🎧 Listen to the Essay and/or Meditation 🎧
Why, yes, those are 2 separate audio links – 1 below, 1 above. || My reading of this essay is right before the opening Hi friends. 👇🏾 || A guided meditation is at the top of this email. 👆🏾 || An archive of meditations lives here.
Listen to me read this essay:
This is the second in a 4-part series based on my online course, Love Club. You can find all posts here.
Hi friends
🪷 Happy Vesak 🪷
First off, I’m sorry about missing this month’s First Quarter Chat! It will be back here on June 4th. And, if the first sentence didn’t clue you in, it’s in fits and starts that I continue to make my way outside into the land of the living. Last week, I had my first big work/practice travel adventure without a cane. I spoke at a conference in Boston and then went back to Barre (the mothership of the Insight Meditation world) for a four-night retreat. I say “back to Barre” because arriving at a retreat there in December sparked this five-month infection debacle. This past week did deliver surprising surges of pain, primarily due to excessive sitting. [Why do so many chairs look like a 4-year old’s drawing of an upside down 4?! Do furniture designers not know what a human spine looks like?]. Still, I am out and about mostly without pain. 🥳 This week felt like a triumphant return to a world beyond acupuncture and body work and hospital appointments as I navigate my current capacities—what I can actually sustain, what I actually want to sustain, and parsing the difference.
I know I want to be here with you. And I feel a bit wobbly as I make my way back into posting regularly. Or maybe I’m slowly recalling the usually fumbling and sometimes feral process that writing is for me. I do enjoy tending to this dedicated space for remembering love. To seed, first within my own heart, any transformation I seek for this world. As bell hooks warned, “If you’re f’ed up and lead the revolution, you’re going to have an f’ed up revolution.” I’m still doing No News Before Noon and invite you to join me in guarding our precious attention. No News Before Noon is not meant to ignore what’s happening. On the contrary, it offers a clear boundary for creative possibilities to vibrate less disturbed in the precious hours after waking—freed from the relentless bursts of information designed to overwhelm us. The nonsense out there keeps blowing. Let us become our own ground for growing kinder, wiser ways of being.
How are you? What’s inspiring you? I feel inspired by singing.
The retreat last week focused on Black Spirituals and Protest Songs, integrating them into practice as profound dharma gates. I cannot do justice to the brilliance of this retreat and give endless thanks to Dr. Melanie Harris and Joshuah Brian Campbell for their scholarship and skill, for the historical context and their sacred ministry. I am grateful to learn about liberation through music from people who embody this long lineage of the musical and mystical, who sing sacred songs that transformed unfathomable pain and suffering through holy connection.
For over a decade, I studied in a devotional tradition that centers chanting, so I’m not unfamiliar with bringing sound and its vibratory power into retreat. And, a lot of western Buddhist chanting feels dull to me. Yeah, I said it. From what I’ve been told, some of this has to do with a modernist flattening of melodies as well as the removal of the powerful percussion at the foundation of most Asian chanting. I believe the dullness also has to do with our western fetishization of silent and still meditation as an austerely superior form of practice and how that colors any chanting that is included. In my experience, an overemphasis on internalized placidity mirrors the hyper-individualism and disembodiment of our larger culture.
At this recent retreat, group singing of sacred songs was the central contemplative exploration and it opened me to a different way of practicing. Singing soulfully about suffering and freedom, discussing with others the paradoxical meaning of these lyrics, expressing rhythms on and through my body, offering care and support for each other’s expressions, and delighting in our collective harmonies all imbued my more traditional meditations. As I sat still, my body buzzed from the melodies and beats, my heart resonated with warmth, my awareness filled with love. I was truly feeling myself. And I was feeling connected. To the others, to rain, to chipmunks, to trees and clouds, to ancestors, to land and sky. And, feeling sadness, sensing tears. Feeling also means sensing the pain, allowing the grief.
I value silence and stillness. I value embodiment more.
I am halfway through this post. But this is not what this Full Moon newsletter is about. It’s also not not what it’s about…
Welcome back for the second installment of my Love Club series where statements from bell hooks’ extraordinary book, All About Love, frame our exploration. This time we are examining the societal myth about romantic love being “true.” Instead, I will offer other models of love. Let us contemplate the related statement:
“There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners.” — bell hooks, All About Love
What a sentence.
