🌗 November Last Quarter Links

"Beautiful means most self." —Isadora, age 3 🌗

Stars and Dust in the Pacman Nebula from NASA, Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Loro

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💥 POWER, SHADOW, AND SPIRITUAL TEACHING 💥

I’ll be joining my dear friend Sara Shapouri on December 18 for the final session of her 3 week series Power, Shadow, and Spiritual Teaching. This conversation will be a rich exploration of our personal shadows, how not contending with them contributes to the bullshit we currently see all around us, and how shadow work is, like life itself, all about relationship: to ourselves, to the other, and to mystery. Hope you can join us.

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Hi friends

I’m currently away teaching so this will be a very short missive—a quick hello and a few links.

In my dharma talk at this retreat, I mentioned Nuar Alsadir’s book Animal Joy. In it, she shares about her daughter Isadora calling someone beautiful. When her mother asks her what beautiful means, Isadora answers “Beautiful means most self.”

This innocent truth has stayed with me for months. And I’ve been turning to it when I feel unsteady or unsure—remembering that everything I practice and teach can be an expression of this truth. The challenge is in fact actually remembering the most self things about me… This newsletter helps.

I’m so grateful to get to do this here with you. To write and share about all of me, all the beauty. Thank you for being here.

With love,

Sebene

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💥 POWER AND SHADOW IN SPIRITUAL TEACHING 💥

I’m honored to be in conversation with my dear friend Sara Shapouri on December 18 for the final session of 💥 Power, Shadow, and Spiritual Teaching💥 for teachers and students looking at the less than savory side of spiritual teaching and how we can work with the hidden, uncomfortable dynamics that can hinder our path and harm others. Please join us!

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🌗 Last Quarter List 🌗

• My friend Allison Strickland’s mom, Jean, recently died. I never met Jean but I’ve come to know her through Allison’s descriptions and the deep loving bond that comes through her descriptions and stroies. Allison wrote multiple gorgeous and moving essays about the experience of caring for her mother full time over many months after Jean had a stroke in April, and eventually losing her to another stroke six months later. Allison could not work at all during this time and wrote a vulnerable and powerful piece about what it means to open up to trust, to the possibility of care from others. If you can, please donate to her GoFundMe to support her in this time of need.

• Dan, Jeff and I are bringing the meditation party to New York City, this time to benefit New York Insight Meditation Center. Join us in-person or online Monday, December 9 at 7pm for The Heart of Connection: Spiritual Friendhsip in Challenging Times.

• Registration closes Monday for Ancestors Welcome Here, a healing retreat for white people. Looks like a great opportunity with some wonderful teachers.

• Loved this interview with Lynday Barry and this epic playlist of hers.

• This graphic made me recognize once again the power of remittances, which those of us from the third world know well. This isn’t just charity that cannot be written off, but a huge economy unto itself.

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