#16: Sebene — Meditation, Astrology, Collage
The “right way” is your way.
Welcome to Mia’s Queue, a newsletter spotlighting the secret agents of taste among us. In each edition, I chat with an undercover tastemaker infusing creativity and wonder into their (and our!) everyday life. Learn what lights them up, where they find inspiration, and what they think we should all be enjoying right now. Meet Agent 016:
, writer, teacher and author of “You Belong: A Call for Connection.”
Sebene doesn’t think of herself as a tastemaker — “that sounds like, you know, people who write for the culture section of the New York Times” — but I most certainly think of her as one. She is one of my favorite teachers on the 10% Happier platform, and her Cosmic Collage class at the vernal equinox was the creative-spiritual practice I didn’t know I needed. As I’ve gotten to know her a little more deeply through a mutual acquaintance (my sister and brother-in-law), it’s become clear that Sebene’s divine energy attracts people like moths to light. She is the glowing, grounded presence to our erratic, mindless flitting. It was an honor to get to ask her these questions.
What are the things that really light you up?
I feel so eclectic in the things that I like. That has a lot to do with my background, being an immigrant raised not within an immigrant community but influenced by that, and being raised Black in white communities, and being influenced by so many different styles of music, cultural references, foods, and other cultures.
I'm also influenced by queer culture. The most interesting conversations — and the most dynamic taste — are happening in the margins a lot of times. Navigating all those marginal identities and communities, and just learning from so many different types of people and cultures and histories and perspectives — that really influences me. I pay attention to people who aren't mainstream voices, whether that's in literature, nonfiction, art, music, politics — whatever it is.
How do you discover, track, and process what lights you up?
I read a lot, and I love it. I was not an early reader. We didn't have a lot of books in my house even though my dad was a professor; my parents just assumed school would take care of it (and it did not). I came to reading later in my teens.
Now I have way too many Substack subscriptions, which is kind of a new influence. I read The New Yorker, my best friend reads Harper's, and we send each other different articles so that we don't have to both be oppressed by two magazines that we never get through.
In the past, it was mostly me keeping track of things in my journals and notebooks and in my weekly planner. Now I put everything in Notion and have specific Notion folders if it's relevant for my Quarter Connections newsletter, which is just a series of links, or my next Full Moon newsletter, or for a course I’m teaching. It has radically transformed my ability to not have to keep everything inside my own brain.
How about for your collage practice?
I will usually put on music or podcasts and take whatever stack of magazines, catalogs, or newspapers I have around, and I’ll just start ripping things out — illustrations, photographs, patterns, anything that's visually interesting. I put them in a big box.
Then I have a second process where, if I'm talking on the phone or listening to music or a podcast, I'll start cutting things so that I have prepared images ready to go. I make a collage for my newsletters. For my Full Moon newsletter, sometimes I'll know the topic because it's an advice column but a lot of times the collage emerges naturally, depending on what images start speaking to me. When I finished the collage, I put it on one of my altars to charge it. I might pull oracle or tarot cards, light a candle and some incense, and put all the elements — air, water, fire, and earth — on the altar and allow the collage to absorb some cosmic energy.
What other spiritual practices do you have?
Altar work — that's the main one. For me, it's just a way for me to gather my energy. And I’ll include all of these other elements like pulling cards and making intentions — sometimes it's called divination — but it's really just chance, opening to the synchronicities of the universe.
I also keep a bowl full of names of people who are going through illness or struggles so I try to bring like a lot of good intentions to it.
I align with the astrological movements in my mystical practices. My chart is ruled by Jupiter in Sagittarius rising so I do a lot of stuff on Thursdays, which is Jupiter's day, I pay attention to the planets and the days of the week. I'll also do stuff on Mondays because that's the moon's day. I do a lot of my teaching on Sundays. So I'll wear gold to honor the sun. I try to honor these huge beings, that for 1000s of years humans have connected to, because we can literally see them and we know that they absolutely influence us — not only just individually but on things like the tides. I take walks in Prospect Park, connecting to the nature around me, and I have over 30 plants, some of them are very big, bringing nature inside my apartment.
