Tea with the Muse: Recent Episodes
Shiloh Sophia
Encouraging stories, images, poetry, inquiries and dares from the Muse at Intentional Creativity®
teawiththemuse.substack.com
Join me to paint the MUSE
Dear One,
If you happen to have a chronic stress or chronic health condition, please listen because this matters. The hours of your day are not neutral. They’re counting on your body’s clock. Hypervigilance over time wears the body down. You know this, but what you might not know is how much pleasure builds the body back.
Pleasure is not a treat. Pleasure is a counterweight to pain. And here’s why I believe it. Chronos. Chronic. It means with time. So if you have chronic health and chronic stress, it means you’re living with it, inside of it. These words come from the Latin and the Greek. When it first began to enter the human language, it was not about a severity, it was about duration, the time it takes. Chronic, on its own, isn’t something bad. It’s what travels with you. But it’s not a singular event. It’s time itself. And if the condition that you are navigating is having an impact on your life. It’s impacting your time. Not just the quantity of your time, but the quality of your time.
So what if the remedy to Chronos and Chronic is connected with time itself? Think about this for a moment with me. Chronos connects with the brainwave of Beta, what I call busybody beta, and hypervigilance, and also the critic. The critic lives in Chronos. Chronos is sequential, the clock, the calendar, the appointment, the countdown, the quantity. Beta is the brainwave that runs it. Hypervigilance is what beta feels like from the inside when you live in a body that communicates to you about what it is experiencing in languages that are hard to understand and so unpredictable. When you’re always scanning for what’s next, what’s going to bring on the inflammation or the flare, whether or not you feel like showing up for something that you’ve already said yes to. Small example, yesterday I spent quite a few hours feeling creative and lit up and informed. And then suddenly my computer was out of battery and I was in a public place. And I didn’t feel like expending the energy to get up and plug it in. So I just closed it and just sat there instead. I was weighing whether or not it felt worthwhile to find the socket. Because when you’re navigating chronic conditions, sometimes the simple act like plugging in a cord can feel like you don’t want to do it. Are you, like I am sometimes, weighing every move? The weighing itself, the evaluation is not free. Researchers have measured what it does to a body over the years. And this buildup is called allostatic load. The wear accumulates. And so when we stay hypervigilant and stressed and in the stressful parts of the beta brainwaves over and over and over, it accumulates. It’s a toxic load.
Accumulation: Is a word that’s been changing everything for me. Hypervigilance is not waiting for a flare. It’s showing up in the good times too. When I’m doing things that I love, it’s just there in the background. And it fills up peaceful times with stress if I don’t pay attention. But there’s something else. This one has to be chosen. Chronos is Predictable. What is not predictable is Kairos.
Kairos is a choice. Kairos is divine time, God timing, supreme timing, synchronicity, everything in right time. Kairos, theta brainwaves, flow state, and the Muse. Kairos is about quality, not quantity. It’s about opportunity, never too early, never too late. It’s the opening. The space to breathe in between, or what I would call Tea with Muse. Chronos is spent. It’s finite. Kairos, you enter and it’s infinite, or at least the experience of it can be when you enter a flow state. Theta is the brainwave that’s operating in Kairos. You don’t just arrive there all at once. You have to pass through other brainwaves. You begin to leave the beta and you pass through the imagination of alpha and into the spacious mystical theta. And as you go. Hypervigilance and stress dissolves along the way. This also counts, especially if you declare that it does. Flow is what it feels like from the inside. Flow is the felt sense of the Kairos state. And this is where science is on my side and the side of Intentional Creativity. The researchers have a name for what happens to time in that state. They actually call it time distortion. It’s one of the defining markers where hours go by and you can’t account for them. You’re so in the flow. You’re in your jam. There’s a theory called transient hypofrontality that says that the self-monitoring part of the brain quiets down during times of deep absorption. The part of you that is over hypervigilant, that guards, that worries, goes quiet, measurably quiet during Kairos. So when you’re in self-expression, particularly things like drawing or painting or singing or weaving or digging in the dirt or cooking food, things that require intention you go into Kairos. When you’re sitting with the Muse and letting her have her way with you. Two hours go by and you don’t even know where