Two years in Hollywood working to adapt my comic series into a TV show was doing my head in.
Even though I went out there with a handful of books published, press and awards under my belt, I was dismissed as a "baby writer" by anyone with a non-zero IMDB credit. The anger sent me into cafes week after week, a schmuck on a laptop in a sea of other schmucks on laptops, creating new series that my single-lane manager didn't know how to sell.
The series option that brought me out west had bound me to great producers but an emotionally unstable showrunner, and before I knew it, the studio's interest waned, the option expired without renewal. From that point, I marked lines in pencil on the walls of my Los Feliz rental as the floodwaters of my pilot script sale receded month by month.
All around me – in my feeds, around the world – the burst abscess of U.S. politics had coated everything in sickness, exposing the nerve-jangled raw flesh beneath. Inside and out, I was in a bad place, taking it out on myself and my partner.
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A night like any night: a party at my pal Sam's house high up on the slope of Mount Washington. I stood out on the wooden deck, my nostrils full of sun-toasted cedar and exceptional sativa, looking out over a cozy valley of softly lit homes. Voices from neighbors’ parties carried up the low valley to mix with our own laughter and chatter, turning the night into music.
In a crowd of my blunt-smoking, dubstep-twerking friends, I sat under a storm cloud for one, repeatedly struck by my own shame-lightning. Smoking and drinking to fuzz out The Town's chainsaw attack on the tiny bonsai of my "Brooklyn Graphic Novelist" persona. I’d devalued myself by jumping into a new medium on a new coast, and now I was wave-tossed by the unpredictable, uncaring TV business, fretting about next month's rent, gas prices, avocado prices, then eye-rolling at myself for it.
Holding up my left hand palm out, I leaned forward with increasing force against the spiny surface of a potted cactus until it began to bite into my skin at dozens of points. The sharpest spine punctured the tip of my middle finger, sparking behind my eyes as it slid into the red meat underneath.
ME [not pulling away]: Ooooooo... that fucking hurts.
A tattooed arm circled around my chest, hugged me, then recoiled:
SAM: Omigod... bro, WHAT are you doing?!
I stepped back from the cactus, the micro-serrated thorn ripping back out of my fingertip, already ruby-jeweled. Sam's eyes met mine – Sam, who IS a successful artist/entrepreneur in L.A., carefree and happy-go-lucky in the way not worrying about money allows you to be – and the clasp on my emotional purse loosened and dumped itself into his lap.
In those days, I was unable to cry (I'm better now), but without judgment or pity, Sam sat and listened to me, eye contact unwavering, empathy deep as I choked up the narrative of my own failure, my own ridiculous expectations for myself. After I exorcised myself, Sam waited a long beat, licked his lips, and asked me:
SAM: I see you standing in your own fucking way. Have you tried TM? Like, Transcendental Meditation? It changed my life.
Meditation? That was his advice? I was not impressed. I'd heard of Transcendental Meditation many times before, but since I'd heard it was prohibitively expensive, something for movie stars and CEOs, I'd never tried. But in this moment – when I was raw, surging with anger and fear, flailing wildly – I had to admit:
ME [talking to myself]: I... I need help.
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I'd tried to meditate before over the years, in multiple styles:
- My dad's Scientologist friend gave me a Dianetics-adjacent book in high school, before my parents barred him from being alone with me. I didn't vibe with it: the important stuff was too buried inside the Scientology lingo to sink in.
- After a friend gifted me Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, I tried reading but didn't finish it. I tried the Zen style but spent my meditations wondering what I would eat when I was finished.
- Lying prone in shavasana at the end of yoga class, the mammal pheromones in the air punted my subconscious past chill straight into vivid sexual fantasy.
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I should mention here: I was an all-day weed smoker since age 20 [I was 42 then, so 22 years running]. Being high informed my taste in film/art/music [the weirder the better, mannnnn], my creative process [I'd convinced myself I couldn't be inspired without it], it was how my social bonds were formed.
All this factors into what follows.
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The closest Transcendental Meditation (from here: TM™) Center turned out to be a short walk from my home in Los Feliz. They offered a free 5:30 pm orientation class that I signed up for online.
A few days later, I walked over to Hillhurst. The TM™ Center was, like everything in Los Angeles, an address in an anonymous strip mall with mirrored windows.
When the door unlocked at 5:30 pm on the dot, a skinny man named Jesse and a puffy woman named Tricia greeted me and the dozen other hot messes who waited outside in a sloppy queue. Checking each of us against the website-submitted attendance list, Jesse welcomed me:
JESSE: Welcome, Daniel. Please come in, take a seat. There's bottled water if you like.
ME: Thanks. [noticing his sparkly gold earring] I like your earring.
He looked at me, silent, trying to suss out if I was making fun of it. I wasn't, but clearly my compliment landed sideways and I came off dickish.
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The TM™ Center looked like a converted dental office: a large waiting room with beige walls and linoleum rug, a circle of also-beige folding chairs, a wall-mounted TV. Slowly, the group filed in, took bottles of water and then their seats.
Then Jesse and Patty spoke:
PATTY: Today's orientation is designed to give you the broad strokes about the TM™ Technique and explain how your life can benefit from its practice.
JESSE: The first falsehood I want to dispel is that TM™ is absolutely not a religion or a philosophy. It's a technique with scientifically measurable physiological results.
