🎧 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.
Listen to me read this essay:
This is the last in a 3-part series based on my online course, Soulful Cycles. You can find all posts here.
Hi friends
Big thank yous to everyone who sent messages of care and support after my last newsletter—also to those who did so energetically. Sometimes when I’m in extreme pain or am feeling particularly lost in illness, I allow myself to be wowed and buoyed by the fact that people I’ve never met pray for me. It’s one of the most powerful and touching things about this weird job of publicly sharing my writing and voice. The world devolves. Loss drains. Cancer stinks. But love feels amazing.
I’m grateful to every one of you for being here with me.
This week we conclude our exploration of rituals by moving beyond the rational validations for engaging with them. I do not aim to shame any of us for holding rational defenses. If you (like me) maintain defenses against ritual, you may want to read this. That post offers several scientific examples of their power. This post doesn’t give a flying fuck about “But does it really work?” foolishness. I encourage us to recognize the difference between healthy inquiry (even skepticism) and the centuries long indoctrination into a paradigm of scientific materialism which disconnects us from the inherent mystery of the universe. We barely understand how anything “works” while the supposed solid objectivity of modernity is in fact filled with contradictions the size of black holes. I will not go into all of that here. I’ve included below previous posts where I touch on this. Today, we will explore the actual experience of personal rituals. By that I mean, I will share my sometimes messy, mostly make it up as you go along process for integrating rituals into my life.
Rituals are intentional practices which connect us to the sacred. Meditation is ritual. So too any contemplative praxis. Some are born into these. Perhaps you have a strong connection to an ancestral or adopted ritual culture. I do not. Through colonization (my dad’s father converted to Lutheranism in the twenties) as well as emigration, my family lost the routines and rhythms of traditional rituals. And, honestly, even if we had not, I probably would not feel an easy connection to the extremely patriarchal expression of Ethiopian/Eritrean (or any) Christianity. For years, as maybe you have done or do now, I turned to communities and spaces that borrow (and coopt) rituals from other cultures. That’s a lot to unpack and not the focus here—I have an entire section on the differences between cultural appropriation, appreciation, exchange, and dismissal in You Belong. Currently, I do not belong (see what I did there?) to any specific lineage or community. Like many modern spiritual students, I combine disparate teachings. This is the truth of my postcolonial, pastiche, spiritual mishmash of a life—which can be fraught.
Have you heard the critique of the contemporary seeker who treats lineages like samples at a poorly blended buffet? In the past, I held firmly to that judgement. Today, I am more open about spiritual syncretism. I combine traditions and practices that speak to me and to each other. Still, in my experience, both a certain amount of depth in lineages as well as a manageable number of rituals ensures that I’m neither a dilettante nor a spiritual hoarder. One metaphor I’ve used to describe this balance is a multitude of trailheads with all the trails representing various spiritual lineages, practices and rituals. If I remain at the start, hopping back and forth peeking at one opening then another, I never begin any particular road/ritual. Of course, there can be value in trying things out. This was me, in my mid-twenties, visiting numerous Buddhist centers in New York City, taking classes and workshops to understand what resonated. However, it probably would not have been helpful to race back and forth from one trailhead to another never starting on a path. Similarly, if I chose a specific trail but spun my legs like a cartoon character never gaining traction, I would never have experienced the stunning beauty of a specific path nor the truth that, down the way (often, not that far at all), the different trails/practices touch and intertwine in myriad, wondrous ways. In those early years, I often would start and stop practices because of other distractions in my life (lots of partying). As I’ve aged (no partying), I am more able to consciously choose paths/practices, even dedicating significant energy to self study, as I’ve done with astrology and tarot. I currently walk a a unique path forged through decades of intersecting trails.
Of course, there is no mountain. No trails. No path. No me. Only sacred presence.
My rituals can easily slip into sloppiness. Sometimes, they become messy ways for me to offload anxiety. Let me meditate to get rid of this ache in my hip. I will light a candle to numb the horror and pain of Gaza. Lately, I’ve been worried about Zorhan Mamdani. The vitriol against him is outsize and getting more organized. I feel concern for his safety. I noticed myself saying prayers from this ungrounded place of reactivity and fear. I decided to stop doing this. Instead, I integrate my wishes for his well-being consciously into those I utter from the stillness at the end of my meditations. Like the dedication of merit often done in Buddhist sanghas, I offer blessings for people, places and for our planet as a whole. This frames any goodness I cultivate within sacred presence, not paranoia. Does that impact anything? I cannot say for sure. Also, I hold profound faith that it does.
