Interview with Metaphysical Teacher Damian Sebouhian

Today, I am excited to spotlight Damian Sebouhian.

Damian Sebouhian is a semi-retired English professor who is currently spending the second half of his life exploring the meaning of life. He writes about and teaches mindfulness and spiritual alchemy. He is a student and practitioner of tarot, astrology, numerology, qigong, meditation, and breath work. He is passionate about the arts in general, especially visual art, poetry and the theater.

Cendrine Marrouat: Hello Damian! What triggered your desire to become a metaphysical teacher? Any particular story?

Damian Sebouhian: On my twenty-second birthday, my father gave me two gifts that you could say triggered my interest in studying metaphysics: my astrology natal chart drawn by my father days after my birth (which included about twenty pages of interpretations) and a deck of Tarot cards.

These were very surprising gifts to receive because my father was a university English professor and skeptic of all things paranormal. He never talked about astrology, tarot, or the occult in general.

He gave me the gifts with the explanation that they represented a field of study that he used to be immensely interested in during most of his 20s and that perhaps I might find them useful.

While I appreciated the gifts and became very intrigued by my father's past occult leanings, I had decided that if he had left them behind then, there probably wasn't much to it in the way of finding ultimate truth, something my father spent his whole life pursuing.

It wasn't until I fell in love with an actual astrologer/tarot reader at the age of 27 that I began taking metaphysics seriously.

I devoured everything I could get my hands on; from the Gnostic Gospels to Vedanta Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism to Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy - if it resided in the realm of metaphysics, I explored its teachings.

Thus, becoming a teacher of metaphysics grew organically from my own interest in the field and from my own experiences as a traditional academic teacher.

CM: How has your background as an academic influenced your metaphysical practice?

DS: Almost entirely. From lesson planning, to classroom presentations, my teaching style was forged in the traditional classroom and I teach pretty much the same way with my metaphysic courses.

The only difference is with metaphysics, there are far fewer writing assignments and essays for me to grade, and the tests are experiential-based, rather than cognitive-based.

CM: You are in the process of building a website to offer tarot classes. You are also interested in getting into the quartz crystal business. For those who are not familiar with those two things, could you tell us about them?

DS: Walk into any metaphysical shop and you are guaranteed to find two things: tarot cards and crystals.

While I've been into tarot for about thirty years now, my interest in quartz crystals is relatively new and began a year-and-a-half ago during my and my wife's stay in Hot Springs, Arkansas. That area (especially around Lake Ouachita) is home to the largest deposits of quartz crystals in the country. There are multiple crystal mines that anyone can explore for a fee and whatever you dig up is yours to keep.

The Arkansas quartz is in high demand for energy workers. In fact my wife and I have partnered up with a healer/lecturer named David Speare who runs workshops on the healing properties of the Arkansas quartz crystal.

As I write this we are on our way to Hot Springs with the purpose of crystal mining for a lecture Speare will be conducting in September at one of the most famous metaphysical communities in the world - Lily Dale (located in Cassadaga, New York).

As far as the tarot goes, I could spend several lifetimes studying it and still not unearth all of its mysteries.

My elevator pitch for the tarot would be this:

The tarot is an intricately symbolic pictorial key of 78 cards that mysteriously appeared during the Italian Renaissance and which addresses every philosophical tenant of the human experience, including the meaning of life and, if its lessons are sincerely practiced, has the potential to guide the adept to the ultimate truth of self knowledge and enlightenment.

I am more than honored and privileged to have the opportunity of teaching its mysteries to others.

CM: In one of your articles, titled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ascension," I found the following quote very intriguing: "There are two types of people in the world. Those who are preparing for the ascension and everybody else." Would you mind expounding on this thought? And what does the word "ascension" mean to you?

DS: Well, my hope is that we ALL start "preparing" for the "ascension".

I put both words in quotes because there is no external way one can prepare for the ascension and there is no adequate word to use to describe what's happening on the metaphysical level to the planet, so the light-worker community is just going with "ascension" because I mean, it's a pretty new-age sounding word and who doesn't want to ascend?

