🌕 In My Experience... Erotic Presents & Presence & Presents

it's a full moon in pisces 🌕

Image ID: “Erotic Presence” Color collage diptych (separated and framed by Amharic script) with on the left: an illustrated background of green patterns and white flowers overlayed with two cards from the Motherpiece tarot deck (the world and judgement) and a color [photo from the eighties of a young black masculine person b-boying in front of a crowd; and on the right, an illustrated background of an autumn scene of a water way with two indigenous people in a canoe and overlayed images of a young black femme person in a leaotard, an Ethiopian ibex, freeways with cars, a blue bird and a b/w photo of a woman looking through a camera.

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🥳Registration opens September 6th for ANCESTORS TO ELEMENT🥳

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Listen to me read this essay:

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Hi friends

Summer in this hemisphere is coming to an end! 😭😭😭 It’s been such a beautiful one for me. Except for a couple of trips upstate to teach at Omega, I’ve been in Brooklyn all season reveling in an abundance of visitors, sharing meals in my home, stomping around this glorious city (and many times up and down a flower-filled High Line). And it’s not over yet… I have a trip planned to the west coast to see my many loves in El Ay (and my friend Valincy’s debut solo show 🙌🏾), and then I go to Seattle for a PNW adventure with my sis-in-law, Julie.

I hope this full super moon is finding you connected to some distinct and delightful joys in your precious life, no matter how small or fleeting. Being in watery Pisces, it may also surface some powerful emotions. Be easy on you.

Last Monday I went to see the uber-talented Larry Krone at Joe’s Pub for his show, What a Difference! — a tender, moving, and funny exploration of estrangement that celebrates chosen family through song, stories, and spectacular costume changes (his chant to the ancestors had me in tears from the get go). It was perfect timing, as this week has provided me significant familial, um, exfoliation. One of the many gifts of the pandemic was space and time to more fully understand the profound intergenerational messes of my lineages (I’m trying out new words besides the now muddled term “trauma”). I am also re-appreciating how deep friendships have substituted as family for me. Larry’s show was the perfect mirror as I too have found freedom by actively choosing either connection (yes!) or boundaries (no!) with various people (regardless the shared biological data between us).

I can write that clearly enough. To live it has taken years of healing, practice and perspective. Only now do I see how the majority of the pain and heartache I experienced around fractured family relations was because of an idea that genetics should make them feel more natural or at least fit a minimum baseline of congruence.

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Image ID: IG post from @astridschmidt_ with image card “Normalize periods of Estrangement” and post text reading: Normalize periods of Estrangement // When recovering from family dysfunction space in the form of boundaries - or total estrangement - often becomes necessary. // This space can be temporary or permanent. // Estrangement can be a powerful expression of self-love // Estrangement is taboo in a dysfunctional family/culture that says “stay enmeshed” // Staying enmeshed = handing over your precious life force to feed the dysfunction. Boundaries & space starve dysfunctional forces which angers it.

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I realize that until very recently I pathologized family estrangement, and therefore expended a bonkers amount of energy maintaining connections out of a sense of duty rather than desire. Since my days as a women’s studies minor (there was no major at McGill back then let alone “gender studies”), I’ve been aware that sensing my own needs is integral to any sense of the erotic. But cutting off my wants for the sake of what is culturally expected was my norm for so long that, even though I could rationally critique the patriarchal patterns, I would not abandon my habits of sacrifice. Squashing my own deepest knowing and intuition for what was assumed for me as a daughter, sister, and woman denied my own desire.

I’m especially curious about this, how disconnection from the erotic often originates in ancestral confusion (once again, didn’t say trauma). In my lineages, I side-eye the long ago (i.e. before European invasion) adoption of Christian ideology (no shade to Jesus). Patriarchy and imperialism and their resulting destructions predate colonization in many lands. The accompanying dogmas promoted distortions of desire and the erotic and denigration of the body (especially female) and sexuality. In my homeland cultures, these belief systems perpetuated suppressions and oppressions of older, egalitarian, sacred ways of knowing. I feel myself mending and healing these erotic disconnections through every exuberant “yes” and firm “no.”

In response to the new moon erotic disruption post, someone submitted a question (not included below). It stood out to me because the person interpreted “erotic disruption” as a negative concept. That was not my intention — I was describing these disruptions as good for me. But the question did make me consider the flip side as erotic disconnections or disturbances, which sparked the above reflection on how disconnection from the erotic often does originate in ancestor troubles. Ancestral distortions of the erotic are a central theme of the hybrid memoir I hope to write one day 😬 because, of course, similar ideologies exist in many societies and affect so many of our lineages… So thank you for that question and definitely more to come!

I received wonderful submissions for this month’s In My Experience... Thank you everyone. I cannot answer them all, but I tried my best to address many of the themes. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for being here.

With love,

Sebene

P.S. In honor of Black August, 10% of August’s paid subscriptions will go to Communities Not Cages to support their efforts to end mass incarceration and overhaul New York’s racist and unjust sentencing laws. And because of the devestating fires, this month another 10% will go to Maui Aloha: The Peopleʻs Response through Hawai’i People’s Fund. Thank you for your support!!!