they went. That happened just this morning. Coffee with two people I adore. We read poetry from my book, Tea with the Midnight Muse. We did the Mother Mary Oracle Deck and applied it to our health. We talked to the kitties. We talked about the roses and the tomatoes. I made a soup of everything from the garden. And the hours were gone and they couldn’t even believe it. And I said, that? That’s Tea with the Muse. That’s what I want to talk about today. We traveled out of beta and we stopped guarding the parameter of our consciousness. We stopped listening to the Chronos critic who told us we must be productive. We entered the place where there is no clock. Instead, there’s a cuppa.Here’s the interesting thing, is that this time wasn’t about healing something completely, not about overcoming something. When we come back out of it, the same conditions are waiting for us, but our perspective is shifted and we can bring magic out of Kairos into the Chronos. Let me tell you this, the pleasure time, the Muse time, that also is accumulative, just like the stress. The body, the heart, the mind, and the identity, they begin to fill up with a different kind of energy. This is why my entire day is filled with little bursts of chosen micro-pleasure. Chronos, Beta, Hypervigilance, Critic, Finite. That one writes by itself all day long, whether we consent or not, where Kairos, Theta, Flow, and the Muse, and the Infinite, that one only writes in us when we choose it, and also choose to be conscious of it. Kairos offsets days of bracing and worry for the worst. What if Tea with the Muse Is this life-saving as I’ve been saying it is all these years? You might ask yourself, why does Shiloh spend so much time on pleasure when the world is on fire? Because I know what’s possible, because I’ve seen it for myself. I’ve seen people move out of chronic pain and into practices of pleasure that change our world. You know what? Chronos gets the clock. It’s operating all day long. Kairos only gets what we choose and appoint. While you might think that 15 minutes of Tea with the Muse against the rest of the hours spent just fighting the onslaught of overwhelm and chaos: I challenge you to consider this is not just a lovely invitation. For many of us, it’s life-saving. Pleasure is our activism. Kairos, like the Muse, must be courted. Kairos doesn’t just arrive on its own, usually. The only times I’ve seen it come are through falling in love or worshipping at the altar of the Divine. Every other time, I need to choose it. Pain is inevitable, but pleasure is chosen. Kronos never has to be chosen. Kronos is chronic, just like the critic is chronic, keeping you scrolling and reminding you that time is running out. Kairos is a ritual. And while many of us in our community do prefer a giant canvas, in addition, take a walk and let the flowers speak poetry to you. Look out the window at the farthest point you can find and ask what color that is, if you were to paint it. Talk to the part of your body that hurts and ask what it wants. One of the people I was sitting with this morning is navigating a health condition and I asked her to ask that part of her body what the message was. Only one small thing came. But for me, as I sat with her and listened to the space in between the spaces, I heard a very clear instruction about a particular form of rest and I invited her to take that rest today - and she did and she’s doing it right now while I do this. Information comes when you’re having Tea with the Muse. So open the page and give the Muse of Kairos the pen. Ask What wants to reveal itself to you today? Do you believe me that a practice of pleasure could be the counterpoint of a lifetime of pain and could actually be, not just a coping mechanism but a practice to deal with states of chronic health and stress? I know it works. The only question is how much? Will you try? I will. I’ll see you with the Muse. This is Curate Shiloh Sophia for Tea with the Muse podcast and I’m grateful to be in your life. Let’s choose the Muse.
Amber and Shiloh Sophia
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Dear Ones, This Sunday - paint flowers with me and the Muses. A daylong paint and sip in Sonoma and virtually. No experience needed - really. Just come. You will have so much fun - there is still time to get cake and rose’ or sparkle water and brushes and a canvas a big as you choose. ~ Shiloh Sophia
The Muse May Speak in Flowers
My muse usually shows up
in leather, lace, and feathers
with rhinestone sunglasses,
glinting in cowgirl boots with gold wings.
This is how I've come to know her
since she made her company available to me.
The first time she spoke to me,
her language was red-winged blackbird,
and pomegranate seeds
the color of moon blood on white sheet red.
She didn't come with platitudes.
She came with instructions and keys.
Oh, so many keys to so many doors
I know nothing about.
And she only occasionally
allows me to try one to fit in the lock. S
he doesn't let me try if I am good.
She only offers them if I am willing to be bad.