I was talking with my friend Paul about the importance of relaxation in life, in healing, in growth, in creativity. Sometimes I wonder if my entire path, all these years of spiritual development and every ritual I enact are actually different ways to teach me to relax. Relax enough to connect with what is true. Love. Love is true.
For many years, I practiced rituals in community. I do sometimes meditate or study with groups. Mostly I engage in solo rituals. It can be hard to practice on one’s own. Though, I do have a few rituals connected to spiritual friendships. At the end of almost every one of our regualr catchup calls, my friend Sara and I pull three tarot cards together. We text photos of our spreads to each other and discuss their possible meanings. We don’t use the same deck, so it’s alway interesting for me to learn from her path. I’ve also adopted rituals that I’ve learned from friends, like keeping a metta bowl on my main altar where I place names of those for whom I am praying, like my buddy La does.
Yet, I often forget to offer blessings. My rituals are highly imperfect. Some people practice the exact same rituals every single day, in a precise order. Those people are called annoying. I’m kidding of course. I do not want to shame those with a strong sense of discipline. It’s just that I often use my inconsistency to judge myself. After my last post, where I mentioned rigor, someone wisely commented that this word is connected to rigor mortis. I don’t want to advocate for ritual as another way for us to judge or punish ourselves. I do not want to collapse and abandon rituals out of frustration. I’ve been practicing replacing the word discipline with devotion. I want my ritual practices to express my devotion to all that is beautiful and mysterious, sacred and loving. I admire the colors and scents and sensations involved with keeping an altar or burning herbs or incoroprating movement into prayer. I aspire for rituals to infuse my life with a sense of awe and wonder at what is possible when I allow the universe to respond to my devotional practices in unexpected ways: an uncanny tarot spread, a strong breeze, a fateful message, the poetry of planets, a loving feeling.
The more I’ve stayed on my unique path, the more I understand for myself that, at a certain point, all roads/rituals meet. By starting any path, I am in fact walking my own path to sacred presence. When I attune to their deepest offerings, sacred rituals provide pathways to experiencing the numinous and ensouled nature of it all, of me and everything around me.
May we all discover our unique and beautiful pathways into ritual as sacred presence.
With love
Sebene
JOURNAL PROMPTS:
Have you been drawn to one or different paths/rituals? How have you navigating walking one or various paths?
How do you feel about the rituals you’ve encountered? What are your experiences with practicing or devoting yourself to them? Do they feel sacred to you, and, if so, how?
Are there new rituals you’re longing to engage in your life? How would you go about doing this?
ONGOING PRACTICES:
Practice bringing or continuuing rituals as conscious practices of scared presence? Investigate what this would mean for your life.
Related Posts
If you’d like to practice with me in person this year…
Learn to Let It Be: Acceptance & Equanimity for Individual & Collective Liberation (with Kate Johnson, Dawn Mauricio & La Sarmiento)
August 22–24 at Omega Institute
There is so much that is unacceptable in our world. And yet, the first task of change is accepting things just as they are. It's a paradox, and it's a ripe place for practice.
Join us for a weekend of meditation and dharma talks mixed with reflective journaling, nature walks, and music and dance activities. Together we explore "letting be" as the antidote to both unnecessary struggle and resigned indifference.
Register Here for Let It Be
Meditation Party: Reckless Conviviality With Mindfulness Superfriends (with Dan Harris and Jeff Warren)
October 24–26 at Omega Institute
Many of us meditate solo, especially these days. This is a chance to get all of the high-occupancy-vehicle-lane benefits of meditating in a group.
Join self-proclaimed meditation nerds Dan Harris, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for a weekend “do-nothing” party with lots of meditating. This is definitely not a silent retreat. It is an opportunity to connect with others, move your body, nap, and discover the power of applying your practice to everything in life.
Note: Meditation Party is one of Omega's most popular workshops and will host as many as 425 participants. Register early to secure your seat and housing.
