🌑 Masks & Mystics
it's a new moon in aquarius 🌑
Image Description: "Identity & Intuition & Imagination" – a horizontal collage with various images including from left to right/ top to bottom: an illustration of a white owl, two Alvin Ailey dancers, a woman dancing, a golden jeweled jaguar scultpure, and a b&w photo of a seated Josephine Baker; the collage is centered at the back of an altar filled with objects including from left to right, a small glass with water, jars of incense, crystals, a lit tealight candle, a raccoon oracle card, a small Ethiopian painted icon, and a brass incense holder releasing a plume of smoke.
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends
Happy Lunar New Year! 🌚🧧🐇
How’s 2023 been for you so far? I’ve continued to honor an easeful entry that has included slow and quiet mornings, at least one dance class per week (last night was Sufi whirling), regular craniosacral sessions, sweet phone catch-ups, and nourishing meals. I have not been “busy” for which I feel grateful, and I am amazed that it’s already almost the end of January.
Thank you for being here. It is a strange thing having “an audience.” It’s humbling. It’s also helpful. Your presence is motivation to write pieces in a steady rhythm. Yet, despite your continued encouragement, I had a hard time getting to the keyboard for this one. I really had no inkling what to write about.
I don’t enjoy stuckness. And it usually means something is ready to shift.
I kept looking longingly at the collage I made last week. Usually a title or idea will emerge if I stare down the images long enough. Nothing was coming. I journaled. I morning–paged. Rien. Then, I pulled an oracle and got the Raccoon. Two days in a row (although I shuffled the heck out of that deck). The primary questions of that card: “Am I who my audience thinks I am? What if I am ready to grow into something more?”
Sheesh, Raccoon!
Okay, yes, I have been trying to figure out who I think I am and what I am growing into... Again.
This is not a complaint. I (finally) accept the ongoing process that is creating my own work. Including writing. But even for those of us who are not solopreneurs spilling our guts out to strangers, I believe self(re)creation is the reality right now. We live & labor in transformative times. I mean that in terms of the particular turbulence of the past few years. Also because we exist within the overall post-post-modern confusion of diasporic-diversities meets turbo-technologies meets hyper-consumerist-inequality meets earthly-catastrophes meets neo-ancient-mysticism meets something’s gotta give.
I am witnessing identity transformations in people changing vocations and relations and locations. But as well in those who are not changing their work or marital status or house… Who am I? Who am I in connection with others? Where to next? WTF is going on?
For me, fundamental questions around identity have been activated in part because I have been shifting out of centering any one tradition in my life or teaching. [The lineage acknowledgement I did for the uncoupling course in December was mad long! I paid homage to: Black feminist scholarship, Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy for Complex Trauma (IFOT), hellensitic astrology and planetary prayer, theravada and zen buddhism, post-structuralist and post-colonial theory, and more!] And, identity is up for me because I am a newly single, middle-aged, globalist, Black lady who is finally embracing that there is no time to waste tiptoeing around the fact that I have shit to share about our collective awakening that many may not want to hear, and (somewhat embarrassingly) I still have fear around being too weird or out there or, hmmm, I don’t know… that I don’t belong. 🙃
I did a podcast episode with Po-Hong Yu last month. I’ve known Po for over a decade and have watched her powerful evolution as a teacher and guide from afar. She’s the first person I witnessed begin calling herself a mystic – that is, to name this shift aloud, consciously. For many, this may seem trivial or easy or totally bonkers. Well, not to me. It felt meaningful and brave and honest. I remember thinking, Wow. I could not do that...
✨ I am a mystic. ✨
Being a mystic simply means believing in the mystical which Merriam-Webster defines as “having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence.” Saying I’m a mystic means dropping masks that hide this simple truth.*
One of the things that raccoon card talks about is masks — how masks can be useful for artistry (to play a role in order to express a truth), but that masks can hide the truth. I was at my friend Jocelyn’s in Woodstock a couple of weekends ago, and I pulled a (very menacing-looking) card on authenticity from a Jungian shadow deck she has. That card was also about masks (creepy masks). The cards are definitely trolling me.
I’ve been putting off updating my website. I want it to better reflect all of me. I’m afraid people come there and get the impression that I don’t want revolution. I do. Or, that the revolution I want is rational or reasonable. It’s not. As I’ve said before: The revolution will not be secularized.
This week, I’ve been asking myself, What masks have I been wearing? What masks am I dropping?
I've been wearing masks of the mainstream(s) — that push objectivity, sensibility, conformity (sometimes those masks come from the dominant mainstreams and sometimes from my “marginal” mainstreams). I'm dropping the masks of modernity — that privilege intellect over intuition, material over energetic, science over magic, separation over unity.
In a recent workshop, Tara McMullin shared this quote from Donella Meadows, the author of the ovular The Limits to Growth: “The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being.” Recently, I’ve been pulled more and more into my intuition and imagination. I’ve been having powerful experiences of synchronicities, premonitions, and straight up enchantment. I feel vulnerable writing that. But, touching into the numinous, magical, mystical nature of our world has proved extremely beneficial for me. Why would I not share it with you? Also, this is something that needs more loving acknowledgment and cultivation within me if I want to nurture its power. The mystical is powerful. And empowering.
I will not be adding mystic to my title or bio or website (I’m actually trying to shed identities — that’s a whole other email). I don’t want mystic to be yet another mask. But neither do I want to fear its truth. We need personal and collective power and empowerment for our current and coming shifts. Absolutely every single wonderful or terrible thing around us today was imagined into being. All the beautiful realities we want for ourselves, our friends & families, our communities, our world… we must imagine those too. The realm of imagination requires going beyond the obvious. Imagination is inherently mystical.
May we all drop the masks that no longer serve our inherent magic.
With love,
Sebene
* Thank you to my friends Dan & Jeff for the inspiring email chain that sparked this declaration.
The recording of Uncoupling from Couple–Dom is available for purchase. I am incredibly proud of this workshop. It was a profound process for me — my research led me down multiple rabbit holes including: learning about the violent enforcement of monogomy through colonization (and how polyamory is basically mimicking indigenous sexualities but without the sacredness), reading an extremely long post-structuralist dissertation analyzing the origins of couple-dom (I’m sorry/you’re welcome) and skewering modern psychology in the process, and discovering research that counters every single negative “scientific study” of being single. It includes meditation, embodied reflections and journaling. There is also a list of references/resources included.
I will be teaching at Omega Institute three times this year. Including once in June with a dream team of Kate Johnson, Dawn Mauricio, and La Sarmiento and in October with the aforementioned and very affable Dan Harris and Jeff Warren. Registration is open for those two retreats. There's info and links on my website and I will share more on Instagram and here soon.
I've been on a few podcasts recently-ish including: Jocelyn's excellent show Hurry Slowly, the hilarious Ashley Gavin's We're Having Gay Sex, and Po's Tao of Po.
Save the date: Cosmic Collage! Equinox will be Sunday, March 19, 1–3:30pm ET. Registration will open 2/20.