ON MONEY AND SPIRIT
If a genie sprang forth from my cocktail shaker and offered me the choice between enlightenment and a billion dollars tax free, there would be a telltale pause.
I liked being four years old. Life was play, responsibility was an unsuspected bogeyman hiding somewhere in the future. Though I’m sure there were some parental do’s and don’ts, very little was expected of me; I felt free to do pretty much as I pleased. It had not yet occurred to me to be anything other than myself. Life was full of new discoveries and wonder. My fourth year was (in memory at least) a time of delightful, quasi-infantile nirvana.
In my daydreams, being filthy rich would be an amplified version of this preschool bliss: unlimited play, adventure, ease, freedom, society and solitude, travel, luxury, simplicity, and, best of all, security. Pretense would be passé, worry a pain barely remembered. There would be endless toys: celebrated paintings and sculptures, a yacht, maybe a private jet, splendid travel, a superb chef. And if there was ever any annoyance or pain, there would be too many exquisite amusements to notice. Of course there would be a generous charitable foundation to satisfy my virtuous urges and to assuage the guilt of having so much more than everyone else. I would be in total control. Life would be whatever I wanted it to be.
On the other hand there’s enlightenment. How does that compare in my daydreams?
Enlightenment, to use David Spangler’s cumbersome but perfect word, is to be unobstructed, to at last open one’s entire being each moment to the light of intelligence and love, which is intrinsic to our universe, to every atom of what is. It is to discover that beneficent light echoed uniquely in one’s self and then to radiate love into our world and act with love’s wisdom. It is to be willing to throw yourself like a handful of beads up into the cosmos, knowing that you are hurling love into love, knowing that your self, whether reassembled or dispersed in light, will be of service to the divine. It is to abandon the illusion of security for the joy of discovering the magnificence of each moment, here and now, just as it is.
Enlightenment is clear, clean awareness unobstructed by all our social conditioning and learned prejudice. This open awareness is itself the action that brings positive change. For the enlightened, the rewards and punishments of heaven and hell have no meaning whatever; you do good for no reason simply because you are good. You love simply because you are love. You are one with the whole of life.
Beneath all the fun and frolic in my fantasy of great wealth I see an immaturity, an avoidance of life, an orgy of having instead of being. And endless distraction. It is said that these days we’re distracted from distraction by distraction. There is a substitution of material security for a deeper, heartfelt trust in the loving nature of creation. There is a worldly sense of control instead of an open attention to the subtle urgings of the divine. Self-discovery, the very essence of a life worth living, would become the only unaffordable luxury. Sorry, soul, no time for that!
So with only a twinge of regret, I would defy the conventional wisdom of our curious culture and choose enlightenment. Love is priceless.
Of course, a more generous genie could offer both kinds of riches: a billion bucks and enlightenment; the two are not mutually exclusive. Money, after all, is just condensed energy waiting to do our bidding. Spirit would spend money beatifically.
DREW CAREY
In 2002, I became involved in a real gender-bender on The Drew Carey Show, the television sitcom. It all started in the sleepy rural beach town where I live. I was enjoying a shiatsu massage given by an expert local Portuguese woman with blue eye shadow and an extravagant beehive hairdo in her cluttered little office across from the beach.
Several months prior, my exotic masseuse had rescued a mynah bird that had fallen from its nest. This feathered creature had subsequently grown up in a cage and had learned to talk. About halfway through my treatment the silence was abruptly broken by the mynah, saying in its strangely sophisticated and ironically camp voice, “I love papaya…I looooooooove papaya…I love yoooooooooooooooooou!! Ha ha ha.”
Well, I nearly fell off the massage table laughing.
That week I learned to imitate the mynah’s voice and related its slightly insane words to any friends who would listen. They all laughed. Using my imitation of the bird’s voice, I discovered a very funny and often witty character who would occasionally “appear” and make amusing comments on whatever was going on. I named her Daphne Papaya. These unpredictable appearances of Daphne seemed to release in me an incisive observation, and a wicked humor that I would never dare express as myself. Where I am cautious and polite, Daphne is fearless and funny.
Playing comedy is extremely difficult, but great fun. Thinking the character had real possibilities, Martin and I wrote a sitcom script starring Daphne and her former-cowboyesque husband, in which I would play both parts. I had never attempted this sort of writing before, but to my surprise the script turned out quite well.
Martin wasn’t convinced that I had the cojones to play a woman for a short stint, let alone a full season. He challenged me to dress up in full Daphne regalia for a night on the town. I had never dressed in drag before, not because I was fearful of the repercussions, but because it just didn’t interest me. Yet the idea of playing Daphne was so exhilarating I felt this could be an opportunity for my expansion into comedy and a new personal freedom.
Running around Honolulu looking for the right wig, the right high heels, and the right gown for the soiree was an eye-opener. When I bought the bra, I had to explain to the saleswoman’s arched eyebrows that it was for a reading of a new play. Sitting in a beauty salon having a woman’s wig styled on my head summoned up a new kind of courage. When finally done up, I thought I looked fairly glamorous in a slightly off-kilter sort of way, and a tad like my mother, albeit a head taller in those heels.
