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.
Registration is open for Soulful Cycles: Creating Sacred Rituals for Life Changes. Life is a continuous cycle of changes, and rituals help us to create a sacred relationship to change. Studies consistently show that rituals actually work! In this series, we will spend 3 weeks soulfully exploring change through rituals. Tuesdays July 2, 9, & 16th :: 6–8pm ET :: On Zoom :: Space is limited!
🌊 Registration and more info here 🌊
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends
In last week’s First Quarter Chat 🌓, we discussed soulful tending and the Moon. Posting Ancestors to Elements on lunar cycles helps me attune to the Moon, providing a cosmic cadence for these essays, collages and meditations. Left to my own distractible mind, I could not publish every single week (or even remember to use the chat function). Cultivating lunar awareness helps disrupt the relentless algorithmic grabs at my attention (which I willingly carry around with me in my pocket wherever I go). I don’t want to ignore the world — I intend to keep my heart open. Also, I serve no one by succumbing to constant chaos.
The Moon is never chaotic. They magnetically guide Earth through the solar system, faithfully orbiting us every month, harmonizing migration patterns, signaling spawnings, regulating our watery highs and lows, dancing with the Sun. When I reconnect to these greater rhythms, I draw upon the power of elemental and ancestral practices to balance, fortify, and uplift me. I then meet this life and current reality with the compassion and wisdom they desperately need. Like humans have done for tens of thousands of years, I follow lunar phases, honor natural cycles, engage simple rituals, and acknowledge, as Leslie Jamison stated in The New Yorker, “The tides might tell themselves stories about why they’re rushing in and out, but it’s ultimately the moon that’s in charge.”
Though the Sun may disagree…
It’s good to be with you again. And Happy Solstice! 🌞 This beautiful full moon coincides with either the longest or shortest day of the year (depending on whether you’re in the northern or southern hemisphere). Just yesterday, the Sun appeared to reach either its highest or lowest point in the sky. Our ancestors revered the uniqueness of the summer & winter solstices (as well as the spring & fall equinoxes, when the balance between day and night is near perfect). Ancient societies around the globe celebrated these special times. Temples and monuments were configured to capture the exact moment of these astronomical alignments. Climate, weather patterns, time zones, and other geographical as well as cultural differences distinguish the various parts of our planet, but these annual cosmic events unite us all.
Ancient astronomers observed that, at the solstice, the Sun appears to stand still. We too can appreciate a sacred pause from all the rushing in and out. Perhaps you can find space this weekend to connect with the Sun, the Moon, yourself… even if only for a moment. As we are almost exactly half way through the year, it also offers a marker for stopping to assess what has transpired since January or the March equinox, and to consider your aspirations and commitments for the next 3 or 6 months (until the next equinox or solstice). What do you long to cultivate? When will you practice? Where will you give your attention? How do you wish to serve?
Below is this season’s In My Experience… This so-called advice column is now quarterly, sent on the full moon closest to an equinox or solstice. The next one will be September 17th. Please use this form to submit a question. These are all the past posts.
With love,
Sebene
EFF WHY EYE
Two people I absolutely admire and adore, Dawn Haney and Nina Herzog, have a totally rad program enrolling right now: Fat Dharma: Liberation for Our Hearts and Bodies is a weekly, virtual offering running July 9 – July 30. By welcoming and gathering fat-identified people into community to explore the four noble truths of Buddhism, we hope to create new frameworks for understanding and practicing (fat) liberation. Our intention is no less than to offer a version of the teachings that is free of anti-fat language and that encourages fat people to cherish our bodies, finding contentment and peace in a fat body, just as it is, in every moment, as it changes and ages. More info here.
I am no longer running my Cosmic Collage! workshops, but I am releasing last year’s four video recordings for free close to their astral events (but they can be enjoyed any time). These are experiential creative workshops that explore a cosmically resonant theme. Here are the ones posted so far (the next one will be for All Souls Day).
Cosmic Collage! Solstice (exploring shadow & light)
Cosmic Collage! Equinox (on balance in our lives and art)
Cosmic Collage! Lunar New Year (on setting intentions)
SAVE THE DATE: Lin Wang Gordon and I will be leading an all day, MTA-accessible, contemplative hike for BIPOC on Saturday, September 7. Stay tuned for registration info.
In My Experience…
The focus of my curiosity du jour is: the space that lies between the performative and curated persona one projects and the unmediated (and possibly true) self that lingers in the shadows.
Dear Perfectly Imperfect Shadows,
Thank you for this personal koan, I’ve also pondered this one for some time. As a part-time paradox peddler, it’s one of my favorites.
In My Experience… my self is an ever changing, contradictory expression of life itself: trying to fix it anywhere is futile (I am literally vibrating energy patterns interconnected to everything in the universe throughout time), but denying my various identities is equally frustrating (because I currently exist in an actual live human body) — when I calm the voices telling me who I should be, embrace every single part of myself (including those in the shadows), and release what inhibits my deepest aspirations, only then do I align with versions (plural) of Sebene that meet each moment in a perfect-imperfection.
Much easier said than done. LOL.
I could approach this topic from multiple angles because there exist innumerable ways to understand oneself, the world, the cosmos. Goddess knows I love me a good consciousness-typology system. I will emphasize the second half of your “focus” because I think it actually gives great insight into our “perfomative and curated” selves. What I’m about to share is only one (flawed) metaphor/model for our being. I hope it’s helpful for your particular inquiry around what we do in the shadows. 😉 Integrating even this one idea is the work of a lifetime.