Not bad as in bad versus good, but bad as in badass.
Because my Muse is a badass.
Yours is too, most likely.
She won't offer us her gifts if we stay safe.
She always wants a bigger canvas.
She always wants a bigger brush.
She always wants too much water.
Because she told me sometimes size does matter
and it would be much better if I painted naked and barefoot.
She walks me to my edge and then tips me over
Into that muse place where all the colors bend
and come alive in me.
The place where I remember
who I was before
all of this heart-breaking open stuff of life.
Today, she showed up differently.
I haven't seen her quite like this before.
She tempted me with an old lure, lightning for breakfast.
But then she added soft, full-hipped orgasms i
n the sunny afternoon,
the ones that start at the top of your head
and shimmy down to the tips of your red toes.
Today, she brought me pain à chocolat.
A chocolate croissant from Paris
where she dreams me alive.
You see, I was there for weeks a
nd now every dream I have
is taking place in the streets of Paris
where we're all having Tea with the Muse.
You see, I haven't been feeling so well.
You see, this life has been too busy for me.
But it's not her who abandons me.
It's me. Who abandons me.
Then I can't hear her voice so clearly.
The tones, they are muffled. T
he colors, they are muted.
And the riddle is that I cannot hear her
if I abandon myself.
I cannot hear her speaking in sunflowers speak.
For a minute, just a minute, I resisted. I protested.
Haven't you seen what is happening in the world?
Isn't having Tea with the Muse a frivolity?
She rolled her giant eyes, of course,
and as she did, I swear dragonflies flew all around her,
their wings glistening. Where had they been hiding?
Then I started to court her.
I courted her when the stars
still shone on the waters.
I sat in the deep well waiting and looking
until the sun shone on my freckled shoulders.
When I saw her, of course, I was dazzled.
She flirted with black-eyed Susans on her nipples,
a star jasmine crown of white, oh, the scent of her,
coral-colored roses blooming around her hips,
a peony at her vulva, pink with magenta strokes.
In her hand, she carried ripe peaches
from the tree just right there,
and the first pears of the season.
There was a long train of geraniums
trailing behind her of every color.
Hummingbirds hovered around her head
and the bees, I could hear them singing
as she approached and pulled me
from the water and that was when
the ravens began to sing and cluck.
She took my hand and in my hands
the seeds of foreign flowers flowed,
perhaps flowers from France.
She told me that flowers are the language of poetry
and that I better get used to
hydrangeas that speak in periwinkle
and gladiolas that hum in yellow
and rhododendrons that talk too much.
She warned me:
Get your ass to the canvas or else, biatch.
I know she threatens when I'm in danger
of losing some deeper sense of self.
It's just been slipping between the cracks. Or I have been slipping through them.
So here I sit, having this Tea with the Muse,
feeling the fog depart and the numbing soften.
Her hands are on my hands now,
clicking and clacking as I attempt to tell you
about a visitation from La Muse
and I invite you to call upon your own.
Hint: She may speak in flowers or ravens or dragonflies.
Do not take this visit lightly.
Take it from me that without her the well dries up,
the colors fade and the belly clenches
and the heart moans of longing.
The Muse She isn't always right on time.
You can't just expect her. She has her own timing.
I feel like today I got really lucky.
As she took her leave,
I could swear I saw Dogwood
from last season dancing around her wake.
She looked back, winking, her job well done,
and I began to laugh.
And now to the page.
And now to the dance floor.
And now to the canvas.
Today I shall wear the pink dress
and go barefoot, hot pink lip gloss,
and I too will be winking right at you.
Shiloh Sophia
Tea with the Muse is a reader-supported publication. It is free and contributions are lovely for the MUSE!
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Here's what's been on my heart: this is no time to stop creating what matters to you. When the world feels like it's coming apart — when the causes we've worked for our whole lives seem to be coming undone before our eyes — it's so easy to abandon ourselves. To decide that beauty, abundance, a voyage de rêve to Paris, is somehow selfish or beside the point.
I'm here to tell you it isn't. We are Co-creators with all of creation, and we must continue to o-create. That is the power we have.