What people are most familiar with is my meditation practices — quiet reflection and contemplation, sitting in silence. I also do other kinds of meditation practices that involve healing practices and working with energies in the body.
I could keep going…I have a lot of spiritual practices!
Please tell me more about your meditation practice!
During the pandemic, my ex-husband and I spent three months in Sicily. I realized it was the first time that for an extended period of time, I didn't have a meditation cushion. I just sort of decided, not for any really strong reason, that I didn't want to set up. So I dropped my formal practice and I just practiced wherever I was. It was a much more spontaneous practice.
It’s only recently that I've started again, meditating at the same time every day. Generally, I do it in the morning when I first wake up, but I didn't do that for like three years.
I'm trying to learn for myself, and also encourage others, to really let go of an idea of what you should do and tune into ourselves in a way that's hard in our culture of distraction and distress. It's not that I like one more than the other; it's what's right for me in any moment. It takes a lot of attunement.
I still feel like I'm not “doing it right” when it comes to meditation, and I'd love your take on how to address this.
There are so many techniques that it becomes confusing. But the “right way” is your way. I really think that the word “mindfulness” is terrible because it has the word “mind” right at the beginning and that's not what it's only about. What it is saying is to bring a holistic awareness to whatever's happening in any moment and, within that, you may have techniques because you’re feeling distracted and you want to focus your attention. But that attunement to what is needed in any moment is what I think we actually should be developing, not necessarily focus all the time. What does my body need right now? We’re mostly activated in this culture and so bringing some kind of regulation to our system is usually the thing that most of us need, I would say.
OK, now let’s get into your recommendations!
📕 “Placebos” by Kathryn T. Hall
The author is a neuroscientist at MIT, and it's all about how powerful placebos are. It's kind of mind-blowing, and it brings up a lot of ethical issues too — like why are we giving people drugs when placebos work just as well for so many things like depression, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, even some surgeries. It’s bananas how powerful placebos are.
🎙 How to Survive the End of the World podcast
This is a podcast by two sisters, Adrienne Maree Brown and Autumn Brown, that delves into the practices they think we need as a community. This season is all about witches.
It's a 10-part documentary about astrology featuring the work of Richard Tarnas, who's an amazing philosopher. He wrote this book “Cosmos and Psyche” that’s like an astrology Bible for many people — it is really fucking dense. “Changing of the Gods” is a very fun and accessible way to understand the power of astrology. It focuses on the outer planets, which affect cultural and societal things, basically looking at how astrology can help us map trends and things that are happening in culture through the centuries. It's mind-blowing.
If you're in New York, I really love this Thai restaurant, kind of a slow food Thai place in Brooklyn. They just opened this past year. Their food is really fantastic. Just generally, I hope that people are eating seasonally and locally. We can't keep on this food chain of having raspberries in winter and getting all this stuff to eat that is just not sustainable.
🌈 Get your colors done
I went to my friend Hope Turner, at Colors by Hope. When we were kids, fashion magazines would be like: Are you a winter? Are you a fall? This is like the expanded versions of that. It's really powerful. I used to love wearing autumnal colors and because I liked the colors, I thought they looked good on me. When I had my colors done, they were like totally not colors I should wear. And I started wearing bright colors. And every time I wear bright colors, people like “Oh my God, you look amazing.” Like, why doesn't everybody do this?
• The best place to follow is on Substack.
• She’s also on Instagram.
• You can buy “You Belong” wherever you buy your books.
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In case you haven’t noticed, I love people with good taste! In fact, I have a podcast about it for Flipboard. The latest episode features
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Such great comments on having one's own unique meditation practice... and great point about "mind" in "mindfulness." Thank you for always sharing fun and insight-full posts, Mia ❤️
What an honor! I love your exploration of taste makers and I am still a little in disbelief that I get to be one of them! Thank you for this Mia. It was so fun to have this conversation with you.