Some background: A year before I taught the Love Club course, I created a workshop called Uncoupling from Couple-Dom exploring the internalized pressure to be romantically coupled that many of us absorb from dominant cultures. Cultures plural because many of us feel these pressures most strongly from within our own communities which program us with the narrative that if we are not coupled, we are deficient or even worth-less (Where my immigrants at?). That workshop arose from my divorce, yet I was not critiquing coupling itself (a number of couples even took the workshop together). However, I was reeling from the self-obliteration that can come from leaving the identity of couple-dom. Suddenly, there was no longer a singular and go-to witness for my existence: no one to text when the plane lands, no one to ask about every dinner or movie idea. I have a full life, with many friends, yet I instantly felt the stinging isolation that contemporary single life elicits for many. The grief came in engulfing waves. So I cried. A lot. And then got nerdy about it.
In prepping the workshop, I read and distilled a bunch of research, including: an excellent and long-ass post-structuralist dissertation1 on the origins and evolution of coupledom, established theories on the invention of modern romantic love within the aristocratic literature of the middle ages and over the centuries into an elevation of the nuclear family and individualism, and the brilliant work of Dr. Kim Tallbear2 who shows how, through colonialism, the Christian model of marriage, sexuality, and gender expression was imposed on Indigenous people, breaking apart the sense of communal connection through compulsory often violent means. If you’re interested in exploring all of this, I recommend the workshop recording. Today, I’d like to focus on the subtitle of that workshop: Returning to Sacred Love of Self & World.
If you have been here for a while, you know that I believe much of my shame, brokenness, unworthiness, and deficiency (really, all the ways I can’t feel my freedom) stem directly from a disconnection from the sacred. This includes feelings around romantic love. Most of us have not had the type of nurturance needed to know and remember the truth that we live in an interdependent, ensouled cosmos that includes both our romantic partners and every other last atom in the universe. Every single thing—animate and non-animate, human and more than human, seen and unseen is enchanted, is alive with consciousness. The work of reenchantment butts up against a world trying its hardest to erase this truth and sell anemic versions involving rewatching old and new rom-coms (guilty… also, I love me good room-com) and feverishly consuming all the earth’s resources. My awareness of the numinous needs ongoing nurturing because it’s fragile and it’s vital for liberation from this trance.
Since we’re all being forced to pay attention to the Vatican right now (at least it’s for a pope who calls for a ceasefire in Gaza), let’s bring in 14th century mystic and pope-whisperer3, St. Catherine of Siena, who had some opinions about papal powers.
“All has been consecrated. The creatures in the forest know this, the earth does, the seas do, the clouds know, as does the heart full of love. Strange! A priest would rob us of this knowledge and then empower himself with the ability to make holy what already was.” — St. Catherine of Siena
The heart full of love knows that everything is holy. Everything includes me. And you. Maybe this is about really feeling ourselves. Sensing how very holy we are. How everything is. That this sensing is love.
Last time, I introduced an image very similar to the one below. This is the Love Club map. It outlines the three intelligence centers (based on the Enneagram4) and connects each to a way of love: love as behavior, love as emotion, love as idea. This time, we will pull focus on the root intelligence of the belly, love as behavior, and how daily grounding supports this way of knowing love.
Behavior is maybe not the best word. Action? But action does not necessarily mean lots of activity (though it can). For me, love rooted in the belly is my body sensing. So, maybe Sense? But then sense, sensing, sensations will be almost all the words for this intelligence center (and perhaps that’s because of just how much I need to remember the sensual). Whatever we name it, this way of love requires my sensitized awareness. Often, it means I need to s—l—o—w down… my mind. Which requires I pay attention to my body. I’ve written many, many, too many times about my challenges with embodiment. Though it is and continues to be better, I amaze myself with how often I have to repeat the basics of my own grounding (multiple times a day is how often). I remind myself to never underestimate the power of a deep inhale & exhale, to feel my feet when I’m in a mental loop, to connect to the sensory wonder within and around me whenever possible, to. lie. down. on. the. ground. The disembodiment I was taught by people who were taught the same or worse can only be unlearned through embodiment. Which should just be called life. Or love. Or song.
