Curious Seeds is an interview series with beautiful, fascinating humans and/or creatures. Suggest someone to interview here.
Angel Hu (they/them) is a ritualist, leadership coach, and organizational psychologist. They serve as an executive coach in the tech and creative spaces, providing heart-led and evidence-based support on embodying authenticity and bravery in group spaces. Angel is also co-founder of Shoji, a virtual community for contemplative death study and founder of the palindromic herbal skincare company lio.oil. Catch Angel’s wicked memes here.
Angel, it’s so good to be with you!
Let’s play "this or that, without context." Choose one and share why, or not.
Maine coon cat or irish jig: Maine coon! Idek what an irish jig is.
Obscure sorrow or unimaginable ecstasy: Obscure sorrow speaks to my Cancerian rage
Peanut Butter filled pretzels or rotting flesh: Pretzels, please.
Calendula or Calliope: Calendula! The Angel Oil is made of calendula 🌼
Right turns only or glitter in your eye: Glitter in my eye
Velvet revolver or silicone sword: Velvet revolver only if the bullets are made of plushy hearts
I’m not sure if you would consider yourself a Renaissance human, but the breadth of your creativity seems vast. What are some throughlines?
With influences from my parents, I grew up actively suppressing my creative energy, and it took me decades to realize and unlearn the myth that I wasn’t creative. Now I see the obvious ways that creativity flows through my daily life. The common theme of my creativity is a consistent sense of deep trust in myself, in the lineage I came from, in my community, and of course, a sense of playfulness with my day-to-day human experience.
Life has offered me experiences that both broke me down and built me up, all of which I receive with gratitude. Through these experiences, I’ve learned to be attentive and listen deeply to my dreams, my capacity, and believe in my gifts and strengths. This clarity has helped me to follow guttural yeses and nos, which makes the process of creating nonlinear, fun, and dynamic. While I don’t connect my worth with the things I produce, looking at the ecosystem of the roles I’ve birthed/been gifted I see that I’m only able to show up in expansiveness because I’m in alignment every step of the way.
“I’m only able to show up in expansiveness
because I’m in alignment every step of the way.”
My bigness, if you will, is a mirror of the bigness of my community and my lineage of people. My community is a constant source of inspiration and connection. My ancestors were historical figures whose impact is still seen today; I draw a lot of strength and resilience from their stories. Spirit also guides and supports me. I experience Spirit as an elemental energy that shows up in sensations from the heart center, life synchronicities, and soulful kinships. When you talk to me, you’re talking to a whole team.
You are a purveyor of memes, perhaps the most treasured content of the 21st century. What is the essence of a brilliant meme? Do you have a favorite?
Haha! This is a big praise! Thank you. I used to create more memes, but now I only curate them. You know what they say about art: that the artwork becomes the viewer’s once it's out there. The essence of a brilliant meme is the interaction between my followers’ own brilliance with what the original creator of the meme intended.
As a Buddhist practitioner, one of my favorite memes is one that says “Cute but suffering” (as a reference to the First Noble Truth). I don't think it requires someone to be a Buddhist to tap into the nature of suffering in this lifetime. Once I understood that in a felt-sense way, my relationship with suffering turned into one that is held by compassion and humor. Some of my recent favorites are just silly and make me laugh. That’s enough to be a good meme. Sometimes when I’m having a hard time, I remind myself that at least I’m hot. And that makes me chuckle, too. I should turn that into a meme.
What is the overlap in the Venn diagram between Buddhism and bagels?
Your questions are so good. The Venn diagram between Buddhism and bagels is me! One of my friends calls me bagel as a nickname. When I got into the path of Buddhism, I was really moved by the teaching that Buddha nature, or an enlightened aspect, is in all of us. I would practice walking around in NYC gently gazing at people and recognizing them as Buddhas. So there is buddha nature in a bagel too.
What about between Buddhism and queerness?
Buddhism speaks about reincarnation as a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. This idea is also very much embedded in my upbringing in the Chinese culture. I experience this as very queer because reincarnation means I literally could have been living in all sorts of different bodies, including different genders and stratifications, based on the era that I am reincarnated in. Also, one of the primary figures in Buddhism is Avalokiteśvara (or as I learned, Guanyin), the divine embodiment of compassion, who can deliver teachings in any form, gender, or age. If that isn’t queer, I don’t know what is. I love it.
And between Buddhism and ancestors / lineage?