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ANCESTORS TO ELEMENTS

Reconnect to Nature, Mystery & Joy

Created for these challenging times, ANCESTORS TO ELEMENTS is a creative & soulful 6-week course designed to help you embody the sacred paradox of belonging: we are not separate AND we are not the same by reconnecting to nature, mystery, and joy.

This course creatively engages these two frameworks — elements and ancestors — as ancient & expansive metaphors for exploring how existence rests on a key paradox: you are absolutely interconnected with everything and you are also a uniquely independent being. Through six-weeks of inspiring live lessons, creative practices, journal prompts, guided meditations and community sharing, this course leads you to (re)discover your unique & sacred sense of belonging.

Main sessions will run on Zoom every Wednesday October 4 — November 13 from 6–8pm ET, with optional 1-hour practice/Q&A sessions on the following Mondays from 5–6pm ET. All sessions will be recorded.

There are three sliding scale payment options.

• Pay-It-Forward Price, $450: This option is for those who easily meet their basic needs of food, housing, transport & leisure... and then some.

• Full Price, $370: This option is for those who regularly meet their basic needs of food, housing, transport & leisure.

• Need-Based Price, $210: This option is for those who mostly meet their basic needs of food, housing, transport & leisure.

REGISTRATION OPENS ON THE SEPTEMBER 6th LAST QUARTER MOON

If the Need-Based Price is a hardship, there will be a limited number of pay-what-you-can scholarships available on a rolling basis – see the registration page when it opens (please do NOT reply to this post to request a scholarship).

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In My Experience...

Why do you say erotic power could disrupt some things?

Dear Erotic Presents (as in, display)

Thank you for a clarifying question. I imagine entire tomes could be written about this. I believe, as Audre Lorde taught us, that the erotic is rooted in the “power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.” For most of us, a LOT has been repressed or suppressed there. When I say it could disrupt some things, I imagine the erotic unleashing a tsunami’s worth of emotions and expressions — all that I’ve been taught to dismiss, deny, hide, or reject.

In My Experience… rather than a natural, flowing acceptance and communication of feeling, I was conditioned to present the erotic for exhibition and consumption — as I harness the erotic disruption of menopause, I engage the sensual and sexual in secure, sovereign & sacred expressions of love.

In You Belong, I wrote about relating to my sexuality as an object rather than a subject of my own desire. Let me quote myself: For many years I confused being desired with belonging and having a lot of sex with the erotic. Lorde describes how the degradation of the erotic in sex leads to a type of sex that is about the imprisonment of the male gaze, what she refers to as the pornographic. I remember in my early thirties, recognizing that I had learned to objectify myself through sex. I was an object executing sex, not a subject of my sensual experiences.

Being an older woman is liberating me from a sexuality based in presentation rather than sensation. Last week, I was telling my best friend Peter how middle age frees me from the need to be looked at (and talked at) by men. Some years ago, when I first began to experience the withdrawal of the male gaze, I admit it felt like the absence of the warmth of the sun. As a societally coronated “attractive” woman, I was, to put it simply, used to a fair amount of positive attention and reward. As a mostly straight-ish one, I had based much of my worth in that treatment. Now, my hair is mostly gray, my body scarred, my belly soft, and my mainstream value depreciated. AND I feel more secure because I base my erotic experience not in how I present, but in my own sensual presence (see below). As a self-adorned crone, I know my true worth (thank you to Ana for helping me see the connection between crown 👸🏾 and crone 🧙🏾‍♀️ and krone 💸!).

In addition, the end of my marriage and the decision to not actively seek coupledom (for now) has gifted me erotic sovereignty. Not only do I not base the erotic in how randos see me, I do not tie my sexual pleasure to one person’s desire of me. This has been crucial because, for most of my life, I regarded romantic couple-dom as the key to love. Untangling those patterns of co-dependence allows me to connect to the erotic from a place of personal, sensual empowerment — recognizing love in many glorious forms. Last week brought multiple delights, including a McGill friend reunion with people I first met 35 years ago this month and with whom I have fostered intimate connections and decades of beautiful memories: of trips ✈️ and trips 😵‍💫 and trips 🤕, of food and fun and failure, of difficulties and dance and death. According to Audre, ALL of this is the erotic too.

Finally, aging foregrounds mortality. Not that I need much reminding. Included in the gifts (🎁, get it?) of being so cancer-ish for so long is a deep appreciation for life and a curiosity about the mystery of existence. What Suleika Jaouad calls being “between two kingdoms.” Surrendering to the mystery of life’s inevitable ups and downs with a commitment to wonder and joy allows me to enjoy the erotic as an opening to the sacred invitation of existence itself: Because I am still alive, let me explore sensual presence in every moment.

The best sex I've ever had was after my partner & I meditated together, so I'm wondering what other practices are out there to increase presence within the body itself.

Dear Erotic Presence

Congratulations on connecting your meditation practice to your sexuality. I imagine that takes a certain amount of freedom. In the past, I’ve felt too inhibited to connect meditation and the erotic; I was taught to disconnect spirituality and sexuality. You (and others here) probably know more than me about specific practices… so, thanks for asking. Here’s how I relate to your question.

