🌑 Trust Life – Let Joy Be

it’s a new moon in gemini 🌑

Jun 18, 2023

Image ID: *trust life:* Altar featuring a collage with medium headshot photo of medium light skin toned femme wearing head phones surrounded by images of nature including photos of water and fields of flowers as well aas illustrations of a bird, butterfly and colorful designs.

TODAY I am leading Cosmic Collage! SOLSTICE — join me for an exploration of light & shadow. Sunday, June 18th, 1–3:30 pm ET on Zoom (and recorded for those who sign up). ☀️ REGISTER ☀️

Registration is also open for Soulful Cycles: Creating Intention, Ritual, & Ceremony for Life-Changes. Join me for this 3-week exploration for connecting to ALL change as sacred. Wednesdays, July 26 and August 2 & 9, 6–8pm ET, on Zoom. 🌊 Learn more and register here. 🌊

Listen to me read this essay:

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“When I say I believe in magic, I mean I believe in myself.” — Andrea Gibson

Hi friends

It is almost officially summer here in the northern hemisphere, and I am here for that! ☀️ 🏖️ 🌈

How are you doing? What’s this season bringing you? I hope plenty of wonder and awe.

Thanks for being here to hear about my life and world. It means a lot to me.

Last weekend, I was at Omega Institute teaching about joy with my friends Dawn, Kate, & La and 90+ amazing participants. We made This Joy our anthem (singing it together every day), practiced joy as a spectrum of expression from contentment to exuberance, and celebrated with a closing dance party full of bubbles & dee-lite.

I’ve know La for almost twenty years now. We met through a POC sangha in D.C. (which they founded), roomed together throughout our community dharma leader training, and have been weirdo immigrant buddies ever since. I am incredibly grateful for our friendship. We always have meaningful and moving conversations. Also, mad fun! They’re one of the few adults with whom I can easily access my goofy self (see the example below from a reunion retreat for our dharma leadership program we attended in 2015).

Image ID: Group photo of over two dozen adults looking normal except for the two goofballs in the back. 💞🤪🦄

I’m always learning from La — last week it was through their simply–perfect, perfectly–simple, personal mantra of profound faith: trust life. [I told them that I’m getting that tattooed on my wrist… I’m not kidding.] In the full moon missive two weeks ago, I offered a “mantra” about unconditional joy from Charlotte Joko Beck: joy is exactly what's happening, minus our opinion of it. And, at Omega, I shared another powerful mantra: let it be — a teaching I believe points to the freedom that emerges when I can both allow (let things be as I experience them moment to moment) and aspire (let things be as my deepest intentions long them to be).

All leading to my mash-up mantra for today: Trust Life – Let Joy Be

To me, this is a meta–mantra that ultimately rests in boundless love (which makes it a metta mantra 😜). It speaks to the grace, power, and magic that result when I wholeheartedly embrace a life of faith, joy, and freedom.

Embrace implies choice.

I’ve had quite a bit of pain in my body over the past couple of months. Also, big cancer drama these weeks. And, I’m fine. Both of these are old news in my world (bo-ring!). But in the past, such “news” whether received as sensation in the body or as a test result (or as any other “pain”) has been distressing to receive. Even when the pain would finally settle into the background (only occasionally surfacing as the noisy disturbance of discomfort or anxiety), there was still an underlying buzz of suffering.

This time feels different.

I had exactly one day of real upset when I received my recent medical update. My first reaction was the usual shock: My heart was racing. Energetically, there was that familiar sense of collapse which feels to me like a palpable loss of spaciousness. Emotionally, I felt despair. I sat on my bed crying and my first instinct was to call my ex, though I knew better than to go down that road (a dead end in co-dependence city). I spent an hour on the phone with a bestie who let me weep, expressing all my anguish, all my stories of feeling punished and exhausted and bereft. As the day progressed, my system was settling from the activation. I met an internet friend for the first time IRL. I rode my bike to run errands. And I was still disturbed — I could feel a heaviness in my chest; my mind kept focusing on scary scenarios of debilitation (fed by the ongoing pain I have in my body). By the time the same bestie came over that night, I felt more calm… yes.

On day two, I was biking to acupuncture when I had illuminating insights about tendencies I have with both illness and relationships. I went home and journaled about these discoveries and realized even more — things I had never seen so clearly before. I would never have had these insights without the stress of the medical news. I was only thinking about the cancer update itself off and on. Then, I left for a silent weekend.

When I arrived at the retreat, in the very first meditation, well-worn thought patterns surfaced around my previous relationship — tedious stories involving an endless “I’m right about…” narrative loop. These too surfaced because of the stress of the recent test results. The thoughts played into the next morning when, during the first sitting, my friend Jeff’s voice swooped in and said “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be free?” Making that choice is simple, though (as you probably know), it’s not always easy… Except this time it was. The next tour of that thought train appeared, and I stage–whispered, “Nope!”

