Registration opens April 2 for Let It All Out! Cultivating Mourning Practices for Grief Release, a 3–week course exploring the relationship between grief and mourning by cultivating embodied and expressive practices for processing loss. Tuesdays 4/30, 5/7, 5/14 // 6–8pm EST // On Zoom & Recorded. Space is limited (see below).
Yes, these are two separate audio links – one above, one below. I have added the podcast feature to Ancestors to Elements! 🥳 You will continue to find my reading of new and full moon essays (minus updates) directly above the opening “Hi friends.” And, from now on, new and full moon newsletters will also include a guided meditation at the very top of the email. There will be an archive of these podcast-meditations here (not in RSS feeds). I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think of them and if there are other resources you’d like in this space.
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends,
Thank you for being here. I truly appreciate each one of you that chooses to read or listen to these ramblings. How are you doing?
I have no new health calamities to report. Just the old ones, LOL — balanced with lots of sweet time with loved ones, including a glorious four full days hanging in NYC with my bestie, Peter. I am incredibly grateful. Thank you is the greatest prayer.
Happy New Season! 🌷 The Equinox heralds spring in the northern hemisphere and the western astrological new year — as well as the actual new year, Nowruz Mobarak! 🪻🍊🌾🥚 This is a time of celebration for many. Maybe? 🫣 It’s also seriously ruff out in these global streets. Inequities accumulate. War machines rage on. Lots of people I know are going. through. it. Many of us are exhausted.
This week, listening to Off the Grid (hosted by the magnificent Amelia Hruby, my leaving-social-media guru), I learned the word Frühjahrsmüdigkeit – literally “Spring fatigue.” Yes, Germans have a word for the specific state of weariness initiated by the change of seasons from winter to spring. Like magic, language makes this cyclical experience more visible.
Today’s full moon is a penumbral eclipse, meaning Earth is blocking part of the Sun’s rays from reaching the Moon – a shadow darkening the light. Metaphorically, shadows symbolize what cannot be fully witnessed, what we deny. In a society founded on unrelenting exploitation & extraction, rest is resented. Like most, I internalize this shadow – taught to believe the lie that constant production is vital for survival (and not directly causing our destruction). I must consciously, soulfully witness then unwind both my addiction to over-activity and my resistance to peace (mental, emotional, physical). I (re)commit to centering sacredness, to cultivating beauty & love.
Germany, please invent a term for late-stage-capitalist-gas-lighting exasperation leading to re-enchantment for ourselves and our world.
The latest In My Experience… is below (after a few housekeeping notes). Thanks again for reading.
With love,
Sebene
P.S. Two of my favorite people have rad programs enrolling right now:
The wonderful and wise Sara Shapouri is co-leading A Fierce and Tender Heart, a 5 week investigation into meeting the wisdom of emotions. As they beautifully state in the description: In the midst of multiple devastating crises, and the everyday pull to disconnect, attuning to the heart is a radical act that supports love and justice.
If you have a project or practice that would benefit from supportive community, my magical friend Jocelyn has a new offering — KILN (Early bird pricing until March 31st) is a creative incubator where half-baked ideas become real. KILN looks like 🔥🔥🔥 for what you got cooking!!
10% of March paid subscriptions will go to Tigray Action Committee Feeding Centers whose primary focus are to address the food stability needs of women and children in Tigray and currently serve meals to 650 people per day. Thank you for your support!
SOME UPDATES
I will be on a silent retreat 4/14–4/20, so May’s First Quarter Chat will be on 4/13.
I am no longer running my Cosmic Collage! workshops, but I am releasing last year’s video recordings for free close to their astral events. These are experiential workshops that each explore a cosmically resonant theme. Next up is the June Solstice…
Cosmic Collage! Equinox (on balance in our lives and art)
Cosmic Collage! New Year (on setting intentions)
Some of you know that I became a New York State Licensed Hiking Guide in 2023. My goal this year is to co-lead (along with my dear friend Lin Wang Gordon) MTA-accessible hikes. These will be small group outings and will likely sell out fast. Stay tuned for an early summer weekend program!
Speaking of small… I really, REALLY enjoyed teaching fewer people in LOVE CLUB, so I will now cap the size of my three and four-week courses to 30 people max. My signature six-week course, Ancestors to Elements will remain a larger, comprehensive introduction to my work. Multiple times a year, I will lead shorter, more intimate courses. The one exception to this will be a new recurring offering (first one in May, see below) which is not a course but a weekly contemplative, creative space open to all. If you’re a planner like me, below is the schedule (so far) for the rest of this year. Watch this space for registration openings (and any additional offerings).
Let It All Out! Cultivating Mourning Practices for Grief Release
Tuesdays 4/30, 5/7, 5/14 // 6–8pm EST (registration opens April 2)
Make Sacred Space: Enchanting Time for Meditation, Intuition & Creation
Sundays in May // 7–8:15 pm EST (registration opens April 8)
Soulful Cycles: Nurturing Intention, Ritual, & Ceremony for Life-Changes
Tuesdays July 2, 9, 16 // 6–8pm EST
Ancestors to Elements
Wednesdays October 16–November 20 // 6–8pm EST (with optional Monday practice sessions)
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.
I haven’t sent an In My Experience… since my summer epic post on all the erotics. This so-called advice column is now quarterly, sent on the full moons closest to the equinoxes and solstices. The next one will be June 21st. If you have questions for me, you can submit them here. All past posts live here.
