🌕 In My Experience… I’m the Starfish
it’s a full moon in scorpio 🌕
Image description: “I Remember Who I Am” Collage with images left to right: A Masai woman standing outsize over a vast spring tundra landscape; a large brown hand holding a smart phone with a black and white image of our solar system taking up its entire front (also outsize on the landscape); an illustration of a person with long black hair wearing a grey dress standing on a black frozen lake reflecting the moon and stars surrounded by winter plants and birds and with cherry blossoms in a starry sky above.
Listen to me read this essay:
Next week, I begin teaching a 3–week course on grief and mourning and ways we can cultivate our own unique processes for exploring both. Let It All Out!: Cultivating Mourning Practices for Grief Release is happening Tuesdays, May 9, 16, & 23 from 6–8 pm ET on Zoom (and recorded for those who register). ✨REGISTER✨
Hi friends
Happy May! Can you believe we are a third of the way through 2023? What IS time?
Image description: Meme with the text, “Me: ‘I’m going to have a normal conversation’ Also me:” below which is a picture of a large-eyed blue alien stating, “Time is an illusion.”
Thank you for all the well wishes after my last newsletter (and my first Substack!). I’m doing fine. I’ve been to Toronto and back. I’m finding ways to stay inspired (singing every morning) and grounded (weekly acupuncture).
Yes, continually dodging death is kind of a harsh way to develop gratitude for living. If my brushes with mortality can serve a purpose here, let them be a clarion call for the preciousness of life.
I am grateful for every. single. day. 🥳🤸🏾♀️💛
And I am grateful that you subscribe. Welcome to all the new folks! I genuinely appreciate that people willingly give their time (and now, money!) to read about… well, me. It’s an odd thing to write & teach from my life “for a living.” It’s even more odd to have “an audience” for that.
I dedicated many years and much time to cultivating communities, developing a deep respect for what that entails and provides. And I have come to accept that besides the ephemeral communities of my online and in person offerings, community builder is no longer my role, for now.
However, I do long to have a connected, emergent, evolving, and, even experimental approach to whatever it does means to have an audience. Whether that’s breaking the fourth wall or the fourth dimension, I intend that my work be reverently relational, that it feel meaningful and impactful — for me and for you.
I don’t yet know all the what or how of this intention, but it reminds me of when I taught my first daylong retreat over a dozen years ago. It was for MLK day and there were a few of us newer teachers creating the agenda together. Each of us was given about forty-five minutes for a “talk” on sacred activism. I went the route of my popular education training and planned an experiential process involving a contemplative “wall talk.” Participants would do walking meditation while viewing a gallery of posters I created about spiritual activists from around the world. I then had everyone answer a series of writing prompts directly onto posted paper on the walls and circulate through the space a few times, reading and responding to each others’ comments. All of this in “silence.” After I explained my plan at a prep meeting, one of my co-teachers asked me, “But when will you do your dharma talk?” I responded, “That IS my dharma talk.”
Since I cleared the slate for the one year anniversary of my “advice column” (btw, I finally recorded the audio for that one and it’s linked in there now), I only received a few new questions. Most of these fell into a similar category, so hopefully, the below edition of In My Experience… will satisfy those who wrote in recently. I appreciate each of your inquiries and I save them all. 🙏🏾
If you’d like to submit a question for next month, please do so here.
Much love,
Sebene
P.S. On May 12th, I will be sharing the very first ever, soon to be monthly 🌗 Quarter Connections (my last–quarter–moon missive). This is for paying subscribers and it will consist of a list of 25 (Get it? Quarter Connections? How cute am I?) things which I am reading/watching/hearing/experiencing. You can subscribe here. The new moon and full moon newsletters will always remain free for all.
How do I live a great life while surrounded by suffering?
Dear I’m the Starfish
Thank you for this deceptively simple question. It sums up so much. Of course there’s the “surrounded by suffering” part that pierces my heart. Yet, what touches me in this moment is the phrase “a great life.” Do I even know what that means? Or am I still detoxing all the cultural conditioning around that idea? OOF!
Speaking of dharma talks — many of you know that there are sayings, stories, and an infinitesimal number of Mary Oliver poems that get rehashed at meditation retreats. Many of them are clever metaphors and analogies to help us integrate spiritual teachings into our attempts at a great life. I’m reminded of two.
First, the story about a beach filled with stranded starfish as far as length of the coast and a lone child at the shore throwing them back into the ocean one by one. A passerby questions whether this action matters given the impossibility of the overall task. The child picks up a starfish and says “It matters to this one.”
Second is the quote attributed to Swami Muktananda: You can't stop the waves but you can learn how to surf.
In My Experience… when I realize that, actually, I am that starfish (I am also all the starfish, the compassionate child, and the jaded adult), I can reclaim my intuitive, sacred devotion to the ocean of a great life (I am also the ocean) — only then do I willingly throw myself into the water to surf those magnificent waves with my fellow creatures… even though I get thrashed and tumbled, even though I crash to the shore again and again (sometimes kind kids throw me back), even though I witness the suffering (and cruelty) of all us starfish… because although I am merely a lone starfish – a brainless being – I am part of an oceanic universe, my movements synchronized with the moon, my being nurtured by the sun, my moments lived amongst water, light, rocks, plants, whales, birds, sky, stars, stories, souls, spirits, energy…
I (Sebene) yearn for cosmic connections like these because they nourish and delight, they attune me to my path & purpose — and that alleviates suffering.
I know almost nothing about starfish (except that brainless fact). I imagine them to be wholly (holy?) sensory beings, and I totally get that. I am finally coming to accept my own profound sensitivity — which I’ve often confused with fragility. Almost two decades of intense episodic illness had me develop a self–narrative of weakness. I have been rewriting that script for a number of years by acknowledging my body as incredibly strong and resilient for what I have braved (rather than frail or flawed from the impacts).
