🎧 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.
💥 POWER, SHADOW, AND SPIRITUAL TEACHING 💥
My last offering for 2024 will be on December 18 when I’ll be joining my dear friend Sara Shapouri for the final session of Power, Shadow, and Spiritual Teaching, her 3 week series for teachers and students looking at the less than savory side of spiritual teaching. I’m very excited about Noah and Morgan’s sessions as well. Hope you can join us.
🌙 MAKE SACRED SPACE 🌙
There’s one more round of Make Sacred Space in 2024 — starting this Sunday! This is a co-creative gathering where we attune to the Moon through guided meditation, journaling prompts, and open space — all for a soulful start to the week. Sign up for the November sessions here.
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends
It’s a new moon in Scorpio. Days before a U.S. election mired in collective delusion. As disasters and horrors rage globally. 🫣🩶😬
How’s everyone doing? How’s your practice? I don’t just mean meditation.
According to Oxford, practice is: the actual application of an idea, belief, or method. I would add consciously OR unconsciously—because we practice (and get good at) anything we do over and over, right? Meditating/not meditating, writing/not writing, staying engaged/numbing out… snacking, scrolling, spiraling, despairing—cooking, contributing, resting, praying. We’re always practicing one thing or another.
What are you currently practicing? Like many of us lately, I’ve been practicing being extremely in my feels. Understandable given the planetary and personal chaos all around. My emotional upsets are not wrong or bad, they’re just not inner states I wish to perpetuate. Though being activated is a natural response to this ongoing nonsense, I’m not trying to live there. If I let myself stay agitated too long, I go on to interpret every aggravation as something gone horribly haywire rather than what it usually is: people peopling (including me… I am people!). Maybe, there’s even a case of the call is coming from inside the house because in fact it’s my own damn hot flash which I didn’t realize until I’m already projecting this inner fiery irritation onto some external factor, blaming my dissonant energy on something thousands of miles away or someone directly in front of me—like, I’m doing RIGHT this minute, to this person here in the wilds of these Brooklyn streets. [I’m only noticing this after I’m already slightly annoyed with them and now embarrassingly dabbing sweat from my forehead while tapping this out on my phone ... so I don’t forget to tell you about it. Because the thing about being a solipsistic essay writer is everything becomes material!]
Rituals and routines help me attune better. I know you know this. It’s not like I have access to some top-secret methodology which you have never ever considered. Being spiritually-basic can be a helpful kind of basic: boundaries around the bullshit, energetic hygiene, solid sleep, connections to wise people, joyful movement, seasonal foods, meaningful work, connection with nature… I try to engage any or all of these with some measure of ease. That is, I hope not to grasp at these tools erratically in desperation. Though that sometimes happens too.
All this to say, once again, I’ve been attuning to the various practices which help me re-regulate, to shift reactive to creative. Well, trying to attune to these practices. The hardest part is remembering—that’s the unconscious part of practice (that’s why the OG meaning of sati/mindfulness is to remember). Because sometimes, I do sleepwalk through life, opening a news app from bed late at night, guaranteeing myself some crappy feelings. In a moment of distraction or after a long day or filled with heavy emotions, I simply forget what supports me best: feeling my body, sensing my breath, listening…
I also make many conscious choices that make me feel crappy. Although, I could argue that we’re so deeply patterned, most of our choices are unconscious. Even when I believe I’m making a deliberate decision, I may simply be giving into deep conditioning (aka practice!). I’m certain the news has not shifted greatly since I checked two hours ago and I understand perfectly well how much these apps agitate me, but I open them willy nilly (and I’m not even on social media!). I get caught in some larger momentum or there’s a lot churning in my own life or I’m absorbing the mayhem of others or I’m traveling every other week or I’m currently nursing a cold (thankfully on its way out) … all this is true. And, I know better. Yet, I refuse to resist the pull of the news and polls, the think pieces and podcasts. Is this behavior conscious or unconscious? Or somewhere in between? And how can I better attune?
At the planetary tuning workshop on Saturday (which proved to be even more amazing than I could have imagined), the teacher, John Beaulieu described how underneath every form is frequency, that we’re all basically “frequency navigators.” This reminded me of what physicist and astronomer Marcelo Gleiser told me years ago: “We are all vibrating energy patterns, made of the same kinds of atoms and connected to everything else through the history of the universe.” Dr. John (as people call him) makes tuning forks that are set to different frequencies. Many of them are tuned for harmonic healing and emit pleasing sounds. But, it’s not about good vibes only. He believes the goal is actually to expand our “frequency repertoire” in order to attune to everything, including what may at first seem dissonant. As the music critic Alex Ross said, “Music is our name for the noise that we like.” Dr. John insists that if we can’t allow a particular frequency, we’re separating ourselves from the universe—from the galactic orchestra of infinite sound. Our resistance to certain sounds manifests as a tightening, and he believes these tensions cause us all manner of suffering. However, most of us need gentle and balancing frequencies to build up our capacities to allow for these different vibes. Otherwise, we become destabilized. So, we practice opening ourselves up to all the frequencies. Eventually, we attune to the larger orchestra always at play, even as we stay centered in our own perfect resonance. This reminds me of the story from the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh who described how if even one person stays calm, this serves as an attunement for all.
“When the crowded refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But if even one person remained calm and centered, it was enough. They showed the way for everyone to survive.”
Maybe allowing all the frequencies is another way of saying loving everyone and everything. It takes courage to love.
May we all practice attuning to all the frequencies and making beautiful music of our lives.
With love,
Sebene
P.S. For today’s practice, I am sharing the sleep meditation above which I created a few weeks ago for my friend Dan’s site. You can use it for sleep or for attuning to deep rest. Hope you enjoy it!
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑
November Make Sacred Space starts this Sunday!
In this co-creative gathering, we attune to the Moon through guided meditation, journaling prompts, and open space — all for a soulful start to the week. Sign up for November sessions here.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑
What people say about Make Sacred Space:
I really love Make Sacred Space. The work you put into the music, themes, quotes and prompts is very much appreciated. I treasure the full half hour of mostly silent meditation and your well-placed skillful guidance. It’s nice to set aside some time at the start of each week in the company of spiritual friends.
This offering is very meaningful to me as it has given me time to hold sacredly for myself as I prepare to enter a new week.
I don’t know what to say. You are uncannily tapped into where I’m at every dang time!! Why are you such a genius? Your meditations are amazing/insightful. Your journaling prompts hit the nail on the head and get me thinking about things like “duh, of course I need to be thinking about this!” But I wouldn’t have myself. Your musical curation is on point. I love you. Your talent is beyond. Do more of these!
💥 POWER AND SHADOW IN SPIRITUAL TEACHING 💥
I’m honored to be in conversation with my dear friend Sara Shapouri for the final session of 💥 Power, Shadow, and Spiritual Teaching💥 her 3 week series for teachers and students looking at the less than savory side of spiritual teaching.
I recently shared the below meme with Sara and she responded “Goddamn if that ain’t the truth.” That’s why I adore her and know our discussion about power and shadow will be authentic and deep and hilarious. Please join us!
My friends at Omega are co-hosting Bouncing Back from a Broken Heart which starts today! In my session (at 2:30 pm), I share about my recent divorce and subsequent revelations around coupling vs couple-DOM. Lynne and I explored everything from childhood patterns to astrology to healthy boundaries. It was a great conversation! You can learn more and register for free here.
🌑 Practice Attuning