Acting might seem like the most easy and awesome work on the planet, but when you go behind the scenes, you get a whole other picture of what it is truly like to be an actor. I must say, over the months I have come to know quite a few actors in Los Angeles, and all of them share common traits, which I would like to celebrate in this blog.

A burning desire to succeed. Have you ever sat in a crowded room filled with beautiful people who look almost exactly like you, who are all reading the same part as you are, and wearing similar clothes as you? The most confident person in the world can saunter into that audition room and still be faced with insecurities suddenly. It truly takes a burning desire to succeed in the acting world because actors need to reinforce over and over again that they are special and not just another number.

Ability to accept criticism. On a set, time is money. Things must move quickly and efficiently. Hence the importance of being open to criticism without flinching in front of dozens of people. Actors are continuously faced with criticism, and this is what makes them exceptional people:  their ability to keep their mood and vibration positive, and not let words destroy their self-image and self-love. If they do not have a strong back-bone, the slightest discouraging word can send their career down the drain.

Adaptability. Acting is all about going with the flow of the present moment. Whatever script actors have memorized or scenes they have revised, things in real life can go completely wrong sometimes. Thus they need to adapt quickly, and this means losing the desire to control events or situations. From what I have observed, great acting comes from great adaptability, that attitude that whatever happens on set, “It’s all good”.

Detachment. When going in to audition for roles, actors must remain detached from the outcome. If they hold unto that burning desire to get a role, they might live great disappointments. I have seen actors saunter in and out of audition rooms like they were going to order another cup of coffee, two sugars and cream. As they sit in that audition room, sipping their 876th cup of imaginary coffee, their faces reflect that timeless spiritual law of detachment.

Ability to sense others. To succeed in acting you need to be plugged into that invisible realm. Certain actors have told me that they immediately sense when the producers turn them down, even before they have spoken their first line. This sixth sense of what others are looking for creates in them an ability to not take things personal, to realize that they might not be the perfect person for that role. Most good actors navigate through auditions with an ability to sense and foresee ahead of time whether they will be cast or not. Such a sixth sense frees them of great expectations.

Staying humble. A great actor stays humble, because he or she never knows when the moment of glory shall pass. Maybe one year they get cast in the most popular television series, and the next they find themselves without work. Whatever happens, staying humble allows for actors to avoid crashes and burns.

My time amongst actors has taught me much. I continue to learn from their powerful spirits and quick minds. The world has much to learn from them. Let us remember that although Shakespeare is considered the greatest English writer of all times, he was also a superb actor. Rodney Dangerfield once said, “Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself”.

Mother Ocean in California is widely known by surfers as the “Blue Lady”. The Blue Lady is a force to be reckoned with. My first time in California, I had no knowledge of duck diving. When the first six-foot wave stood up in front of me, I froze in fear and could not figure out for the life of me how I would survive. After getting “rinse-cycled” and after eating many “sea-salt potatoe chips”, I stumbled out of the Blue Lady and got a crash-course from my good friend who had been smirking discreetly from the shore.

“Kook!” he yelled at me, which is a Californian word for many states of being, but in this case it meant “beginner”.

Many people are afraid of the ocean’s great power. And we should be! She can toss you around like you are but a speck of sand to her. Every time I duck dive under a wave, and close my eyes, I feel like a little part of me is dying, that part that is used to the known, to the visible, to the physical. As you go under a wave, it’s all about trust. Trust that you will pop back up again on the other side, safe and sound, the seagulls screeching above you.

I have great admiration for surfers. To surf is to not fear the unknown, to really trust that the Blue Lady will protect your life no matter what happens. Talk to any surfer and you will know what I mean. They are the most laid-back, easy-going, relaxed people on earth! They are natural gurus, really, because they enter one of the most powerful forces on earth every day with great humility and reverence, and then go back to work as if they just had done the most natural thing on earth.

The Blue Lady opens her innermost secrets to those willing to close their eyes, take a deep breath, and surrender to the great unknown.

Every writer has an itch. It can be a small itch, or a big itch, but it has to be an itch. Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando has a very big itch, one that is related to the whole body; when the desire to write takes over her, her entire body shakes and trembles and tingles (if you haven’t already read Orlando it is an amazing book). My itch is quite annoying as it happens to me… in the middle of the night.