From what I know about shadow psychology, the persona, ego and shadow selves hold different aspects of our psyche (the totality of our conscious and unconscious selves). The persona is the mask we wear to present to the outside world (I’m a writer, I’m a mother, I’m an artist, I’m a success) — how we want the world to see us. The ego is our intimate sense of self (I am so and so, and I’ve had these experiences throughout my life, here are my memories/dreams) — who we are to ourselves. Our shadow includes the parts of ourselves that we’ve disowned — what we don’t see and, in fact, mostly don’t want to see about ourselves. The things we reject or deny, the shadow harbors for us. The shadow contains all that is largely if not entirely unconscious.
When we’re young, the shadow holds anything our parents, families, communities, and cultures deem unacceptable (rage, sexuality, rebellion). However, it’s not only societally-declared negative traits that end up in the shadow – often there’s a baseline of what’s accepted and anything less than or greater than this ends up in the shadow (e.g. some families reward symbiotic dysfunction and punish healthy individuation). And sometimes, especially for certain people and groups, it’s actually even harder to see and own the gold that’s buried in the shadow. In this culture, it can be hard for a woman to exert power — she won’t be called assertive like a man would, she’ll be called a bitch. We get different messages depending on race, class, gender, etc. Even in communities that promote spiritual understanding and self-awareness, we may receive the unspoken message (sometimes in actual silence) not to welcome our full selves. By the time we’re adolescents and adults, we’ve understood what is allowable and not–allowable in our given or chosen communities. And to some degree we accept and internalize these rules, again, largely unconsciously.
Yet, it’s not that the shadow is bad – we’re not trying to get rid of it. The shadow also holds the taboos and agreements that protect a community because it’s not necessarily appropriate to outwardly express our deepest and most difficult stuff. What’s problematic is our unconscious rejection of this material. We want to see and understand what’s in our our shadow, and to appropriately compost or integrate anything we find. We can learn to alchemize. All healthy societies have a rich ceremonial life with practices for integrating the shadow. But in much of modern life we have rejected and denied not only the shadow, but also the processes and rituals for its transmutation.
I’ve learned to see (some of) what’s in my shadow, learned to make the unconscious conscious through various methods: therapy, meditation, coaching, intimacy with partners and friends who share honestly with me, more therapy, psychedelics & plant medicine, rubbing up against people who challenge me, deep study of different systems of self-understanding. What have I learned? Mostly that I have a long way to go. I have recurring problematic shadow traits (that I’ve written about many times in You Belong and here), including: the need for control, a tendency to be overbearing, body/health shame, envy, know-it-allness... I also have hidden treasures that I’m learning to let shine.
The most helpful ongoing practice for my shadow-work? To continually bring curiosity, kindness, and wonder to what it is about myself I am not yet seeing. I often ask friends for feedback, in real time. Just the other night I was at dinner with an old friend and a new friend. I felt I had been overbearing in the way I responded to the new friend’s sharing of a tender story. I checked in privately with the old friend about it, and I also briefly mentioned it to the new friend. I make sure to do this type of thing on the regular (without getting annoying about it). I hope I never stop practicing in this way.
A few weeks ago, I attended the launch for Prentis Hemphill’s new book, What It Takes to Heal. At the event (hosted by our queen, adrienne maree brown), Prentis encouraged us to be “dangerously authentic” in contrast to the shape-shifting we do to fit into societal expectations. I appreciated the invitation to authenticity. And I am a proud shape-shifter. How could I not be? Since toddler-hood, I’ve traversed and translated different languages, cultures, scenes, and circles. In respect to the multitudes Walt Whitman assured me I contain, my self longs for me to be dangerously-authentically shape-shifting. My shadow selves shift with me, constantly casting new shapes. I aspire to envision all of this as integral to my being.
May we all dance with the Sun and Moon, with the light and shadow of our perfectly-imperfect selves.
P.S. The Cosmic Collage! session I just posted is all about shadow work and includes me teaching about this topic with interactive reflections and journaling prompts plus collaging. You can find the recording here. Enjoy!
Some related posts…
Soulful Cycles: Creating Sacred Rituals for Life Changes
Tuesdays July 2, 9, & 16th :: 6–8pm EST :: On Zoom :: Space is limited! Registration and more info here.
Life is a continuous cycle of changes. Change is both happening and needed in our world now more than ever. When we resist change, suffering happens. When we soulfully flow with the cycles of change, we help shape the change we desire.
Rituals help us in creating a sacred relationship to change.
Rituals are a fundamental part of the human experience. All people engage rituals: small children and top athletes, spiritually inclined and not. And rituals work! Studies consistently show that rituals improve outcomes. They increase confidence and decrease anxiety. They help us savor experience and promote interconnection.
And like, placebos (which originate in and are full of rituals), rituals involve mystery. In this series, we will spend 3 weeks exploring change through intention, ritual & ceremony. Come connect to all change as sacred!
SPACE IS LIMITED. SLIDING SCALE AVAILABLE.
I now cap the size of my three and four-week courses to 30 people max. I have set a sliding scale so those who are able to pay more can help balance the lower end. See here for payment options and to learn more about the course.
There are a few pay-what-you-can scholarships spots available. Please email connect@sebeneselassie.com — first come basis.
🌕 In My Experience… My Perfectly Imperfect Shadows