🌑 Go Where the Love Is

it’s a new moon in aquarius 🌑

Vertical color collage featuring a large image of a young brown skinned woman in a jaunty pose in the foreground wearing seventies fashion including a multicolored patterned sweater-vest and shirt with a patchwork of various bright colors and patterns in the background

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LOVE CLUB STARTS NEXT WEEK!

💓 the first rule of LOVE CLUB is definitely do talk about love... with everyone. all the time. forever. (especially self-love) 💓

My first offering of 2024 is LOVE CLUB, a four week course starting Valentine’s Day. Come explore your barriers and openings to love through teaching, contemplation, and connection. Wednesdays, February 14–March 6 // 6–8pm ET // On Zoom & Recorded. More info below.

💓 REGISTER HERE 💓

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Listen to me read this essay:

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Hi friends

Happy Lunar New Year! 🧧🐲🧧 I hope you’re healthy and well and being kind to yourselves. Always. Thank you for being here.

So, I took an all-day clowning workshop last Friday. I am as surprised as you when I say that this experience provided me with deeper insights than the plant medicine ceremony I attended the following day. I’ve written here before about the various medicines I’ve encountered in my many decades of exploring consciousness and healing. I won’t provide any additional hot takes about those right now. Not today. Today, I’m here to talk to you about the medicine of clowning! 🤡

Hear me out…

A while ago, I was working with my delightfully-deep coach and friend,

Chela Davison

, exploring ways to unravel the repressions that inhibit me. Some coaches help you organize your systems (I know that’s useful too). Chela goes deep into the heart of what’s impeding your excellence. I already understood that I was in danger of getting severely stuck playing the role of “teacher & author”– a disenchanted performance that led to praise but also cut me off from authentic freedom. I had explored many ways to release these constrictions. Yet, I also continued to harbor fundamental fears of being fully seen (hence the entire-ass book I wrote on belonging). I had been well-tamed by our dominant culture (and certain spiritual ideologies) to reign myself in, act the part, hide the messy bits (but also dull my shine). Chela helped me articulate goals to teach & write from a more vulnerable and spontaneous place that welcomes both depth and delight.

And while I continue to become more comfortable with the challenges I named in You Belong (from public speaking to the erotic to seeing & allowing all of me), there are ways I still feel inhibited and stuck in patterns of shame and inauthenticity. Although I consider myself a fairly funny person, I tend more towards wit than slapstick. Certain people bring out my silly side (shoutout to my buddy La!), but generally I have a hard time being authentically goofy. Looking foolish frightens me.

Chela is the one who suggested clowning. Two years ago. I finally made the time.

I assumed there would be other first timers at the one-day introduction offered by Clown Gym (which I keep misremembering as Clown College – always the overachieving immigrant!). In fact, I was the only student completely new to performance. Even the one person I met before ( serendipitously, in the same plant medicine community over a year ago… the odds?!), even she had already done months of training in improv and clowning.

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“Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great.” — Cher

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I was about to look hella foolish. [And possibly great? Spoiler alert… no.]

In one of the probably tens of thousands of small, mirrored rehearsal rooms in Times Square, I circled up with several long time clowns, many actors, and a few much-more-experienced-than-me non-performers. Our instructor, Michelle Matlock, immediately pulled curtains to cut us off from our reflections and proceeded to lead us in various warm-ups and games. She then meditatively guided us to remember when we first heard the word “no” in response to our natural expressions and actions, bringing us back to those moments as babies and children. She invited us to explore feelings, sensations, movements, and vocalizations as our “childlike, not childish” selves. We were instructed to interact with various objects placed around the room and, eventually, with each other.

Eighteen of us — multiple genders and races, many nationalities and ethnicities, aged mid-twenties to sixty-something — crawled around the room, babbling and singing. We loped and skipped and bounced. People gathered in pairs and small groups to play. She encouraged us to get vulnerable, repeating over and over “If you’re not uncomfortable, what are you even doing?” She assured us that a unique inner clown existed within each of us, underneath the blocks and restrictions we had accumulated over the years. The entire process was meditative and moving. It was also collective — so, while it felt awkward, I didn’t feel fearful.

My meditation training came through, yet I encountered the familiar challenges of staying with my felt experience rather than going into commentary or analysis. I noticed how often I watched myself with the imagined gaze of an other, tiptoeing the line between flowing performance and strained performativity. I experienced an embarrasingly immense amount of māna/comparing mind (i.e. straight-up judgements of my fellow clowns). These are all things that are often revealed to me in other contemplative spaces. But because clowning is fundamentally about humor, what was becoming most apparent was that I had definite opinions of who I thought was funny and not, of what type of clown I preferred (which I maturely intuited was more about me than them). In addition, I observed that I felt fairly comfortable moving my body (thank you 5rhythms and ecstatic dance and queer clubs everywhere), however I was less comfortable freely vocalizing. 🤔

Having never previously enrolled at clown college (nor any acting/improv/performance class), I did not anticipate that we would be required to perform by ourselves in front of “an audience.” Doh! The final exercise involved each of us getting from one side of the room to the other based on laughs. DOH! When people laughed, we could step forward. When they did not, we were forced to step back, and back – until we got another laugh (or until we had to leave the stage). Michelle insisted that we not give each other any sympathy laughs whatsoever.