Quite often I am enjoying a dream when it takes over. At first it is like an annoying noise in the background of a dream, but it gets louder and louder and finally, it wakes me up: words flash, bells go off, you name it, I have it. Then the trick is that before falling back asleep, I have to recite the words several times  in order not to forget them. In truth, I am too lazy to write them down.

How does your writer’s itch manifest itself? Have you ever tried to control it or ignore it? What happens when you ignore the itch? Once I tried to sleep through the itch and it turned into a nightmare: someone over a loudspeaker was yelling my name, telling me to get up and write things down. I nearly fell out of bed when that happened. My advice: do not ignore the itch! Obey it! Amazing things have come from writers who follow their itch rather than fight it.

How can you encourage the itch? Give it permission to disturb you at any moment during your day (or night in my case). It’s unbelievable the words that will come at you! Truly. My friends used to tell me to take sleeping pills, but I always replied, “Why sleep when I could write the next best-seller? Let me sleep when I am dead”.

Being real is all about learning to walk to your own beat in life. Every life has its own beat, and all beats are beautiful, but finding out what beat your life is might be a little tricky at times. When you turn to the outside world and compare yourself to others, there will always be people who are more intelligent, more beautiful, more popular, more rich than you, but this thinking produces nothing but a dead-end. You are looking at other songs and telling yourself yours isn’t as precious, and this is when you become less real: when you try to fit into another beat.

Socrates said the wisest words two thousand years ago: “Know thyself”. These words, as simple as they are, teach us that before achieving wisdom you must first know your essence, what makes you dance in this world, what makes you cry, what makes you laugh, what makes you afraid. When you can identify your weaknesses and strengths you become more real, and step past others around you swimming against their own life stream.

Feeling like you don’t know what you are doing here on earth some days? Remind yourself of your passions, the things that make you vibrate, make you happy. There is an old Chinese proverb that says, “If you love your work, you will never work a day in your life”. Repeat this to yourself. You are your work, and your work is you. When you love what you do, every moment of life is magical and infused with divinity.

Walking to your own beat involves taking risks, perhaps losing friends that you had for a long time, or feeling lonely for some time. It might involve you quitting a job you hate and spending some time in limbo, waiting for that job that will turn your life into magic again. It could mean that you feel sad for some time as you retrieve lost pieces of your soul.

Cinderella’s story is the tale of how one woman is badly treated by others, and always feels like she is an outsider until the day her real identity is revealed. As she steps into her real vibration, her real beat, the world outside can no longer harm her and she finally achieves completion and happiness. Walking to our own beat is a lot like Cinderella’s story, which involves risks and loneliness and venturing forth into the unknown, hoping the shoe will fit.

Have you ever wandered into the darkened area of a New Age store, hunting for that secret place where a woman is waiting for you, a crystal ball in hand, promising to tell you of your future? At some point or other, all of us have reached out to others for guidance and there is nothing wrong with seeking help. What is wrong in my mind is when the guidance from others becomes a program, albeit one that is hard to understand and decipher. Whereas in the past it was fashionable to consult a fortune teller and gaze into her crystal ball, I would like to write about the reasons why not consulting a fortune teller will serve your future better.

Please remember that what many fortune tellers see or feel is filtered by their own perceptions, fears, and feelings. In my eyes, a pure channel (someone who is connected directly to the Source) is not authorized to tell your future; rather, they help you make better decisions based on your present moment. Be wary of those who tell you God is speaking through them, for often it could be something less pretty!

Another reason why consulting fortune tellers might not truly serve you is that whatever they tell you might stay in your mind a very long time, and could actually hinder rather than help you. Once I consulted a woman who told me my brother was going to have an accident at a certain age, and my whole family became terrified, even my skeptical brother. As time went on, we realized that our fears might actually be creating this event instead of avoiding it. You might recall that energy flows in the direction that our thoughts do, so focusing on a dark future will certainly create that future. In the end, we learned to erase from our minds the words of this woman, and my brother still stands today, thank God.