The earth herself is said to be going through this energy shift, setting the foundation for Her inhabitants to live in a much different way. Likewise, those who are sensitive to these energetic shifts have been paying attention and making shifts of their own.

Breaking down the word itself, "to ascend" means to rise above one level in order to advance to a "higher" level.

What are we ascending from?

• Toxic paradigms and belief structures that have created systems designed to hold humanity from knowing and embodying its full potential.
• All the characteristics inherent in those systems such as greed, violence, war, isolation, punishment, poverty, global climate change, environmental pollution, hierarchical structures of power, racism, sexism, ageism, etc.
• The root misconception, which is to "blame" for the current state of affairs, is the belief in separation from Source and separation from each other. Source, in this context, is another word for God, or the Universe, or Creation, etc.

Where are we ascending to?

• We are ascending to heart-centered consciousness, towards what many call the Divine Feminine or Christ Consciousness.
• The characteristics inherent in the Divine Feminine include: egalitarianism, unconditional love, heart-based systems where empathy and cooperation are the primary motivational forces behind all relationships.
• A planet with no war or violence.
• Perks of living in an ascended world include: psychic powers, astral travel, relationships with other entities and star systems, prolonged life-spans, world peace and unity consciousness.

For an individual to prepare for ascension is to do the work necessary for them to embody transcendence.

For me personally, ascension is about transcending my ego's desires and the prison of my own mind. I do this through a host of practices, namely meditation, qigong, mindfulness, spreading kindness, and educating myself on all things spiritual and metaphysical.

To learn much more about ascension, check out this Medium publication.

CM: You have been traveling around the country in a camper trailer with your wife. What has been your favorite location so far? And Why?

DS: For me it's a tie between Hot Springs, Arkansas and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Prior to going to Hot Springs, I had never thought of Arkansas as a destination spot. The energy there is incredible, the people as quirky, diverse and as laid back as they are friendly.

This isn't a knock against Western New York, but I made more friends in six months living in Hot Springs than I ever did in six years of living in Buffalo. If it wasn't for people with names like Missy, Susan, Star, Erica, Bruce & Nia, we most likely never would have been able to procure our truck and trailer the way we did.

The Hot Springs water is extremely healing, there are lots of lakes to swim in and the crystals are out of this world.

It should be noted that Hot Springs National Park is one of two official national parks in the path of totality for the total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, 2024. Lightworkers from around the country are planning on converging at this time, and we plan on going as well.

Raleigh, North Carolina, is the home of our friends and business partners and when we visited them it was our first time in Raleigh. It's one of the few cities I've been to where living in the city is preferable to living on the outskirts. They've done a great job with making it super green and pedestrian-friendly with scooters and bikes available everywhere. I dined out nearly every night and didn't have a single meal that wasn't amazing. Lots of diversity of people and cuisine.

CM: What is the most important thing you have learnt on your spiritual journey?

DS: The most important thing I've learned on my spiritual journey is very simple to understand yet challenging to accomplish. It's realizing that I'm already at my destination. I am a fully enlightened being, an eternal soul having a temporary human experience, just like everyone else.

What keeps me (and most everyone) from embodying the full brightness of my soul are all the "motes" or obscurations - the mental, emotional, physical, and karmic patterns that keep me distracted from being present.

The work of being a fully realized being is to remove those obscurations.

Imagine a river in it's pristine state, flowing smooth and powerful. That's enlightenment. Most people's river's are not pristine and flowing smooth and powerful because they have inadvertently (and sometimes purposefully) polluted the river in all sorts of ways.

The river doesn't need you to add anything to it in order to return to its pristine state. It simply needs you to remove all the pollutants, then it will naturally and organically flow powerfully on its own again.

Therefore, nearly all of my spiritual practices involve removing toxic, discordant, and parasitic energies from my body-and-mind complex.

There are lots of guiding quotes, teachers, and practices that I have turned to throughout the years in helping me restore my body-mind complex to it's fully realized, authentic Self. I have seen incredible results and I recognize that there is still much work to be done.

