Laugh & Learn

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My maternal grandmother was Margaret Dunbar, but I always called her Foxy Lady because that was her C.B. handle. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the 70's craze, C.B. stands for Citizens Band radio. My grandmother used to drive herself back and forth from Atlantic City New Jersey to her trailer in South Florida every year until she was in her late 70's. This was no small miracle given that her other nickname was Mrs. McGoo because she was so nearsighted, she was almost legally blind. (She once asked a chubby 10-year-old girl in a restaurant When are you due? thinking she was looking at a pregnant adult.)

Foxy Lady would sign on to her CB radio somewhere south of Maryland on I-95 and scope out the speed traps Any Smokie's south of Santee?..over!.

She moved on to the next adventure in 2005 at 92 years old, but she was and will remain one of my most favorite people on earth. Though she was a Shiks (a gentile woman) my grandmother was the biggest jew-a-phile you would ever meet. Most of her friends were Jewish, and I think the only thing she admired about my father was that he was mostly Jewish. She had many little Jewish sayings and she was never more adorable than when she was coughing up some Yiddish expression in her over-the-top guttural pronunciation. She was a reader's digest of philosophical slogans and she had plenty of non-Yiddish expressions too. One often repeated bit of wisdom was act the way you want to be and you will be the way you act.

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One of my favorite movie scenes is from The Witches of Eastwick with Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, Michele Pfeiffer and Cher. Jack Nicholson, in a perfect bit of typecasting, plays the Devil. The actresses play women who try to best him with their own experimentation in the black arts.

For me, Jack Nicholson's character represents the ego in its purest form: fear turned inside out projecting itself into everything it sees.

My favorite scene, one that I often show in my workshop is one where the Witches discover that laughter can stop the effects of fear right in its tracks.

It's the scene toward the end where the devil has been attacked by the Witches through a voodoo doll. He comes looking for them in an intense rage. His fury blows them forcefully down a long corridor and Susan Sarandon's character falls from balcony. As she tumbles through the air to certain death, her friends Michele Pfeiffer and Cher call down to her instructing her to "laugh".

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One of the topics that came up last weekend at the retreat at Lifebridge Sanctuary: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life is the challenge of living in this cult of more.

The mind keeps promising a break from all of the restless searching, but never delivers one.

It is as if soon after we are born we are lifted up on a helicopter ride for the rest of our lives. It's a noisy helicopter and the thrill of riding on one wears thin fast, but still we keep hovering, hovering, hovering. Years and years go by, and the pilot keeps teasing us that we will get to land. You get so close to landing 2 feet from the ground, holding in one place and just when you think thank God, get me off this damn thing so I can kiss the ground, it swiftly rises back up into the sky.

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I have a 16 month old daughter named Maitreya. Maitreya is a very precocious, joyful, determined, and curious creature. Not a day goes by that I am not inspired by her and aspire to some of her natural abilities.

Before she came into my life I had a really lame idea about what a baby of a year and a half was about. I had no idea how calculating and clever they could be or how sage. One of the lessons I have learned indirectly, is how fast life zips by.

If I had a dime for every time some parent came up to me when I was out with my daughter and said "enjoy it while it lasts" I would have her college tuition for the year 2024 all paid for. My kid is 19, I would give anything to have them at your baby's age again they say with a smiling mask to ease the sad delivery in the comment. I kind of understood it, but I didn't really get it until a few weeks ago. That was when Maitreya and began to walk.

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Yesterday was Day 2 of our retreat "Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life" at the beautiful Lifebridge sanctuary in the Catskill mountain region of New York's mid-hudson valley. I had a great time. Usually the workshop is on one long day, but this time it got split up over two days with people getting to sleep on the ideas of Day 1 in a beautiful room in the mountains. We were surrounded by graceful, snacking deer and a coyote the size of a small colt.

The people who attended were beautiful, amazing, and committed to going deeper into their personal growth practice. I was really thrilled and honored to be a part of their process.

We did all kinds of exercises (you will have to register for the one in the summer to find out exactly what goes on!) I never stop being fascinated by how similar we all are when we come together to explore the voice of fear, doubt and criticism in our heads.