I recently connected with someone interested in my background, and directed them towards a series I’d done for The Huffington Post in 2010, which chronicled my participation in a ‘spiritual boot camp for the mind’ that year.
The person told me they were having a hard time finding each entry of the series (I also looked, and it is a bit of a mess to figure out). So I’ve decided to republish, 12 years later, with some revisions and annotations.
Although my interest in spirituality and metaphysics kicked off in the late 1990s, the “boot camp” experience is the bedrock of whatever foundation I may have as a spiritual counselor, or teacher (if that doesn’t sound too hoity-toity).
I’d been feeling a bit ‘disconnected’ lately, so it seemed like a good time to reacquaint myself with work I’d done over a decade ago.
Am I still in alignment with what I learned or wrote about? Where do I still agree, or disagree? Perhaps by going back (somewhat) to the beginning, I will discover new ways to share what I learned.
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January 12, 2010 (original publish date; revised April 6, 2022)
I have struggled with anxiety as long as I can remember. In situations where I feel powerless, have no control, or I’m missing information, my mind reels and any positive images I have of myself go out the window.
Every negative thought is followed by an almost involuntary reflex: a wince and an internal (or out loud) “stop that!” It’s an unpleasant ping-pong match; an exhausting battle of wills in my head. Punishing.
Therapy, along with some self-help and spiritually themed books, helped me conquer some of the reactivity I was experiencing.
In 2008, Oprah Winfrey began championing Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. As I’d been reading writers like Gary Zukav, Caroline Myss and Shirley MacLaine, among others, I was primed for a book like Tolle’s.
Oprah eventually took her passion for A New Earth even further, creating the first worldwide online class in connection with the book.
The 10-week class took me to a completely unexpected, deeper level of awareness. I experienced profound changes in my thought process and put the teachings to work with some success.
My sense of personal purpose increased, but concurrently, so did problems in friendships. I thought I was loving people unconditionally, but it became apparent I was merely tolerating bad behavior.
Longtime connections now seemed unhealthy. Friends who had known me to participate in their “drama” were complaining that I was now “too calm” for them, or couldn’t handle that I wasn’t “freaking out” about things anymore.
I’d been giving a generous amount of love and care to people, but was now aware I wasn’t receiving an equal and balanced amount of love and care in return.
As I grew apart from several friends, I also wasn’t finding new people I “clicked with” to fill the voids. Spending a lot of time alone was fine to a degree, but then, one night, I realized an effect of the “exodus.”
Entertainment had been “my thing.” Beyond my own skills in acting, singing and writing, I would have an Oscar party every year. The 2009 Oscars were approaching, and I wasn’t hosting a party, wasn't invited to a party, and hadn’t had so much as a conversation about the Oscars with a single person.
My mind took a giant leap within milliseconds. I extrapolated the realization of “Oscars lack” to, “Oh my God. I don’t have an ‘in case of emergency person’ where I live! Who would I call if I was in trouble?”
That felt intensely scary and sad. I had no clue what I could do about it.
The Oprah/Tolle classes had been over for nearly a year. I missed the structure of those classes terribly, and I didn’t know how to “follow up.” If there were groups or other classes I could join, I was unaware of them.
Without the classes, the “freshness” of the ideas faded and so did my discipline in using them. Faith in my new practices felt relentlessly tested. It was as if “the universe” was saying, “Not so fast! You want change? Let’s see if you mean it.”
Although to a lesser degree, I was still spinning stories and envisioning scenarios that might not be accurate.
I stayed in “the dumps” about my isolation for about a month before feeling motivated enough to “get back out there.” When I did start going out, I challenged myself by going to new places instead of familiar ones, and made some new acquaintances.
I felt great and thought, “OK. This worked; I’ve licked the problem.”
I was wrong.
I thought certain people were becoming new friends, but their behaviors quickly showed me otherwise.
Prime example: every week, I would attend an open-mic for singers at a piano bar called “The Other Side.” A group of pals, including me, had formed from the weekly camaraderie, and I was having a lot of fun.
One night at the open mic, a new friend in this group, Dave, told me everyone else in the group was mad at me for something I’d written on The Huffington Post. I had no reason not to believe him. So, I decided to speak to people individually and apologize for any offense.
Each person either said they hadn’t read what I’d written or found nothing offensive about it. So, someone was lying — but who? These people were so new to me I couldn’t be sure.
