what happened. I was immersed in the most materialistic reality of all- Hollywood. Every day, having at least one audition, looking at each character I’d be reading for. Weighing her in- what would she wear today, what was her make-up regime, does she straighten her hair or wear it wild and whirly-twirly? Every day I played at least one diva, usually more, transforming from one to the next in the back seat of my car. Waving to the world as they whizzed by. Going from goth chic to good girl with just a coat of paint remover and a dab of pink.
We are all ten million people in one.
And I wore ten million masks.
And underneath the creation of each, there was I- unchanging, ever-changing and constant- in love with the world and what was ecstatically apparent- Oh my gosh- all there is that is not being seen; what we call “Spiritual” for lack of, really, any word at all that could possibly describe it. All that is actually touching our eyeballs at this moment, that most often goes undetected. The passive presence of pure divinity, that we are.
I was rolling in love. Every thing was and is love. And love is a pathetic word. Totally insufficient. And aspiring toward the truth in the way it knows how. Being a word, after all, it has no hope but to be a finger. Pointing toward what it aspires to describe, pointing toward what is, what is now, in this moment, what we are floating inside of, and made of. That we are.
And so, here I was, drunken in truth, deep in meditation- running between auditions to a contemplative community in the bottom of an office building with fluorescent lights, that to me, even now thinking back, seemed the most sublime space. The breeze from the Los Angeles parking lot like a gust of the most high.
And I was. Totally high. (sans any drug, mind you.)
So everything I looked at, during my day, everything I saw was a tiny revelation, “Oh my god!” Everything I looked at- my MAC studio fix foundation while applying my make-up, its container baring 4 layers of space, “Jesus! Just like the four worlds in Kabbalah! Each layer with its own tools, level, and purpose. And see, it is foundation. The foundation of everything!” And I did laugh as the mind made these connections, the heart splitting forever wider open, knowing the silliness of each link. And still it came from the depths and spoke to the depths of all. It included every single thing. My MAC foundation was no exception. There was no exception- Ayn Od*- There it was, that which revealed itself to me as G-d, that with which I was in love – peering out from the depths of every single spot. No matter how mundane, profane, dense, or opaque- there was the eye. There was the I. Everywhere. And I, drunk from everything.
“Hello.” I couldn’t help but say, sometimes in a whisper. “Hello,” to all and everything I saw. My bed’s comforter in the morning, the water speaking to every cell in the shower, the towel that dried these hands, the car I drove, the slate I walked across to get to it, the threshold that I crossed to walk out to the slate. “Hello.” And, oh, to the sun that hit my eyelids as I crossed over. “Hello.”
And so all spoke. And so my outpour of love upon hearing.
And so all spoke. And so I heard.
And in a circle it went. In a circle it goes. Hearing, loving, speaking, hearing… the world was so alive and made me
so.
*Hebrew- lit. nothing else. The truth of there being nothing but G-d and therefore no "Other."