This is one of my favorite quotes: "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." - Rumi

CM: One item on your bucket list is to do stand-up comedy. That's quite different from metaphysical teaching! Or is it really that different?

DS: One of my favorite comedians of all time - Bill Hicks - dabbled in mysticism and talked about it frequently on stage. I aim to continue where he left off, as he died very young back in the 90s.

Comedy and comedians are vitally important today because there is so much division, and power struggle happening all over the world. Comedians are truth-tellers, like the Fool in Shakespeare's plays. They use laughter to help guide people to perceive the truth or essence of any given subject, from the profane to the profound.

Bill Hicks was the first adult I knew in the 80s who questioned the war on drugs policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations. He did this one timeless bit where he speculates what it would be like if the media actually told a positive drug-use story:

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the Weather."

CM: What do you want people to learn from your work?

DS: I guess I feel like I need to do more work before I have enough content for people (outside of my classroom) to learn from. There's so much that I have to share and haven't revealed yet, that I'm still mastering and tinkering with.

With my students, I want them to realize what they already know deep within themselves - that they are here on this planet at this time for a reason. I want them to love themselves and to love others.

I want them to fulfill the maxim inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: "Gnothi seauton", which translates to "Know Thyself".

I want all these things for myself as well.

CM: According to you, what role does spirituality play in society? And do you see that role evolving in the near future?

DS: On the general level, there is a spiritual war taking place behind everything we see. One side is striving for humanity to awaken to its full potential and to live on Mother Earth in Unity Consciousness, and the other side wants to maintain the status quo power structures while using technology and AI to gain more and more control of everything.

We can't spend our way out of the trouble we're in. Artificial Intelligence will not save us either. There's no technology greater than the human mind and the potential of the human mind is limitless. But that potential will only ever come close to being realized through spirituality.

At the intellectual level, the war is playing out between non-dualism and scientific materialism. The materialists have boasted a few centuries of dominance over the non-dualists but with the sublime discoveries made by quantum physics, that dominance has been waning for some time.

The beings that want to maintain and enhance their control (George Carlin called them the "Ownership Class") are just fine and dandy with scientific materialism because it's a perspective that denies human access to any reality beyond time and space.

The non-dualists are represented by anyone who posits that reality is fundamentally conscious. Everything is conscious and we are all manifestations or expressions of the One Mind.

For a non-dualist, to say that consciousness (or awareness) comes from the brain would be like saying that the ocean comes from the fish that swim in it. The ocean just is and everything in the ocean is sharing the same ocean. We, like fish in the ocean, are likewise sharing the same air, the same emotions, the same thoughts, the same everything. These things exist as extremely subtle electromagnetic energy scapes that we happen to tune in and out of depending on how we resonate.

I should stress that nothing I am saying here is new. Every mystical tradition in the world has been saying the same stuff for millennia. We are all interconnected. When you intentionally hurt another being, you are essentially hurting yourself. Likewise, when you serve or support or help another being, you are serving, supporting and helping yourself.

The future of spirituality will be a future where all religions and science unite with the Golden Rule (as paraphrased above) as its foundational teaching. From there, anything is possible.

Support Damian Sebouhian's Work!

• Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@damiansebouhian5624
• Medium profile: https://medium.com/@dsebouhian
• Autumnhair Coaching & Consulting: https://autumnhair.net

That's it for today! Thank you for reading!

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Cendrine Marrouat is a writer, photographer, podcaster, blogger, anthology editor, and the co-founder of Auroras & Blossoms and A Warm Cup of Cozy. She has authored and co-authored more than 40 books, including The Train: A Short Story (2023), In Her Own Words: A Collection of Short Stories & Flashku (2022), After the Fires of Day: Haiku Inspired by Kahlil Gibran & Alphonse de Lamartine (2021), Rhythm Flourishing: A Collection of Kindku and Sixku (2020), Walks: A Collection of Haiku (2019-2020), and In the Silence of Words: A Three-Act Play (2018).

Cendrine's work has appeared in many publications. She is the creator of the Sixku, Flashku, Sepigram, and Reminigram; as well as the co-creator of the Kindku, Pareiku, Vardhaku, and Hemingku.