PATTY: I have to ask – by show of hands – who-all's here because things have been harder for you since the President took office.
Almost everyone's hands went up, except for the neckbeard who didn't take off his mirrorshades. He folded his arms, cleared his throat.
JESSE: TM™ Centers across the country are busier this year than ever, so the Foundation is cutting our course price by 75% to help as many people as possible. So... good news. [weak fists up] Yay.
We went around the room, introducing ourselves and revealing what we hoped to get from TM™. Most folks said "focus," "peace," but when my turn came I figured fuck it, they're all strangers, I can be vulnerable:
ME: I want to control my emotions. I want to stop hating myself.
The room got quiet. From across the circle, Jesse's eyes burrowed into mine and he nodded, stone-faced. What he reflected back at me was... a recognition, maybe? But while his energy was clear and calm, mine was jagged, hot.
The class continued with a very-2000s-style PowerPoint explaining the four-day structure of the course, should we choose to sign up, which payment forms they accepted, the sliding scale they offered. And then:
PATTY: One last thing: if you're a drinker or a drug user, we ask that you refrain from that for two weeks before starting the course.
JESSE [looking directly at me]: Yes. This allows the brain chemistry to stabilize before you receive your mantra, which will yield better results.
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I did that. It was easy, and also... not easy.
I was an all-day weed smoker since age 20 [I was 42 then, so 22 years running]. Weed isn't addictive, but it was the grease on my creative wheels for a long time. Stopping cold-turkey meant sitting for two weeks in my usual cafes all day, staring into blank pages, or worse, panic-typing flavorless garbage for a few hours and calling it a day by 3 pm.
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Two weeks later, I had my first of four classes, scheduled consecutively for four days. The first session followed the PowerPoint exactly: explanation of the technique itself, the reasons for its benefits, then a group meditation.
PATTY: After we meditate together for 20 minutes, one of us will invite you individually into one of the smaller rooms in the back.
JESSE: This is where you will receive your mantra.
Our group meditation was chill. I sat in my chair, hands on my knees. I listened to other people breathing. Was this it?
After we were instructed to open our eyes, Jesse stood up, walked outside our circle until he stood behind me. He tapped me on the shoulder, and I followed him.
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The small room had a Turkish rug on the floor, bare walls, a small altar with some Hindu art and statues. There was a wooden chair for Jesse and a chair for me. He lit an incense – Nag Champa classic – and gestured with an open palm for me to take a seat in my chair.
Jesse sat, folded his legs, his eyes fixed on the statue of many-armed Shiva. He began to chant in a language that was definitely of Indian origin, probably Sanskrit.
He chanted softly, enunciated several sentences, and then looped back to repeat them with slight variations on the melody.
I stared ahead, listening. The sentences were getting shorter. Jesse was paring them down with each loop until he'd settled on two syllables that he repeated and repeated and repeated.
It was relaxing me, the softness of his voice with the incense. I began feeling slightly separate from my body as his voice pronounced those two syllables more clearly, louder, louder.
I looked over at him. He was looking at me; his eyes flashed like: are you getting it?
ME [realizing]: Oh... this is my mantra.
Closing his eyes slowly, Jesse nodded, continuing to speak my mantra as I closed my eyes too and followed his voice... inward.
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I won't type those two syllables here. They are for me, within me, even today.
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I took the mantra and held it in my mind as colors began pulsating, radiating outwards from a center point in front of me, rings of color swallowing me in their wake as they passed over my head and shoulders to disappear behind me. Was I perceiving time? Was this just capillary vessels on the insides of my eyelids?
I had the distinct feeling of moving slowly forward through space, toward the origin of those colors. Kind of like being in a slow canoe.
Silently, inside my mind, I repeated the mantra, slowly, steadily. The tunnel of colors pulsed with my breath, and as I spoke the syllables, I felt the faces of people I knew looking back at me from within those colors and then–
Jesse's fingers on my shoulder.
ME [out loud]: OH.
My eyes snapped open, looked up at Jesse. He looked down, wise and kind.
JESSE [whispering]: I know. Go take a walk. I hope you can share what you felt in tomorrow's session.
Walking back out onto Hillhurst, I was stunned: the noise in my head/heart was quieter, the sunlight clearer. Something tight in my ribcage had loosened its grip, and I pulled my breath deeper down into myself as I walked home.
When I came through the door, my partner, L., peeked out from the kitchen:
L.: So? How was it? [watching me] Oh. Oh wow, you're... different.
ME: It worked. Like, right away.
L.: I wanna do it too.
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And nearly every day since then – 8 years now – I have sat still and gone deeper inside myself, diving (with practice) below what I call "the garbage patch", the useless chatter floating on the surface, into a calm and steady place.
This has served me through the pandemic, through layoffs, through falling-outs with creative partners. It is perhaps the best tool for life.
It did, as Sam promised, change my ability to handle everything.
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Often I wonder how different my life would have been if I had been taught to meditate much earlier, in elementary or middle school. How much more control I could have had over my emotions, my reactions, how much more confidence and focus that would have given me with social situations, navigating academia, romantic relationships.
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And also, it is a practice in motion. I don't actually follow the TM™ Technique by the book anymore. My own practice permits me to let go of things – sitting positions, times, breathing, walking in silence instead of sitting, even the mantra has gone away and comes back when I want it to – constantly, constantly changing, day by day, just like the rest of me.
But the mantra works.