In this episode I talk about the difference between the things we can't control — the traffic, the news, who puts their name on an airport — and the one thing we can: our approach to the day. I share why I treat my morning swim as a sacrament, not an indulgence. Why self-expression isn't just nervous-system regulation but a creative spiritual practice. And why, right now, we're going to need to practice pleasure and manifestation right alongside everything else.
You're going to have to book it, baby. You're going to have to book the pleasure in.
Come take the ride with me. Press play, and I'll see you in circle.
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Here’s the beautiful tree I’m looking at in France 💗
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It’s my birthday and I’m sharing three gratitudes and three of regrets
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When my father and I crashed on the motorcycle
when my family picked up hitchhiker’s
when my mother and I fled in the middle of the night
all of this shaped my nervous system to be more comfortable with discomfort.
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Can You Cultivate Genius?
The question is: can you cultivate genius? What do you think?
First, a quote from my mama, Caron McCloud. She says, “I decided early on that I mattered.”
Today’s episode shares how my mom Karen McCloud encouraged me to cultivate my genius, why I think it’s important for women to learn to cultivate their genius, and how brainwave shifts can show us what we do not usually see — including a meditation to access the theta brainwave for your insights, as well as an exciting invitation that includes Amy Ahlers. Hint: it includes the genius we share about money, sex, and influence. So here we go.
Let’s talk about genius, my friends, and why it matters. First, a question: What would it take to be able to say, I am genius, without qualifying or needing to prove? Most of us don’t think we are. This isn’t about other people thinking you are, but about cultivating a genius space where fresh thoughts can arise.
The term genius comes from the Latin verb gignere, meaning to beget, to produce, or to bring forth. This same root gives us the words generate and genetics. In Rome, your genius was the birth spirit that shaped your personality, guided your destiny, and protected you throughout life. And I can’t help but think about the word genie being the root of genius.
Very little space is given to the development of our innate genius, and this concerns me. We need more women living in the fullness of their power.
But there’s a problem. We might not know this is a choice — that we get to cultivate our genius. It may never occur to us that we have a genius to access at all, really. Most of us have never spent hours, let alone days, watching what truly wants to come through us: an insight, an innovation, a worldview built to actually design our lives and relationships.
The drafting table Mama gave me
I want to start with a personal story that even now kind of blows my mind. Let me take off my shoes now and step onto the ground as I remember this.
My mother Karen McLeod was a genius. She encouraged me to write and recite poetry. She bought me a drafting table for my 13th birthday and told me, this is where you work out your ideas. Draw here, paint here, write here. She said, I want you to think as if the thing you’re thinking about could be life-saving for yourself and for others. I want you to treat yourself as if you absolutely matter. And the world will be a different place unless you inhabit it with everything you’re carrying.
She’d send me to my room saying, go write a poem and don’t come out until you have a draft. She taught me to treat my thinking as if it completely mattered — and as if I did.
If she hadn’t given me that framework to explore myself, I doubt the thought would have ever crossed my mind. Because it’s audacious, isn’t it? It is audacious to devote an hour or a day to your own genius just to see what’s available to you.
That is what I’m doing right now with two of my genius friends. We are in a sister mind, each quietly working on our own material, then discussing, then back to the drawing table for a 24-hour cycle. This — the cultivation of your genius — is what I’ve invited women to do for over 30 years. It’s what I’ve built a long-term business and community on.
What if our brilliant ideas are in the future? And what if that future is just a few minutes in the future, and accessible — like, right now?
Why We Don’t Go There
There are reasons we don’t create the time to cultivate genius. Here are a few.
Ego. We’re taught not to have an ego. Not to get too big for our britches. Not to be too smart.
Fear. We’re warned that if people knew how much sacred medicine we’re carrying, we could be a danger to ourselves or others.
Worth. In the same breath, we’re told we aren’t worthy, and that there’s no real value in cultivating our consciousness. Don’t be too big — but be big enough.
Those of us in the business world get another script entirely: be more masculine, hustle, grasp, win at all costs, even at cost to yourself. Experiences like hustle and win are almost a deadening place for genius. Genius doesn’t grow in the hard ground of striving. It grows in a field of wildflowers, where you lay back and gaze at the sky and ask questions of your own consciousness.
And I think the most obvious reason we don’t go there, into the space of genius, is simpler. We don’t know how. We haven’t been shown. We’ve been prevented from it, and taught to devalue it.