Over the next month, tension got bigger and things got more and more increasingly bizarre. The details could fill an entirely separate essay. I didn’t go to the open mic for a couple of weeks.
The night I returned, despite things being at the height of bizarre-ness, a third friend in the group decided he was going to try and “broker a peace.” Dave’s boyfriend, Peter, was incensed by what “the peacemaker” was suggesting and began to verbally tear me down as I sat a mere six feet away.
My anxiety shot through the roof. I had to get out of there. Whether Peter was aware I was sitting nearby is something I’ll never know.
When others discovered I’d been at the bar and left, Dave and Peter felt pressure to get in touch via social media and email to “discuss.” When I explained their perceptions of me were incorrect and defended myself, they both twisted the situation to an even more disturbing level.*
Clearly, my “friend picker” was off. Way off.
My “story spinning” and self-punishment came back with a vengeance. I asked myself one pesky question more than any other:
“Why am I still attracting this negative garbage?”
Shell-shocked, I retreated to my apartment for most of the summer of 2009. From late June to mid-August, every day I did nothing but get up, go to work, come home, exercise, eat and go to sleep. I saw no one (outside of work).
When I did feel confident enough to go out again, it was only because a new “open mic” night popped up at O-Bar, blocks from my apartment. If I ran into any of the people from that “other scene,” I could leave and be home very quickly.
That evening at O-Bar, I met a man named Jonathan Zenz, who told me he was studying to be a minister of “New Thought.” I’d never heard of the denomination, so he told me about the philosophy.
It sounded very familiar. I reached into my bag, pulled out my copy of A New Earth, and showed it to Jonathan. He said that if I was already interested in these concepts, his “church” or “center,” The North Hollywood (NoHo) Arts Center for New Thought was something I should check out.
Within the hour, two others shared their experiences of this center. I sensed the synchronicity of these conversations was no accident.
I was skeptical about going to anything referred to as a “church.” I was raised Jewish and “church” was not in my vocabulary. However, I took note of the word “Center” (not “church”) in the name, and brushed that aside. Besides, if I wanted things to change, I had to do something; go somewhere!
I went to “NoHo Arts” the following Sunday morning. At that time they did two services, and I was so inspired by the guest speaker, Rev. Keith Cox, during the first service, that I stayed for the second.
After that, I continued to go every week, and joined in other activities that put me at the center two or three times a week, for the next five months. As I had not been a part of any religious or spiritual community for 26 years, this was a rather surprising development.
When I told people I’d become part of a spiritual community, I was met with comments like, “don’t drink the Kool-Aid!” There was fear I’d begin praying to an interplanetary god named Snarfalag and have my emotional brainwaves tested with an electronic device every hour.
Yet, each week, as I listened to the founder of NoHo Arts and standard Sunday morning speaker, James, deliver his Sunday morning talks, there was a consistent, almost startling, knack for tapping into what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it.
Something felt in alignment.
At the time, James was promoting an upcoming series of classes; referred to as a structured, online, interactive “spiritual boot camp.”
James got the idea as he was driving past a park where a physical trainer was putting his clients through the ringer. He thought, “A physical trainer pushes you to stay on track and do the right things for your body. Why not create the same thing for the mind?”
I liked the concept of “personal training for the mind” and certainly felt I needed it. A return to structured learning along the same lines as the Oprah/Eckhart classes was exactly what I’d been hungering for.
I said to James, “You and others I’ve met emanate a certain glow and lightness of being. I’ve often wondered if I have that quality. If I don’t, I want it.”
James understood. “It’s like that scene in When Harry Met Sally… when Meg Ryan finishes her, you know, ‘big moment’ and that lady says, “I’ll have what she’s having!”
As a movie lover, the use of that quote led me to feel more certain I’d landed in the right place.
I decided to sign up for the Boot Camp. As I’d recently been given the opportunity to blog for The Huffington Post due to a chance meeting with Ariana Huffington herself, I also decided…..
“I’m going to publicly chronicle this experience.”
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Click here for Week 1: Your Word
Note: The NoHo Arts Center For New Thought was rebranded and evolved into a different community, which I am not connected to.
*(2022 annotation: it eventually became apparent that both Dave and Peter had significant mental health issues. A year or so later, I was at a dance bar. Several people from the ‘open mic’ scene were there and told me Dave and Peter’s behaviors pushed them all away. It was clear I was never the problem. I felt sad, but vindicated).
