10 months in! This whole being a human thing ain't no joke!

Well hello out there!
I see that it has been 2 months since my last update! Sorry for the delay!
The reason for my delay in updating is that my life is sort of sweeping me away in this glorious way where I feel like each second is valuable and precious and my time is being well spent. What a change from 10 months ago where each second of my life was spent in anguish over the singular thought "My skin sucks!"
The physical condition of my skin is "still healing". It is not perfect by any means. It continues to break out, especially around my period, and big pockets that were formed during the worst of the breakout points are still filling in and regrowing new skin. I don't have any real idea of what it will look like when this is over, and to say that I don't worry about it would be dishonest. I do worry about it. A lot. But there is something in me that wants to see this through and to see what my body can do on its own. And the amazing thing is that tremendous healing has taken place already and continues daily! Every morning when I wake up my skin is in better shape than it was the day before.
I think the biggest change is in my mental and spiritual healing. In a way this whole skin thing and going through this horrific healing process has freed me in some way from my body consciousness. I actually go out with no make up on and just sort of display the healing process in a way I never, never could have done a year ago... and though I do get quite a few sympathetic and worried stares, I also find that the less I'm concerned with it, the less the people around me are concerned with it.
One huge change that happened in the last two months is that work opportunities have been presenting themselves and I have been forced out of my little cocoon, or rather gently nudged by some unseen hand. I've had several opportunities to read some screenplays and plays for future productions and have had many voice over auditions coming in. I've had friends in town for the holidays and other social events that have pulled me out into the light and there I've stood bravely and told people what I've been going through for 10 months. They all looked at me and with love and appreciation threw their arms around me and said "You are a brave girl! I wish you had told me, maybe I could have helped. In any case, I love you." And with each encounter I feel stronger and more determined to make it through this.
The biggest life change is in the value I now place on cultivating my spiritual health. I am more committed than ever and the change is profound. I now meditate in the morning and the evening for a half an hour. I have subscribed to lessons from the Self Realization Fellowship and I study and practice them faithfully. This is the institution set up by Yogananda to teach his yogic tradition to anyone who seeks to follow it. The information alone is a tremendous gift, but in addition I have received many additional blessings by following this path.
One moment sort of sticks out in my mind. I was reading a lesson about gurus, and what a guru is. Essentially a teacher who has fully realized his or her oneness with God and who then dedicates their lives and beyond this life to helping others find their oneness with God. Buddha is a guru, Jesus a guru too and Yogananda a guru to all students who follow his teachings. Anyway I was sitting there feeling rather helpless that I didn't have a guru in the flesh to sit with me and guide me and help me through my spiritual and life demands, and writing about it. The very next morning, my phone rang and it was a spiritual counselor from the Self Realization Fellowship who wanted to talk with me. She sat on the phone with me and talked with me from deepest love in her heart. One thing I was struggling with was this idea of dedicating one's life to God and how that is the highest priority of every human. I said, "Well, what does that mean for me? Am I to give up on being an actress and dedicate myself to the life of a renunciate? Do I become a nun and live in an ashram?" And as I ask the question I kind of feel my heart breaking. I can do that, if that is what God asks of me, but I'm so confused. And this counselor says so sweetly, "Dear One, where He has placed you, there He must come. Play the role you have been given to the best of your ability. Dedicate your acting to God, play for God. What a beautiful thing that is!" And it was like this huge tremendous weight was lifted off my shoulders. I went out that day feeling the great blessing that had been sent to me in this phone call. And then this great thing happened. I was in the mall and I stopped to eat a pretzel on this bench. I'm watching people walk by me. And because I'm sort of open and hypersensitive since this phone call, I'm sort of feeling this undulating wave of the unhappiness of mankind swelling over me. I see 2 teenage girls walk by me, one pretty severely obese and I see her make eye contact with me and duck her head in shame, I see some teenage boys walk by and stare me up and down and then elbow each other and say some snide comment about their sexual conquering power. And I'm seeing all this, and I'm separate from it, but I'm a part of it. I am a human and these are my fears and worries and feelings too. So I sort of have this thought, like "How are we ever to find our way to God from this world of tremendous suffering? How do we live in kindness and love and compassion and calmness and bravery, when we are met with such hostility and pain?" and then I just say "Where He has placed me, there He must come." And I just repeat it, over and over and over until I just feel this huge freedom and peace. So I get up and I go into Target and as I'm going to leave, right at the exit I'm going out, in walks one of my very favorite actors. This is an actor that I have been watching 0n TV and saying over and over, "Oh man, I hope I get to work with him someday!" And here we are at this exact moment, passing each other in Target. And I'm just so moved and swept away by this perfection... that it is this actor, at this place, at this precise moment in time, and all the things this encounter represents for me, this power showing me that I am where I need to be, that I am doing the right work, that there is a perfect organizing power and that I am as much a part of the big moving picture that is life as everything else is. And that as we turn more and more to it, it reveals more and more of itself to us. All we have to do is turn!
So my fellow travellers, this is where I am 10 months in. I've got a ways to go in this process, but I feel like at least now I know that I'm walking on the right path! I send you all love and courage on your journeys and wish you all countless joys, blessings, love, abundance and health for 2009 and beyond!