I implore you to explore (within yourself 🤭) how all this connects to the erotic (or does not, as the case may be). Erotic as in Audre Lorde’s use of the term5 to describe a sensual engagement with every precious moment, an intimacy with all of life. She insists that this deep sensing of experience is a power that, women especially, have been taught to deny. She says this power “rises from our deepest and non-rational knowledge” and is “creative energy empowered.” Lorde calls the dichotomy between the spiritual and political false. She states: “For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic - the sensual - those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.” A bridge could be protest songs. Perhaps every bridge between the spirtual and political, between us, is holy.
I used to sing. A lot. The day after I returned from retreat, I was talking to one of my oldest friends. Siobhan and I participated in various singing classes and groups together since we were twelve until the end of high school. I told her about the retreat and we reminisced about how much we used to sing and how often outside of formal gatherings. In our school atrium, we frequently joined others in accompanying our friend Chris on guitar. Or, one year, Siobhan, our friend Sarah, and I would constantly harmonize the boogie woogie songs we were taught, wherever we went. I experienced such joy in blending our voices, by creating beauty through our vibrating bodies.
How did I stop singing? And why?
A few weeks ago, I visited my love Naomi. One day, we hung out in her backyard listening to an epic eighties playlist (Naomi is my friend most likely to have an epic eighties playlist). The sun warmed me to relaxation. The comfort of being together soothed any latent hum of anxieties I usually buzzing within me. We played with water colors and sang to the birds in the trees. When I whistled to one, the bird whistled back. It was one of the best days I can remember. Simply singing with others—Naomi, the birds, the trees.
Okay, I hope this was helpful. I’m here for your comments and questions and insights. I really have no precise prescriptions for any of this: for sensing, for grounding, for embodiment. From what I’ve witnessed, it seems to be easier for some and can be very challenging for many because of conditioning. I find it best to, yes, learn what I can from others. And, also, to sense my own way. Because, in fact, it’s the only way possible. The only way through is through my body.
Thanks so much for being here. May we all sense love as our deepest power.
With love,
Sebene
JOURNAL PROMPTS:
Reflect on what ways you are rooted in the truth that there is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners and in what ways you are not rooted in this truth of no special love.
What supports your connection to a heart full of love, to the numinous and to the truth that everything is holy?
ONGOING PRACTICES:
Continue with anything that resonates (singing love songs to yourself, writing letters from love, exploring your enneagram/centers of intelligence)
Make a cup of tea or sit somewhere quiet and listen to Audre Lorde reading “Uses of the Erotic.” [You can also read the essay here.]
Explore meditative and/or contemplative practices that support awareness of the belly center. Explore what it means to ground in love, to sense and embody love.
Later in life, she was literally bossing around papal authorities.
The Enneagram is a personality typing system that describes nine distinct personality types, each with unique motivations, fears, and behavioral patterns. You can learn more here.
Do yourself a huge favor and read the entire essay.
If you’d like to practice with me in person this year…
Learn to Let It Be: Acceptance & Equanimity for Individual & Collective Liberation (with Kate Johnson, Dawn Mauricio & La Sarmiento)
August 22–24 at Omega Institute
There is so much that is unacceptable in our world. And yet, the first task of change is accepting things just as they are. It's a paradox, and it's a ripe place for practice.
Join us for a weekend of meditation and dharma talks mixed with reflective journaling, nature walks, and music and dance activities. Together we explore "letting be" as the antidote to both unnecessary struggle and resigned indifference.
Register Here for Let It Be
Meditation Party: Reckless Conviviality With Mindfulness Superfriends (with Dan Harris and Jeff Warren)
October 24–26 at Omega Institute
Many of us meditate solo, especially these days. This is a chance to get all of the high-occupancy-vehicle-lane benefits of meditating in a group.
Join self-proclaimed meditation nerds Dan Harris, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for a weekend “do-nothing” party with lots of meditating. This is definitely not a silent retreat. It is an opportunity to connect with others, move your body, nap, and discover the power of applying your practice to everything in life.
Note: Meditation Party is one of Omega's most popular workshops and will host as many as 425 participants. Register early to secure your seat and housing.
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