In My Experience… it’s called practice for a reason — ways of being that increase my embodied awareness inevitably increase my presence which enhances my experience of the sensual and ultimately serves erotic disruption.

Besides being an amazing week of friend reunions, last week was the third anniversary of You Belong. 🎉 They say, we teach what we need to learn.  I was actually reminding my own damn self when I emphasized in the book that it’s important to relate to mindfulness as embodied awareness (in these days of my non-didactic teaching era, I would add in my experience…). Let me continue the citation de moi: My connection to my body was tenuous. Rather than feeling what was happening, I was somewhat outside my experience watching the performance of sex, evaluating how I looked to my partner, analyzing whether there was sufficient satisfaction occurring, keeping score as to what had occurred and needed to occur. Disconnected from embodied awareness, from the erotic, sex was about comparing and competing with images and ideas I had absorbed through movies and popular culture. I’m not saying I never enjoyed sex or always felt disconnected. But I believed that lots of sex and many orgasms meant I belonged to some idea about sexual liberation. My pleasure was being tallied, not felt. I was disconnected from the erotic.

In my understanding, meditation is a method or practice, but mindfulness is the innate capacity for embodied awareness (aka sensual presence) that anyone can develop — yes, through meditation, but also through simply remembering at all that it exists. Sati, the Pali word that got translated as mindfulness (by those problematic Victorians) actually has an etymology and connotation of remembering. Remembering what? Remembering an integrated, mind/heart/body-based knowing of each moment. For years, I emphasized formal practices more than this innate capacity. “Meditator” and “meditation teacher” became identities (and maybe fetish). Now, I like to emphasize the capacity at least as much as the practice (and often more so), letting life itself become a natural interplay of forgetting and remembering.

What does that mean? Mostly being curious and connected. Anytime I remember (which is simply awareness that I’ve forgotten), I ask myself: Am I in presence? Do I feel connected to my senses? Which ones? Can I open my mind, heart, body, soul to sensuality in this moment? To what am I drawn? To whom am I drawn? What about sensuality that involves sexuality? What am I feeling? How do I explore the the riddle of “chemistry?” Why am I sexually attracted to one person and not another — are these just old (or societal) patterns playing out? How do I know? Do I know what it is I sensually desire? How do I like to be approached, spoken to, touched? Can I give it to myself? Can I ask for it from another? The curiosity is endless…

Often this kind of inquiry means slowing. the. fuck. down. I pause many many MANY times a day to practice what it feels like to reconnect to my senses – let’s call them erotic mini-disruptions: feel my feet, taste the tea, sense the hot flash, smell the spices, watch the sky, hear the traffic, sense the turn-on… know my sensations, emotions, thoughts.

I appreciate the moments — cultivating erotic presence inevitably bestows erotic presents.

How can someone who is still in the ‘mother’/fertile time of life, and with a long term partner, disrupt the erotic with the same liberation you speak of?

Dear Erotic Presents (as in, gifts)

Yay young people! Thank you for your commitment to liberation. May the seeds of erotic disruptions free the coming generations from the distortions of erotic disconnections and disturbances!!

In My Experience… if I could speak to young Sebene, I would invite her into a love and appreciation of every moment as a possibility for the available erotic disruptions that center joy & freedom & love — and while I don’t wish cancer (or any hardship) on her (or anyone), I would emphasize that pain is not a barrier to her liberation (and can even be a pathway to erotic power).

I was speaking with a friend recently about their incredible good fortune in this lifetime compared to my relative shit show of ongoing calamities (including relatives who are incredible shit shows). We mused about that concept that each of us is given only what we can handle and wondered if the universe has deemed them fundamentally incompetent (and, therefore, me a champion!). Here’s the chat from the celestial control room where circumstances are distributed according to capacities:

What about this one?

Who?

This one here. The one who will become, um, let me look it up… Sebene’s friend.

Oh. Them. Oh, yeah, no. Not that one. They can’t handle it. They can’t handle much. Not much at all, I’m afraid.

Poor thing. Let’s give them a stable relationship, good health, steady career…

We often look at it the other way, but, basically, I’m a total boss in the eyes of the cosmos.

But seriously, one of my all time favorite quotes is from bell hooks, who said this: One of the mighty illusions that is constructed in the dailiness of life in our culture is that all pain is a negation of worthiness, that the real chosen people, the real worthy people, are the people that are most free from pain.

Free from pain is often equated with full of pleasure. But I believe that’s a false equivalence. Believing that sensual, sexual pleasure is somehow unavailable to me because of any circumstance or identity: age, ability, size, culture, relationship status, the presence of pain, the absence of experience, messes/confusions/troubles, distortions/disturbances — that belief is simply a disconnection from the innate & sacred presents that any one of us can access, in any moment.

How we get there is the fun…

May we all embrace every erotic disruption as a gift on the sensual pathway to liberation.

xox

P.S. Please do yourself a favor and read or listen to the Uses of the Erotic essay. It is a gift to revisit regularly. Thank you Audre Lorde.