We invited two close friends to join us for dinner at a very posh Waikiki restaurant that we had never frequented in order to remain as incognito as possible. I was having great fun with this novel acting challenge and the excitement of breaking taboos—until I inadvertently began ordering my meal in my real voice. Martin shot me a stunned look, which startled me right back into character. The maître d’ didn’t bat an eyelid. As my escort, Martin seemed more uncomfortable than the rest of us. I guess he’d never been out on a date with a transvestite.
After the success of our dinner, I felt ready to venture into television as Daphne Papaya, raconteur, and wickedly witty purveyor of truth.
Martin and I flew to New York to pitch the sitcom idea to my agent and several agency bigwigs. After telling the story idea, I gave them a sample of Daphne’s wacky character and voice.
Only my lead agent—and, by the way, possibly the only certifiably straight man in the room—loved the concept. All the others were horrified. “Our romantic hero playing a woman!!! This will ruin your career!” At our insistence the agency said that they would present our idea to various networks and cable channels, but nothing materialized, and the venture languished. Soon thereafter, most of the agents were fired in an agency shake-up. Perhaps they needed a few more cojones.
About a year later, my new agent, who knew about our Daphne sitcom, called and said The Drew Carey Show was looking for a man to play Carey’s boss’s mother, Mrs. Wick. Would I be interested in giving Daphne a whirl? Despite my otherwise cautious nature, I love breaking rules—especially arbitrary ones—and I leapt at the chance.
Following in the tracks of Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams, I was hardly breaking new ground. But the novelty of choosing dresses and jewelry, trying on wigs and makeup, and wearing a padded brassiere and high-heeled shoes in this professional situation was truly weird. There are so many unconscious anxieties and taboos lurking around gender identification that crossing the immense barrier between man things and woman things is hazardous. Years ago Robert Mitchum acted in a movie on location in a penitentiary. Before shooting his scene the makeup person walked up to Mitchum and patted his fa
ce with a powder puff (definitely a woman thing) and nearly caused a prison riot. Nevertheless, I loved this Daphne character for her wit and honesty, so I forged ahead.
The Carey script, which arrived after I had departed Hawaii for Los Angeles to film the show, was a disappointment. Mrs. Wick lacked Daphne’s sophistication and devilish way with words, but Drew and all the actors and producers and crew were bright and friendly, and we had a great time together. And even without Daphne’s class, Mrs. Wick got a lot of laughs.
AWARENESS, CLEAR AND CLEAN
Since my early twenties I’ve been drawn to the writings of J. Krishnamurti, a spiritual teacher of great purity and renown.
As a boy Krishnamurti was found on a beach in India by members of Britain’s Theosophical Society who were searching for the new World Teacher, the new Christ. He was taken to England and intensely trained for this august position. After years of study Krishnamurti was to speak to a large gathering of Theosophists proclaiming his “divinity.” He shocked his worshipful audience with his now famous statement that Truth is a pathless land. He denied the value of spiritual authority of any kind, urging everyone present to discover truth for themselves. Truth cannot be learned from another. The profound paradox of a World Teacher is that he/she comes to teach that which cannot be taught. No one can find your heart and soul but you.
I met Krishnamurti twice, first at a television studio where I was in a small audience for one of his rare TV interviews. After the interview, which was very serious, I was totally surprised when Krishnamurti came up to me and took my hand with the spontaneous joy of a child and said he had seen my performance of Thomas Mendip in Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not for Burning in Chichester, England, a few years earlier. I was both dumbfounded and delighted.
Some years later, perhaps because of that chance meeting, I was asked to narrate a documentary about Krishnamurti and his teaching around the world.
Shortly thereafter I was invited to attend a small luncheon for Krishnamurti in Ojai, California, where he often gave talks. There were twelve people, and I was seated just across the table from this extraordinary man.
During lunch I asked him a question about his statement that the first step is the last step. He put his hand on my arm and asked with great intensity if I was serious. I said I was. And he proceeded to give me an explanation that seemed to me oversimplified and rote. I was strangely disappointed (expectations making trouble).
As I was leaving to drive home to L.A., the lovely woman who had invited me to the luncheon gave me Krishnamurti’s latest book called The Flame of Attention. Hot off the presses she said. That evening I had a lot of work to do, but I couldn’t put his book down. A chapter discussing the central Krishnamurti theme of “unobstructed awareness” riveted my attention.
Unobstructed awareness is pure seeing in the moment, without any interference whatever—no conditioned responses, no judgment, no liking or disliking, no desire for change, no motive, no attitude, no opinion, in fact no preconceived self. Just pure awareness.
The next morning during meditation I had one of the most profound experiences of my life. Without even thinking about it I slipped into a state of clear awareness. Suddenly I could look at anything in my life, even things I’d normally regard with fear or shame or embarrassment, without any reaction at all, just keen interest. There wasn’t an atom of the universe I wanted to change. I was simply in the flow of what is. I felt utterly free, unencumbered, unobstructed. Joyously free. Later I realized that this experience, which lasted for ten or fifteen minutes, was overflowing with love.
I’ve always suspected that this extraordinary happening was the residual effect of my being in the transcendent presence of Krishnamurti the day before. While we were chatting some deeper communion must have occurred.