And, that was it. Something shifted. Over the long weekend, I did not return to that story, and I rarely considered the cancer. I was enjoying meditating. I was also receiving a rush of new ideas for offerings (and a possible new book!) — these came unbidden and in consistent, wild waves. I was excited about these creative channelings — so, I chose to attune to what was present (which felt like presents and presence; though, alas, the easeful flow did not continue and writing this has been as challenging as always).

When I got back from the retreat, I forgot about the cancer update. I am not exaggerating. I had a call with a spiritual coach that Tuesday morning, and I completely failed to mention it to her (I was more excited to share my creative ideas and personal ongoings). I did not put it in my written check-in before our session, and I did not bring it up until three quarters into our hour-long call — and, then, only after she mentioned a long ago illness of hers which reminded me, oh, right, I got “bad” health news last week.

How does that kind of “forgetting to be stressed” happen? I don’t really know. Mostly, I think by grace — albeit grace that results from years of consistently working with my own conditioning and trusting with a deep faith that this not–always–comfortable, usually–unremarkable work is enough (because every spiritual teacher ever has said so). Also, choice (aka power) — an inner power that understands joy is always present, that unconditional is unconditional (it can’t be that my life circumstances are the sole exceptions to “freedom is possible in any circumstance”). And, finally, magic — because maybe magic is real because paradox is real, and magic posits that I can manifest radical intentions and outrageous dreams for personal & collective liberation (that I have control even if I have no control).

These weeks I’ve felt the most consistently happy I’ve ever felt in my 52 years — even with persistent pain, both physical and mental. And this has felt like a choice (aka control). I’ve been contemplating how to write about this without sounding like an asshole. First of all, because I am well resourced on different levels. As well, I receive an incredible amount of love from so many, and love is the true foundation of my well–being — I know that although this is possible for anyone, not everyone experiences it. Finally, because I am well aware that it can be hella challenging to “choose.” Most of us probably feel like we’re choosing something different than our usual unhelpful patterns all the time. But our nervous systems and emotional responses and monkey minds have an entirely different agenda. The whole idea of free will is obviously a colossal philosophical debate. We feel we constantly, consciously choose things, but maybe we don’t at all.

AND, I believe I can choose some things: what to believe, where to place my attention, how to be. And this grace is the powerful magic of let it be.

In meditation practice, we are often instructed to let go… I’m not sure this is a helpful instruction. Maybe I am the only human alive who is extremely skilled at this — or maybe you too have developed ever sneakier & subtler ways to inflict the (futile) obsession with control onto life. If so, then the simple phrase let go can become an attempt to manipulate reality – to (futilely!) attempt to make this moment into something else (go implies somewhere else… to be).

If I just let go of this (pain/grief/anger), then I won’t suffer. I will be with this (challenge/despair/anxiety) so that it will go away.

Let it be offers a subtle but crucial distinction — an invitation to loosen the grip of control while also inviting grace, power, and magic. Let it be invites me into a more nuanced understanding that ultimately spiritual practice (and everything!) is paradoxical.

The transformation I seek comes not from control and manipulation but from the subtle play of intention and attention. Let it be implies a profound acceptance of how things are in this moment — an acceptance filled to the brim with love and compassion for my experience. I allow things to be – giving kind, caring attention right here, right now, surrendering myself right in the midst of pain, heartache, suffering.

At the same time, I aspire for liberation — my hope is to be well in all ways: mental, emotional, physical. Let it be encourages me to recognize that I am powerful beyond my conditioned understanding of myself. I aspire (literally breathe) things to be – invoking loving intentions for me, my friends/family, my communities, all beings, our world.

Let it be/Let it be. Same/Same. Both/And. Attention/Intention. Allowing/Aspiring. May this be my loop — a never-ending circle of faith, joy and freedom.

Friends, I don’t know what messages or moods tomorrow may bring. I could get well. I could get sicker. I can die at any time. But that’s always been true. For all of us. It’s just that I’m finally living in a way that I would not change anything about, regardless. I love life. I love my life. I love you.

I’ve been waking every morning feeling the absolute grace of another day. I feel powerful. Also magical. Not because I can completely alter circumstances (though I am ready to cast some m.f. spells! 🧙🏾‍♀️💫🧚🏾‍♀️), but because I know I can choose to affirm life in any moment — to have utter faith, to experience joy unconditionally, and to let freedom be. Again and again.

May we all live within the circle of grace, power, and magic.

Also, I made you some venn diagrams below.

With love,

Sebene

P.S. 10% of June’s subscription will go to Trans Lifeline and Black Trans Liberation. Thank you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.
God
is Change.
― Octavia E. Butler

Some change comes to us unbidden. Some change we long to call in. Can you view every unexpected change as holy? Can you invite each wanted change with reverence?

Join this 3-week exploration for connecting to ALL change as sacred.

Join me for Soulful Cycles: Creating Intention, Ritual, & Ceremony for Life-Changes. Wednesdays, July 26 & August 2 & 9, 6–8pm ET. On Zoom (and recorded for those who register). Learn more and register here.