Right now, my conscious reprogramming is around understanding that I experience illness not because I am fragile, but because I am sensitive. That sensitivity is the portal into my intuition, my purpose, and my power — I vow to protect and nurture it!
There is just so much happening in our world — too much for my nervous system to track. Do you feel the same? These days, I find myself greatly reducing my (bad) news intake and only dipping in and out of social media, email, reality...
[Yes, I know the term highly sensitive person… I appreciate that it can be helpful for some. I have enough identities to contend with. I’m not trying to add new ones.]
The volume of info in our hyperconnected reality is so intense that I have barely processed that the U.S. government basically conceded a couple of years ago that aliens do drive–bys on their military aircraft. Why are we not bringing that admission into conversation? Every day? Monday: Hey, what about those aliens trolling fighter pilots? Tuesday–Sunday: HEY, what about those aliens trolling fighter pilots? I read that article and was just like, Oh, yeah, ok… what about war in Ethiopia/Ukraine, this TikTok dance, the malicious attacks on trans people, my family drama, the global pandemonium, ALL the memes, the eminent destruction of nature, gun violence, my well of grief, the end of democracy, brunch recipes, that new album/film/series, the contemporary robber barons destroying ordinary people’s lives everywhere, this lol dog video?
There is no way I can process all the endless suffering without seriously disturbing my system. The ocean is hella tumultuous. And poisoned. I want to insure safe, clean water for all the starfish and all my relations. But I am no help (and no fun) if all I’m doing is spinning inside all these monster waves.
Seriosuly, dropping the surfing starfish metaphor… I am dedicated to our collective awakening – I desire an end to the needless suffering caused by our human ignorance, greed, and domination. I imagine many of you reading this feel similarly. My role in this grandest of projects is going to be unique — as will each of yours.
I’ve had multiple conversations with friends this past week about what it means to be on one’s “own path” (or purpose) and how difficult it is not to compare it to those of others. If the ultimate goal is freedom (i.e. human & non-human lives filled with sacred love & joy), I believe we need people deeply pursuing their unique purpose in service to collective awakening. Remembering that my path is service helps me attune to leading a great life. Understanding that I cannot be in service if I am drowning in churning water or dying on a desolate shore, allows me to prioritize care for my sensitive starfish self.
These days, I’ve been meditating in bed every morning. During this time, I sing a chant I learned from Troy Anthony who learned it from his friend Tony George. The words are: I remember/ I remember/ I remember/Who I am. [You can hear me sing it in the audio version linked above or for my friends Dan & Jeff on the next episode of Meditation Party which will be out this summer.] As I sing this sweet melody, I remind myself that I am a spiritual being, a powerful divine creator, a person who is loved and cherished (first by me), that I hope to produce things of meaning & beauty in this world… and any other sacred remembrances I wish to bring into my day.
I sang it one night earlier this week when I could not sleep because I mistakenly drank a non-caffeinated but very stimulating tea after dinner (also: it’s eclipse season). I was up half the night questioning my “career” decisions, relationship choices, many stupid things I said in the previous days, and oh my goddess what AM I doing with my life?
I meditated for a while and noticed the energetic activation in my body. I did some very deep healing breaths sensing the calming power of every inhale and exhale. I listened to healing sounds. I sang love songs to myself while embracing and stroking my own body. I conceived the idea for this post.
The next morning, I sleepily started writing you.
Ok, one last thing, another retreat parable. A person is sitting by a river when they see someone drowning and jump in to save them, bringing them to shore. They see another person, and jump back in to save them. Then another. And another. They get overwhelmed until others come to aid. Soon, there are so many drowning people that, even with more help, it’s impossible to keep up. Finally, one person stops to go upstream and see where all these bodies are coming from. They find that people are unknowingly using a broken bridge and falling in the water. Once the bridge is blocked (and eventually repaired), the flow of drowning people stops.
There are broken bridges everywhere. On every single one of our paths.
May we remember, remember, remember who we are.
Let It All Out!: Cultivating Mourning Practices for Grief Release
Tuesdays, May 9, 16, & 23 from 6–8 pm ET on Zoom
SESSIONS WILL BE RECORDED FOR THOSE WHO REGISTER
Grief and mourning are often incorrectly considered synonymous. But grief is what we feel when confronted with loss. Mourning is how we process those feelings. Every traditional culture honors grief as a threshold, not an indefinite state.
Grief is an awakening portal. Mourning is the passageway through.
Except most of us have lost our traditional mourning rituals. As moderns, we are steeped in an anti-death culture that obscures grief. We lack ways to honor loss as a natural part of life; we lack processes for channeling the strong energies of grief. This leads us to become trapped in our own ongoing, agonizing thoughts and feelings.
Mourning is inherently embodied — energetically shifting and transmuting the energies of loss & sorrow into gratitude & grace. Mourning rituals are creative and collective and celebratory. They include wailing, song, dance, prayer, the elements, nature, community (and more wailing).
With attention and care, we can understand loss as a natural part of the cycle of the universe, we can revive our innate understanding of how we specifically need to mourn, and we can release grief -- allowing it to be the portal to wisdom & compassion — to awakening — it's always been known to be.
Over these 3 weeks, we will explore both current and traditional relationships to grief & mourning. Each of us will touch into the particular losses that we have not yet fully mourned. Participants will be invited to independently explore the mourning practices of their ancestry as well as others that might feel resonant. Finally, we will craft personal, unique, embodied, expressive mourning rituals to release our grief.
Come, let it all out!
If you cannot afford the price of this course, email me by Sunday 5/7 at connect@sebeneselassie.com and we can work something out.