There are states of being which beggar the imagination, which lift us beyond our habitual routines of thinking and allow us a glimpse of divine wholeness. Perhaps we can enhance our everyday living with the blessing of these moments of grace.
Having learned so much from Krishnamurti, I should clarify the statement that spiritual teachers come to teach what cannot be taught. Even Jesus, whom Christians believe is the Son of God, did not succeed in transforming humanity. The Holy Land and so much of our world are still torn apart by hatred and violence. Jesus did his work. We have yet to do ours.
A great teacher has no interest in being followed or worshiped or even believed. A great teacher invites skepticism, questioning, challenge, provocation. A great teacher wants only to wake you up (and has no investment in that either).
A great teacher can suggest possibilities, can point toward truth, can be radiant with love. A great teacher can by his or her presence induct us into holy energies for a moment. But a great teacher will never trespass upon your own discovery of the sacred. Only you may step into the sanctuary of your own heart. Only you can awaken to the presence of God’s wholeness right there within your own being.
FINDING HEAVEN
I have a theory that ideally actors should remain totally unknown to their public so they can be completely convincing as the various characters they play. The less the audience knows about us personally, the more likely they are to believe and be moved by our performances in the fantasies of particular plays or movies.
When Jonathan Miller, the director of our Los Angeles production of Richard II, spoke about the total commitment actors must give to our acting, he said that when audience members come backstage to greet us, all they should find in the dressing room is a little pile of ash.
Unfortunately, show biz is set up in such a way that to succeed a performer requires fame, which in turn requires constant exposure in the media. The anonymous seldom star in movies.
Actors must learn to create two forms of illusion: one to manifest the fictional characters we play in theater and films, and another for building and sustaining our semifictional public image. It’s all part of the show.
For an actor like me, who believed it necessary to hide aspects of his everyday self from public view, the perpetual crafting of my public image was arduously tricky. I had to be constantly on guard during endless press and TV interviews. I didn’t want to slip up and reveal my real self, especially when the inevitable questions, such as “Why aren’t you married?” and “Don’t you want children?” were asked with their covert yet obvious implications.
The care and protection of my partly fabricated public persona became a built-in, habitual part of myself along with the fear of exposure that I worried might stop my career cold.
For forty wonderful years I played romantic leading men and audiences responded to me, sometimes even loved me as these characters. I felt gratefully obligated to sustain their illusions as best I could in my consequently veiled real life.
Living as a somewhat fictional persona in public, every day, every week, every year, inevitably sloshed untruth into my private life. Even my long and deeply loving relationships with Martin and with our close friends were inhibited by my continuing unease about my sexuality, by my perpetual fear of exposure to public prejudice. This continued even after several outings in the rags. I was still placing my well-being in the hands of what I imagined to be that unruly crowd out there.
Then one hot, sunny afternoon in the summer of 2002 a minor miracle happened. My longtime friends Nancy and Sam were driving me to a dinner party and an interesting and unexpectedly enlightening discussion developed. We were wondering if I should or shouldn’t discuss being gay in this book. My worry was the probability that all the subsequent interviews and reviews publicizing the book would then center on this “shocking admission” rather than on the spiritual themes of God, love, and forgiveness. I also worried that since I had never before discussed gay issues in public, I might get tripped up and discombobulated by my old fears.
Sam suggested that we stage a trial interview with Nancy (who was driving, but game) taking the part of the formidable Barbara Walters.
As “Barbar
a” asked some formerly scary questions like “Don’t you feel that by going public in this way you’ll be disappointing and hurting a lot of your loyal and loving fans?,” all at once I unexpectedly opened within myself to a place I’d never experienced before under fire. I dropped any hint of the self-image I’d fought to protect for so many years. I dropped any preconceived agenda for the interview and simply listened carefully to the question and its implications, noticed my reactions, and then quietly listened within myself for the response. Suddenly my only interest was in the truth, whatever that might be. I lost all need to “spin” my answer to make myself look good or to pretend anything. I told “Barbara” that I’d kept silent about my sexual orientation all those decades partly because I was actually prejudiced against myself, and partly out of a desperate fear that honesty would have vanquished my career. I said that like all actors I was a practitioner of illusion, and I respected the rather sweet and even passionate illusions the audience had about me. (Even Mel Gibson, Brad Pitt, and Russell Crowe, all presumably straight, are in fact personally unknown to their adoring fans.) Further, now that the time has finally come for me to learn to love what is, maybe this is an opportunity for my fans to do the same.
This utterly novel experience of complete trust in the truth, in myself exactly as I was, in “Barbara” exactly as she was, and in the world exactly as it was, was like finding myself smack in the middle of heaven. A lifetime of constricting fears vanished in a sweet breeze of grace. The constant background static of my self-deprecatory inner monologue faded into silence.
I felt as if a malign aspect of myself that I had been born with finally released me. In my suddenly silent self I found all the warmth and love I’d worked so hard to cajole from the world outside. For the first time ever I felt easily confident in the integrity of my life. At long last I am free to be the part of God that God wanted me to be.
Shattered Love Page 21