The teachings of the Buddha have been passed down over 2600 years. In this way, we are practicing and learning teachings from our ancestors and elders. As an oral tradition, Buddhism involves everyone in the practice by enlisting each of us to speak the dharma and pass it down to the generations that come after. So we are also ancestors and elders-in-training. The cycle is continuous.
Three words: what does flow state feel like for you?
Buoyant. Connected. Concentrated.
What are most of us missing about organizational health and the cultivation of meaningful culture in the workplace?
We’re all working in an intricate multilayered network of information that influences our assumptions (something Bion calls basic assumptions), which translates to specific thoughts or judgments about people or groups, which in turn leads to our actions and behaviors. This is roughly how psychological phenomena like biases and stereotypes are sustained over time. My job is to observe the spoken and the unspoken interactions of teams and leaders at work, and begin to formulate some hypothesis about why people show up the way they do. My role is to create a safe/brave container for people to talk about the unnamable and unspeakable, so that we can become more aware of the impact we’re having on others, process those dynamics, and work with the culture collectively.
What is a joy-bringer for you?
My two cats, bhikku and haku, my partner Joe, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, trees, mountains, ocean, lakes, deserts, and all that speaks the language of Spirit.
How does death figure into your day to day? Why is it not that serious?
I’ve been aware of death since I was 4 or 5 years old because my parents spoke often about how they’d die one day. I used to treat death with deep fear, and made decisions to avoid the pain of death or endings as much as I could. One day I woke up from this pattern and began spending meaningful time examining my relationship with death. I attended silent retreats on the contemplation of death and in 2020, I spent the year practicing living like it was my last year alive. Instead of being morbid this actually provided me a sense of relief.
I see impermanence all around and within me. The human desire to wish for more, wish for exactly this way, and wish for exactly when, leaves us exhausted on this unending hedonic treadmill. I’ve gotten in touch with this abyss of longing in very serious ways, and with the support of lovingkindness and compassion practices, I’ve come to find the love and the levity of this practice.
It’s kind of paradoxical— I’m very serious about my practice, but I’m not that serious about myself, because when I really look into what makes up the concept of “Angel,” this sense of self is slippery and unreliable. This ultimately brought me joy. Like Ram Dass said, “Death is like taking off a tight shoe.”
Like Ram Dass said: “Death is like taking off a tight shoe.”
When I remember that, I no longer feel like things are out to get me, but just moment-to-moment experiences to be noticed gently and released. Just as I don’t think I had a say in when I was born, I also don’t have a say in exactly when I die. So why get hung up on it? I’m probably the most useful in this moment, here and now. So let’s just focus on that <3
But please don’t just run to this conclusion without doing the work first. And the work is also not for everyone! It’s OK to not meditate on or examine death. That’s just the work I was called to do.
Of the five remembrances in Buddhism, which one really slaps for you?
“All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.”
This one really hits.
It broadens the first three remembrances of an individual not being able to escape aging, illness, and death, to the commonality of all living beings, which, if you really think about, is a lot. Having sat with this remembrance, I still feel achy at the chest when I read it. Like, really? This is really true? Damn, that sucks.
How can I take care of myself knowing this is true?
How can I show up in the world knowing this is true?
Tending to the remembrances like so has helped me live a more authentic and loving life.
What does the liberation of creativity feel like?
It feels like an open chest, a straight and relaxed spine, a soft belly, a little tingling in the stomach, relaxed shoulders, and a soft throat. It feels like the border of my body is in continuous and supportive dialogue with the air surrounding me.
Something that you can’t live without today that you could a year ago.
My cats!!! I love them so much. I adopted both of them this year. They give me so much sweetness and joy. I miss them every time I leave the apartment.
Something that’s not a part of your life right now that was a year ago.
I used to wear a couple of red strings from Vipassana retreats I attended, given at the end to signify blessings and intentions from the practices. I got a pretty bad case of flea bites this year and the strings were in the way of my itching the bites, so I’m glad the blessings have been integrated.
What have you been pecking at lately?
Orange-dews. This hybrid melon fruit is so fragrant sweet and juicy! I love it. I also love these brilliant melons that my friend Eric grows at Pixca Farm in San Diego.
What have you squirreled away for later?
I definitely treat these Japanese Hinata rice (30% polished) from Nijiya market with reverence. They’re California-grown rice with 30% of the husk polished so the texture is a perfect bite with the chewiness specific to Japanese short grain rice.
Anything else to leave us with?
I’m grateful for these questions. If you’re interesting in 1:1 coaching sessions with me, I’m offering a very limited number of seats in my schedule. Feel free to message me about this via LinkedIn.