In My Experience…
I'm curious about how to get unstuck. In your experience, how did you find your way back to yourself after a period of feeling lost/directionless? How did you find your way back to your path, beyond meditation or mindfulness practices?
Dear Make the Path By Feeling,
Thank you for this simple and important question. I appreciate how you imply that finding then losing one’s path is periodic. I feel that. 😉
In My Experience… I do not follow one laid-out route, one single yellow brick road (with only one set of companions); rather, I have come to celebrate my path as a unique and interdependent mycelial web of many practices & people — with awareness, faith, & community as bedrocks, I make my path by feeling (including feeling lost & directionless).*
I dedicated myself to one spiritual path for many decades. I am incredibly thankful for those teachings and especially for the two aspects you named: meditation and mindfulness. I often call mindfulness embodied awareness. Clunky, I know. Maybe I should just call it feeling. If we can agree that feeling really means every awareness-ing. I make the path by touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, sensing, knowing, intuiting, understanding, remembering, being… The awareness so clearly mapped out in the classical teachings on mindfulness is the foundation for all my other practices. However, mindfulness is more than formal meditation. It is the innate capacity for holistic awareness of all experience: sensations, emotions, and thoughts as well as patterns & systems (i.e. all the foundations of mindfulness). Innate, not inevitable. It’s etymological root is remembering. I practice in order to not forget.
I hone mindfulness through making deliberate time and space for its ongoing cultivation. But the skill itself is portable. I carry it with me all along the path. Continually bringing awareness to what I am sensing, feeling, and knowing. When I can develop an awareness of what’s actually happening, this allows me to have more connection to where I am and where I want to go. The path is clearer if I’m actually paying attention to it.
Sometimes I don’t have this awareness. I’ve lost it. I dropped it somewhere along the road. Often, I pick it right back up. Other times I am too distracted or deluded and I don’t notice that it's rolled down a hill or plopped into a river. Occasionally, I get scraped up or engulfed trying to retrieve it. Generally, the more I practice this capacity for awareness on the path, the less likely I am to lose it on my way.
Sometimes I get hella lost and I’m wandering alone down a depressing alley or wondering why I’m watching pointless parades. Usually, by the time I’m feeling lost or directionless, I’ve come back to some awareness. This is where I engage faith, trusting my other tools and techniques for navigation. Again, for many years, I followed one particular route with certain directions. Currently, I bring in all the wayfinding woo.
It seems like you are asking for specifics. Here is a short list of some things I engage regularly:
Elements Practice: When I began formally studying the Satipatthana Sutta (the discourse on mindfulness), I was surprised to learn there is a formal meditation on the elements (it was rarely taught at that time). When I feel off, I use the elements as one way to re-balance. Meditating with the elements in my body over many years has led me to integrating the elements symbolically, astrologically, in altar work, in ritual. Over time, this has become a relational daily practice for me. I experience the elements as archetypal living energies, as fractal expressions of the whole. I am embedded in relationship to earth, water, fire, air and ether. They are me.
Astrology: This is definitely not for everyone. It’s a complex study and a huge commitment. And, besides meditation, it is the single best tool in my life for cultivating a relationship with the cosmos that is dynamic and meaningful. Also, mind blowing. And literally our charts and paths reflected in the sky.
Space Tending: Energetic space is crucial for my wayfinding. If I feel disoriented or disconnected, one way for me to ground is by cleansing & clearing. I’m fairly tidy, so organizing my home or office or even making my bed can help. But I also employ smudging and other clearing techniques. I use my altar for rituals and offerings. Also, I have hella plants.
Journaling: I first read The Artist’s Way in my twenties and have been engaging in some variation of morning pages (3 full pages of free-writing every a.m.) off and on since then. Sometimes extremely off. Currently very ON. (I’m also about to start a re-read of this book with a friend.) When I commit to regular journaling, insights and inspirations come to me more easily. I also use journaling for guidance or direction, asking a question and free-writing the response. One I use regularly: “Universe, what would you have me know today?”
Signs & Symbols: Using tarot or oracle cards (I have so many!), also books of symbols or images or sayings or teachings. Really anything you can pull or choose or open randomly to intuit and receive wisdom. Basically, simply paying attention to whatever shows up whenever. Listening deeply to the universe (i.e. to me).
Ancestors & Prayer: I ask my mom and grandmothers for their help and blessings. All the time.
Arts & Culture: I am forever inspired by literature, music, visual art, theater, criticism, and other people who love these as much as me. Give me an afternoon at a museum with friends who want to wander for hours, and I feel on my path!
Going Off the M.F. Grid: I’m coming up to six months off social media. Also, not for everyone. But I feel so much more clear with even short breaks from my various gadgets and addicting distractions. All of us are constantly being lured off of our sacred paths onto these corporate ad revenue roads.
Finally, community. I could not survive in these streets without the kindness and care of my friends/family. I can’t lie, I did not win the lottery with my biological family. Everyone tried their best — it was often pretty bad. However, I hit multiple major jackpots with friendships. I almost called this “Make the Path By Falling” because it’s often when I’m falling that I feel most lost/directionless. At those times, I definitely can’t do it alone. If I’m falling (or flailing), it’s into or onto my friends. I need their acceptance, reflection, advice, support, their love. We make the path together by caring, responding, delighting, allowing… by loving.**
May we all feel our paths within and around us in this interconnected web called life.
* with all respect to Machado
** with gratitude to Martin Aylward for this articulation of the Four Brahmaviharas
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