It was fascinating to watch the experienced clowns. Some dropped their pants and gestured wildly to get us giggling. The naturals got across quickly on little. One newer clown (a novelist who has taken multiple workshops) was the funniest by far. All he did was stand and stare at us with a huge goofy smile on his face. I could not stop laughing at him all the while asking aloud through tears, “Wait, I don’t understand. Why is he SO funny?” Michelle offered each person thoughtful and precise feedback, including subtle critiques for those who had garnered easy giggles. She repeatedly emphasized three things: presence, listening, and serving others (i.e. giving the audience what they want from you).

My turn came. I was one of the last to go which meant people were tired and the laughs were not as easily won. I was able to sense my nervousness (a tingle in my belly, a flurry of thoughts). I also felt the thrill of doing something completely novel and spontaneous (a thumping in my chest, the speed of my breath). I had no template or routine to fall back on, so I waved a hanky to elicit the first chuckles. I moved forward. People kept laughing. Then, after about thirty seconds, Michelle interrupted me.

“What are you doing? Why did you stop moving forward? People are laughing and you’re just standing there. You’re not listening.”

That snapped me to awareness. I started over. I don’t even remember what I did for the next minute (something with my face and arms I think), but I did pay attention to the laughs I provoked. When I finally made it across, I did my debrief with Michelle.

She looked at me utterly perplexed and asked again why I did not move forward with the laughs I got. I admitted, “I was looking at the people who weren’t laughing.”

She looked relieved. “Oh, that’s what was going on! I could not figure it out. I kept wondering what the heck you were doing up there.”

I continued, “Once I paid attention to the people laughing, it was so much easier.”

She looked at me like I was the dumbest person in the room (which, at that moment, I definitely was) and said, “Not everyone is going to find you funny.” [That was abundantly clear. One guy looked like he was forcibly withdrawing laughs from the air in front of him.] Then she added this:

“Go where the love is. Why are you going where it’s not?”

Oh. Geez!

Is Michelle my new guru? Is clowning my new spiritual practice? [You know I’m kidding. Also, only some of you will have found that funny, and I am A-okay with that!]

Well, Master Clown Michelle, to answer your question: I’m “going where it’s not” because I’ve been repeating patterns of longing for love that’s not on offer since way before I got to your workshop. Probably since I got to this planet. It’s hard to “go where the love is” when there’s a maze of trauma between you and it. Through no fault of their own, the adults around me weren’t great at presence, or listening, or helping me find the joyful path from one side of the room to the other. Yes, many people have never found me funny (or smart, or interesting, or attractive, or tolerable). That has never stopped me from constantly seeking their approval. But I’m working on it.

This does not mean that I don’t want positive feedback (or laughs). Actually, feedback is vital to understanding if my presence is having any impact. As I’ve been mentioning, I believe it’s an all-hands-on-deck moment for our world, and I am committed to contributing what I can to our collective awakening (before we blow this place up). Mine is one single needle point of an acupuncture prick in an Earth-sized body riddled with ailments. I hope I contribute to our healing. And, I’m trying to be less caught up in worrying about if some people appreciate my tiny treatment or whether they even believe in acupuncture at all.

I long ago turned off the subscribe/unsubscribe notifications for this newsletter. I do not know who comes or goes or pays or when. I practice using my body and voice. I practice trusting that those of you reading are laughing with me.

May we each find our unique way into presence, listening and serving others.

With love,

Sebene

P.S. 10% of February’s paid subscriptions will go to Mobile Mini Circus for Children, an NGO founded by someone I met in 2001 on a silent retreat in Thailand. David started MMCC and its Social Circus Pedagogy in 2002 as his response to the war in Afghanistan and has now served over 4 million in conflict zones around the world. Thank you for your support.

Also, a reminder that although I will no longer be running my Cosmic Collage! workshops, I’ll be releasing last year’s recordings for free close to their astral events. Here’s the one for the Lunar New Year. Happy Year of the Wood Dragon! 🌑🐲🌑

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LOVE CLUB

A 4-week Course Exploring Love, Starting Valentine’s Day

Wednesdays, February 14 — March 6

6–8pm ET // On Zoom & Recorded // $240 (or 3 payments of $80)

Learn more and register here

💓 LOVE... Four letters. Boundless territory. 💓

LOVE is used to describe our relationship to everything from romance to family to pizza. Most songs are written about it, every genre tackles it, lots of us are seeking it, and many of us feel inadequate about it. But can anyone who is willing to talk about it really fail at LOVE? Let's definitely do talk about this in LOVE CLUB!

Centering self-love, LOVE CLUB will explore our personal boundaries and openings to LOVE.

Through teaching, contemplation, and connection, we will explore our own longings and aspirations for LOVE. We will examine our ideas about LOVE, understanding the societal roots of our limitations and misconceptions. And, together, we will nurture an embodied, interconnected, sacred LOVE within ourselves that includes self/other/nature/everything.

If the price of this course or the payment plan are a hardship, please email me at connect@sebeneselassie.com for a pay-what-you-can option.

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If you’d like to practice with me in person:

I’ll be back at Omega Institute three times in 2024! In May, with my friends Jeff & Dan for Meditation Party. In June for The Greatest Love of All with Dawn, Kate and La. And in October for an encore with Dan & Jeff. Scholarships are available for all three programs.

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