There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.

—Friedrich Schiller

It all started late one night when I clicked on a link a distant cousin had sent me in June. Crouched in front of my computer, my eyes glued to Google Video, I watched as quantum physicist Laurence Gardner hypnotized me with the world’s most fascinating lecture. Ever. It seems scientists recently rediscovered an ancient form of gold that, when isolated in a single atomic state, levitates, corrects damaged DNA and triggers clairvoyance.

Twenty minutes in, I was obsessed.

“I gotta get me some of that,” I muttered as I dozed off, dreaming of synchronized brain hemispheres and zero-point energy.

My best friend Jowharah came over the next day wearing dry-clean only and makeup, clearly holding a different intention for the Kari Feinstein Style Lounge party (celebrities and attendant swag) than I was.

“Are those heels?” I admonished, genuinely shocked.

En route to Erewhon for some quick tonic sustenance, I gushed about monatomic gold and its larger implications for interdimensional travel and enhanced creativity. Tonics in hand and a spring in our synchronized steps, we hurried back to Jowharah’s car only to find a station wagon inexplicably double parked behind it. Next to the station wagon was a black SUV, from which a buttoned-down man and a pink-haired woman unloaded box after box, adding them to a steadily growing stack in front of Jowharah’s trunk.

In an otherwise empty parking lot, we were blocked in.

I spied a familiar-looking mop of curls leaning into the back seat of the car.

“Are you David Wolfe?” I asked.

“Yes, I am,” beamed the raw-food guru/author/public speaker, in town for his Best Weekend Ever optimal-health-geek workshop, scheduled to start the next day.

I asked if he knew anything about monatomic gold.

“I’m holding 60 bottles of it in my hands,” he said as he carried a large cardboard box to the pile behind Jowharah’s car.

A mile-wide smile hijacked my face as he offered me a sample.

“You might pass out in about half an hour,” he said as he deposited three drops of slime under my tongue. “Or you might be flying high.”

I flew so high, I practically floated into the Benedict Canyon mansion hosting the Style Lounge, where Jowharah and I filled massive tote bags with what was to be an early Christmas for our friends — chocolate and hair products and light dimmers and more chocolate.

“This is the Best Weekend Ever!” Jowharah and I sang in unison as we rolled down a beautiful, windy Beverly hill as the sun set.

The next day, at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz, where Wolfe was hosting his Best Weekend Ever, I found myself surrounded by a couple hundred people with names like Super Goji Girl, Happy Oasis and Nature Boy. Beaming beauties with glowing skin and sparkly eyes milled about the grounds, amped up for a weekend of lectures, panel discussions and product demonstrations by the cream of the crop of organic-wellness vanguards and optimal-health pioneers. I scoped the products for sample and sale — raw food stuff, books, magnets, supplements and .?.?. gasp! .?.?. MONATOMIC GOLD!!!

A hundred bucks later, I clutched my very own miron violet glass bottle of ORMUS (or what they call Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements) and took my seat for the first lecture of the day: “ORMUS: What Is It? The Matrix of Consciousness.”

Barry Carter, the leading authority on monatomic gold, spoke for more than an hour about the practical applications for ORMUS and how to make your own.

Clearly, I was kvelling.

Supercharged on yet another meaningful coincidence and the gooey dose of monatomic gold I gulped down before the lecture, I spent lunch chilling out and chatting with herbalist/author Brigitte Mars about women’s reproductive issues and herbal contraception.

By late afternoon, my brain was a lumpy pile of mush. I was reluctant to miss HRM’s lecture on sun gazing (his full name is Hira Ratan Manek, and he fasted for 411 days, nourished by nothing but water and sunlight), but seeing how this really was the best weekend ever, the Elevate Festival beckoned. I raced to Jowharah’s to change.

“Again with the heels?” I joked as we hurried out into the night.

This year’s Elevate Festival was held at the Kodak Theatre, which boded well for the Elevate crew and its massively successful project, and not so well for those of who had to brave the vortex of chaos and confusion that is the corner of Hollywood and Highland for an evening of socially relevant short films.

We parked at a friend’s apartment on La Brea and Franklin to avoid exorbitant parking fees. Halfway across Franklin, Jowharah stopped dead in her wobbly high-heeled tracks.

“We’re hitching!” she announced.

A dozen cars passed by. We kept our thumbs to ourselves. A black economy car approached from the distance.

“This is it,” said Jowharah.

She flagged down the car. It stopped. The passenger window lowered to reveal a smiling man.

“I know you!”

Turns out Bob and Jowharah were in acting class together back in New York. They reminisced while Bob shuttled us to the theater.

Stilt walkers and performance artists darted in and among the crowd while we waited to take our seats. I literally ran into Rainbeau Mars — fellow Ashtanga yogini and daughter of Brigitte, the herbalist whom I’d spoken to at lunch.

Inside, with three minutes left on the Elevate countdown meter projected onto the screen, the young man in front of me twisted around and asked, “What do you do?”

“I write,” I told him.

“Do you ever write about synchronicity?”

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