Several years ago, my wife Trudy and I were in Sedona to do a show. I don't know how many of you reading this have been to the mythical Sedona, but aside from boasting clear blue sky and rugged red mountains, Sedona has become the holy city for UFO aficionados, channelers, healers, psychics, and every other stripe of ascensioneer. Not that Sedona doesn't have problems that other cities have -- like crime, for example. But even crime in Sedona is different. White collar crime in Sedona generally involves people falsifying their astrological charts for job applications. And although Sedona has no red light district per se, young women are sometimes picked up and charged with committing "random acts of kindness" for money. In the past few years, what with the booming tourist trade, there have even been some muggings. But Sedona muggers are new age muggers. When they take your money, they ask you, "Why did you create this?" And as they flee, they always remember to say, "Thank you for sharing."

Anyway, Trudy and I were in a crystal shop (crystals are to Sedona what chicken fried steak is to Texas) and we were introduced to a guy who claimed to be a French psychic. Now I say introduced, but actually when I am traveling, I like to keep a low profile. So I never really said who I was or what I did. We had already left the store and were in our car when the French psychic came running out gesticulating for us to roll down the window. He pointed at me and said, "Groo-cho, groo-cho!"

Not knowing French, I was puzzled. He told me that he had seen my spirit guide sitting on my shoulder (apparently a commonplace perch for such beings, especially in Sedona) and the spirit guide's name was Groocho.

"Groocho?" I asked.

"Groocho," he said. "You know, Groo-cho." He made a wagging motion with his eyebrows and flicked an imaginary cigar.

"Ah, Groucho!" I said. He nodded emphatically. And with the message delivered, he waved and went back into the store.

Traveling in the circles I've traveled, I've encountered this kind of hit-and-run psychic reading before. But something about this one rang true. I've always had an affinity for Groucho. As a wisecracking schoolkid, I would often interrupt a lesson by declaring, "That's the most ridiculous thing I ever hoid." And as an adult, I've sometimes lapsed into Groucho, and even dressed up like him on Halloween. I loved the permission being Groucho gave me to be intrusive, pointed, insulting, even -- but all in a playful way.

And, of course, having spent my deformative years in New York where insult is considered an art and "tongue fu" is an honored form of self-defense, the Grouchoid persona served me well. But as I allowed myself to soften and become more vulnerable, I began to sense the limitations of this relentlessly iconoclastic humor. Being a deconstructionist in the 1930s -- as Groucho was -- is different from being a deconstructionist today when just about everything has already been deconstructed.

I have come to see that humor -- like any other cultural phenomenon -- can be either "trance-forming" or "transforming." In other words, the humor we choose to immerse ourselves in can either perpetuate suffering and limited thinking, or it can bring us to greater wisdom and love. The dominant cultural "trance" today seems to be cynicism, and the antidote is humor that is playful, innocent and defenseless. But to truly awaken, we also need humor that is as sharp as the "whack" of a Zen master's stick. Transformational humor, then, must be open-hearted and at the same time, pointed.

Without consciously intending to, I built this duality into the Swami Beyondananda character -- who has, in fact, been described as a cross between Gandhi and Groucho. The Gandhi part of the Swami represents the spiritual nature of humor, reminding us that laughter is a gift we can use to "make light of" -- and hence make peace with -- life's heavy situations. But lest we get too addicted to our higher selves (what Swami would call "hitting the Source a little too much"), there's Groucho ready to snap us out of high-falutin' spiritual trances. For example, whenever I hear someone say "Everything is perfect" -- while their facial expression indicates otherwise -- my inner Groucho usually replies, "Well, I'm glad to hear that, because I just stepped in some dog perfection and I'm tracking it all over your rug!"

I guess it's my Libran nature to want to integrate the duality of skepticism vs. open-hearted faith, and likewise the duality of tragedy vs. comedy. It has been said that comedy is tragedy in retrospect, and indeed we can all remember embarrassing moments that were horrifying and humiliating when they happened, but now are just funny stories. Perhaps it's time alone that "flattens" our suffering and brings a balanced perspective to painful events -- or as Groucho once said, "Time wounds all heels." But conscious laughter also puts experience in perspective -- and works a lot more quickly than time alone.

It occurs to me that any process of transformation must involve integrating the hidden or "shadow side." That's why I feel uncomfortable when individuals refer to themselves as "lightworkers." In focusing on only one side of the duality, they may not be prepared to do the "heavy work" of dealing with their own dark nature, aspects of themselves that will no doubt pop up sooner or later. As Carl Jung used to say, "That which we deny in ourselves we will meet on the path." Last spring, I had the opportunity to present at a weekend event called Embracing the Human Shadow. The event was held at a spiritual center which had recently been traumatized by a "betrayal" on the part of their guru. Where once the ashramites had thought of their center as a spiritually pure place free of evil, they now had to face their anger, sadness, and disillusionment.

After a moving ceremony on Saturday night which released grief and offered each individual the chance to walk through a spotlight and briefly act out their own "shadow," Swami Beyondananda was called upon to do his comedy. The next morning, numerous community members came up to me and described the "healing" that had taken place. Unbeknownst to me, I had done my comedy act on the same stage that the guru -- and in fact, numerous other spiritual masters -- had offered the highest and holiest wisdom. Seeing the Swami in his funny tie and rainbow turban enabled the audience to finally laugh at their own tragedy, and helped usher in a new level of healing and release.