By Sunny Sun-Downer (As published in this week's Desert Valley Star newspaper, [www.desertvalleystar.com], except that the print article was edited maybe 5% for space considerations... Many Thanks to the DVStar!)
Comedienne Beth Lapides is my new “Jew-Du Gee-You-Are-U!” Let me explain. While she claims to be Jewish (which she says is “more vague than being ‘a Jew’ “), she is one of the only new mainstream comedians to be popularizing Hatha Yoga & Hinduism- therefore she is what I have coined a ‘Jewish-Hindu’ or “Jew-Du.” (The awakening to this title came to me after studying the Sutra that expounds on the mantra, “Om Oi-vey Padme Hum, Hail the Jew in the Heart-Lotus.” For those un-familiar with this, let me explain that the famous Tibetan mantra, “Om Mani Padme Hum” basically translates as “Hail the JEWEL in the Lotus of my Heart).
When she’s not enjoying Hatha yoga poses like the one that is “to die for,” Savasana, (the “Corpse Pose,”) she’s doing, among other things her “Un-Cabaret Workshops,” her comedy-yoga column “My Other Car Is A Yoga Mat” and her ‘Stand Up Yoga’ comedy show, currently titled “100% Happy- 88 % Of The Time” (after the book of the same name). And, if you ask me, if she’s smart she’ll immediately seek sponsorship for her national tour from one big odor-controlling corporation that’s currently using ‘Yoga Moms” to sell their plug-in “aroma-therapy” de-odorizers in television commercials. (No blatant plug here, but it rhymes with “raid.”) I tell you, sex used to sell products, but now you see Hatha yogis selling everything from insurance to mattresses! Another “SIGN” that the New Age is dawning on us- time to wake up & smell the Nag Champa (incense)!
And, speaking of “signs,” after catching her performance at Palm Springs’ Urban Yoga Center (www.urbanyoga.org) recently, I dubbed her my new “Gee-You-Are-U,” because while she gave all of us in attendance a cosmic transmission that opened our Humor Chakra, it involved a teaching in recognizing the “signs” that life presents to us, which helps us to tune into and connect to our “Ubiquitous” (or “Higher, Omni-present” Self,) the “U” in “Gee-You-Are-U,” as I like to see it. Yes, to paraphrase the famous metaphysical saying, “When the student is ready, the G.U.R.U’s signs will appear.”
A dove made a nest near their front door- a “sign” at first that everything was at peace in their “nest” at their Los Angeles-area home. But after two eggs appeared, was it a sign that they were then supposed to become bi-residential after all? They had been coming out to the desert since spending their fifth anniversary at a spa retreat in Desert Hot Springs, and they came to love coming to the desert over the years. At the same time, she told us, a nearby bee hive was a sign to remember to “Bee Here Now.”
Thanks to her husband-producer Greg Miller’s transformative and morphing slide show, it became an “MLE,” or “Multi-Level Experience,” with never a dull moment. The show is based on their eviction from their home-of-many-summers in L.A., with subsequent re-location out to the Southern California desert, being a “sign” that reflected humanity’s ‘eviction from the Piscean Age into the Aquarian Age,” as she perceived it. This eviction added to the recent financial challenge created when the prospect of her potential comedy show on a major cable channel fizzled.
In the time-consuming search for a new home in L.A., they were getting frustrated at the point that they went looking at Mt. Washington (speaking of Gurus, this has been the home of Swami Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship for decades). After her previously-New-York-based husband compared it to “Queens with Los-Angeles-charm,” Beth said, “We might as well live in Palm Springs,” as a joke. Greg didn’t see it that way and blurted, “That may have been the wisest thing you’ve ever said!” Beth re-iterated, “It’s a joke!” But by the time they got home they were scheming on a plan to live both places, and the rest is history, as they’ve been (88%) happily living in Palm Springs for over four years now. The travails of the whole experience became fodder for the cosmic comedy trough that is their show. It hilariously touches on so much of the metaphysical amusements of the New Age movement experience like the feng shui-like “geo-de-stressing” of their new desert home by a ‘high-desert dowser’ to clear out the negative energy with dowsing rods, in which Beth at first was skeptical until she learned how to do it and ended following him around dowsing every corner of their new ‘mandala-space’ herself! She also discussed her experiences as she was first setting foot on the “Cosmic New Age” path, one time in particular at a “Metaphysical Convention” in Las Vegas that she attended while reporting for ABC Radio, when she didn’t believe in “Angelic Healing” & other things you can’t see with your two physical eyes. But then a famous “angelic healer” told her that she had a “psychic dagger” in the middle of her back where she had been endlessly experiencing back pain, and would she like it removed? After Beth thought for about two seconds, she agreed, and with-in a few more seconds the “psychic operation” was finished. After that, the pain was gone, and wouldn’t return, according to the healer- as long as she “committed to believing in angels.” She agreed, it hasn’t returned, and she became a believer in the cosmic ways of the unseen.
So much more could be included here, but I wouldn’t want to deprive you of much gut-massaging laughter from the master herself- from her workshops, her book, and monthly her column, available at her website, www.bethlapides.com. But I will add this- one of the highlights for me among the many metaphysically-enlightening topics she touched on, was conveying the work of “Mr. Zero-Point-Astro-Physicist” Gregg Braden whose discoveries have come to boggle the mind. While Greg (Miller) displayed the images, she related that our DNA is emitting photons of light particles 24/7… AND therefore we are constantly creating our own universe with our thought-field. That, then, takes me back to the instructions on a bumper sticker I saw at a Grateful Dead show decades ago: “Think Good Thoughts!”
And speaking of psychedelic shows, on the way home through the desert I had just turned east and started thinking more about the “signs” shown to us in life- and right then a big “shooting star” (or was it?) came down across the eastern sky, except it was GREEN & it seemed to come down in an “S-curve.” “S” for “SIGN” perhaps?
I’ll ‘sign off’ now, until next time, reminding you that “Meditation AND Laughter are the BEST Medications!”
-In a rare desert offering, Beth and Greg’s (normally L.A.-housed) highly-effective “Un-Cabaret” Writing & Performance Workshop comes to Palm Springs 6-9 p.m. every Friday in June, beginning June 5th, at Hotel Zozo, 150 S. Indian Canyon Dr., P.S.I-Love-You 92262. For more info, visit their website at www.bethlapides.com or call (323) 993-3305 (Also occurring in Los Angeles on Sundays in June: see their website for more info)
-Sunny Sun-Downer, a Zen “Marxist” (as in Groucho) is director of the HAALOS Healing Arts Center, home of the Desert Karmapa Buddhist Center, located at 12078 Palm Dr., Desert Hot Springs CA 92240 For info on Healing Body-work, Meditation & Yoga please contact him at (760) 673-7580 www.conchustimes.blogspot.com email: conchustimes@yahoo.com
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