Lastly, fortune tellers, for the most part, do not really see the future. Sorry to bust your bubbles folks! What they do see is what you already know, what you already carry within you as a future plan or goal. If you have consulted a fortune teller, oftentimes you find yourself saying, “Amazing! She saw all my talents and dreams!” and this is true. What they do is take what is inside of you and shape it into what they believe might be the future for you. So in reality, you could consult your best friend and get a better reading of your future, in my opinion.

I recommend, if you want to look at your future, take that crystal ball into your own hands.  Say out loud what you would like your future to look like, instead of trying to “see” into your future. Create your future, words have a lot of power! You might be surprised how much your future will be prosperous, beautiful, and filled with love. Instead of letting others guide you to certain goals or dreams,  guide yourself and with enough self-confidence and self-love, you can manifest anything your heart desires!

If you are able to be media free for periods of time, and you disengage yourself from the frequency of chaos and anxiety and stress and hustle-bustle and temptations of all kinds that you don’t need, you begin to get clear. You begin to listen to what is going on inside of yourself and to live in the world and not necessarily be lost in it. You become clear. We cannot emphasize this enough! (Barbara Marciniak, “Bringers of the Dawn”)

For several years now I have not watched television. I own a TV in my house, though, and it sits comfortably amidst a sea of plants and books. Its only function is to play comedy movies on an old DVD player that sometimes doesn’t even work (it’s moody). When friends come over and ask if they can watch television, I answer with a simple, “Not in this house”. Television has always been a source of frequency control. Whether you are aware of this or not, it is time to become conscious of what your television does to your mind, body, and soul.

The first reason why I don’t watch TV is because it creates laziness. People have become so used to plopping down on the couch, turning on a random channel, and being inactive for hours that being active has ceased to exist in many people’s lives. Watching television is one of the leading causes of obesity in America, that and eating too much sugar in food and not moving enough.

Another reason I don’t watch television is because I became aware, years ago, that the general messages on television are those of violence, fear, and chaos. Have you noticed that after watching your television shows your emotions are raging all over the place? Or that you feel more down than before, more tired? Most programs are designed to keep people at a certain frequency, what Marciniak would term the lower frequencies that keep us in a zombie state.

The news, the horror movies, the CSI Miami’s that repeat themselves over and over, do you truly believe that these shows were created to help raise your consciousness and bring light into your life? Think again. Television is not just television: it is a method of control, and one that needs to be tossed out the window, rapido presto.

Don’t buy into the fear circulating everywhere. Underneath the chaos in the media, underneath what television is trying to make you believe, find your center and stick to it. Do you really need to read the newspaper every day, to create more fears and anxieties in your being? Don’t you have enough with your own life, your own problems? Next time you turn on the television, think long and hard about the kind of life you truly want to lead.

There is in Montreal a very famous man who stands on the street corner in the Old Port. He wears a suit, a top hat, and his sign reads “Free hugs. If you can’t hug me, hug each other”. People pass him, usually uncomfortable, often shying away from him like he is the plague. He stands perfectly erect and smiling, his arms open, his eyes twinkling in the afternoon sun, just waiting to give free hugs.

Human touch is central to a healthy life and healthy mind, and the hugging man has understood this. Over the past few years, research in psychology has proven how touch can shape one’s behaviour and attitude. If a child grows up with very affectionate parents, the child will usually turn into a human who is warm, loving, giving and healthy psychologically. Touch is important because it reminds us that we are loved and appreciated by others. Touch is a powerful act of love, and must not be overlooked.

In Journey to the Heart, Teleo massages Lucina, explaining to her that people have forgotten the power of healing through touch. Lucina has been living in solitude and depression for many years, and for the first time in a long time, she receives human contact and it shakes and troubles her. Some people have never had true human affection, and when they finally receive it, they see that a life without human affection is a bleak life indeed.

If you are part of the majority of people who have grown up lacking human affection, it’s up to you to turn the world around. I am not advocating that you stand on a street corner giving free hugs, (what a great idea!) but you can certainly start practicing the art of hugging in your daily life more consciously. Instead of nodding your head at your kids when you get home from work, take them in your arms instead and feel how alive they are. Hugs are a powerful proof that we are physical beings, all connected one to the other.