Hooray for Hollywood

You tell me you need a friend.
The holidays are tough.

So I leave the comfort of home
and drive to out to see you.

It's Christmas night and
 I am still
putting myself together as well.

Helping you, just might help me.

I pick you up
and take you to the drugstore across the street.
It's open.

I want you to see people,
I want you to see life.

This place is as good as any.

I never had all the answers
but I can share
what I've learned.

All is Brahman.

The sadness and joy.
The loneliness and love.
The grace and the longing.

I want you to see the world differently.
I want you to see yourself in the eyes of strangers.

Connect with this world you feel so disconnected from.

If you can see the light in this place, in these people,
then there is hope for you,
hope for  me-
hope for this world.

Each one of these strangers is an opportunity.
Each an opportunity to be brave.

Be brave.

We leave, there is nothing more to teach you here.

So I take you to a place
where dreams fight to stay alive, but mostly die.
I take you to the streets of  Hollywood.

The tourist
The street people
The lights

All is Brahman.

We walk in the cold,
even on Christmas the streets are full of people.
Each one invested in the illusion.
Believing in the separation between one another.

They want the lights
They want to be close to something bigger than themselves
They want their names written on the side walks

They want to feel something is happening.

And it is.

Something is happening here,
and everywhere if you know how to see.

detach from the illusion-
let it go.
forgive
the trash of this world

Each piece of trash is an opportunity
to become the enlightened soul that you already are,
but won't admit.

you can't teach anyone to be anything they're not.
the desire to be something else than what you are, is why you suffer.

You don't need to be anything else.

Be sad, be angry, just be.

In that acceptance,
is silence.

In that silence,
will come the answer you need so desperately
and had all along.

In that silence
you will understand,
your thoughts are not you.

the past-
its gone
but what happened, is exactly the way it was suppose to.

its what you needed to get here,
so that you get there.

and even if everything
I've said amounts to nothing.

It is all I know.
It is all I can teach you.

There in the dirty street
There in a song
There in  the face of a man begging for change.

It is all you.
You created it all.

To get to this present moment.

We head back to the car,
there nothing left to learn tonight.

Outside the McDonald's
I see Marilyn Monroe's
name on Hollywood Walk of fame.

I ask you to take a picture of me next to it,
free of irony.

In the grand illusion,
and in the absence of flowers this will do.

All Brahman