Here’s how. Access flow state within. Focused, intentional inquiry. That is how. Focused, intentional creativity. That is how.
A Little Brain Science
Let me show you why. Here’s a little of the brain science, because it’s worth understanding. Our brains move through different electrical rhythms, and each one gives us access to a different kind of thinking.
Most of our waking day runs on beta — the busybody, alert, task-managing state. This is the ground of usual day-to-day being. Beta is where we answer emails and cross things off lists. It’s useful, but it’s narrow. It can only show us a certain number of things, and we can come to think beta is the only place there is — just like we think we are only so smart, and that’s how we’re born. The issue isn’t beta. It’s in not knowing how to get out of it into new territory.
When we soften and let the mind open, we can visit the bridge to alpha — the relaxed, imaginative, daydreaming state. This is the bridge. It’s the gentle threshold between doing and receiving, the en route that takes us into possibility. We can feel the change in our body as our brain loosens its tight grasp on what there is to do and moves into presence.
And just past that, theta — the slow, intuitive, dreamlike rhythm we touch as we fall into deep meditation and self-expression. Theta is where the subconscious becomes available to us by choice, where we can even dip a toe into the unconscious. This is where the eureka lives: the vision, the aha, the change we want to make in the world. It’s so often conceived here, in expanded possibility.
But can we get it back into beta? That’s one of our questions.
Here’s the curious catch. That brilliant idea is conceived in theta, and then we have to carry it all the way back to beta — back to the day-to-day world of action steps. Many people cultivate a vision for years and never find the steps to ground it. So in our community, we travel into theta on purpose, and then we consciously bring that realm of information back into beta, so we can take decisive action on behalf of the vision.
As Gertrude Stein puts it, being a genius takes a lot of time sitting around doing nothing. I just call that tea with the muse. It’s the pause that makes the cultivation possible.
A Ritual to Try Today
If you want to try it today, here’s a ritual.
Sit quietly and look out a window. Pick a point as far away as you can see, and fix your gaze there. Pretend you can travel to that spot while staying exactly where you are. Let your breathing deepen and lengthen. Feel your belly soften, and the space between your eyebrows soften too. Let loose the grip, smooth the worry lines, and begin to listen to your inner world.
Then state your intention three times: I am here to cultivate my genius. I am here to cultivate my genius. I am here to cultivate my genius.
And then you pause. You just be. You just listen. If nothing comes, say, show me one thing I need to know today. And wait. It may take time. You may need to return to this for a week or two.
Mama McLeod says this: keep looking at the stories that we tell, and the stories that we don’t tell, and take responsibility for them. Create a context that’s big enough to live a big life — and then live into that context. Context provides a theme, and it provides a perspective: a way of going about living our lives as a great adventure, and making choices about what we want that story to be. A context defines, and provides an identity to occur from.
So the answer is yes. You can cultivate genius by choice. I do. You can too. Let’s do it, and teach the others around us. I’m right here with you — in the heart, in the field, in the quantum now.
P.S. — Keep your eyes out…
I have exciting news. If you’re a woman looking for a breakthrough in midlife — in money, sex, and influence — watch this space for an emergent invitation from me and Amy Ahlers, my incredible coach and BFF for the past 16 years.
Amy and I have been working on a project behind the scenes to serve women entrepreneurs and those in corporate spaces, to claim their superpowers of prosperity, sexuality, identity, leadership, and intuition. It is a hybrid of virtual private one-on-one coaching and in-person gatherings — the ultimate mastermind, a council for powerful women. This is a dream of ours, and we’re bringing it to you. We’ve been teaching together since 2012.
Applications for Powerhouse are opening soon, and we begin in September.
Thank you so much for tuning in to Tea with the Midnight Muse.
Much love, Shiloh Sophia
This is a video from 10 years ago where you can hear Caron McCloud speaking about mattering.
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What are the steps you can take to uncolonize your mind? I’m obsessed with this sacred form of activism. I’d like to share with you why and how I learned what I learned. AND the 9 areas that are so impacted even when we don't realise it!
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Hi Everyone
I hope you can get just as excited about this research as I am. It has been around a while but I am just putting the peices together. References are below.I want you to EXPERIENCE THIS for yourself. Here are three ways NOW!
Shiloh Sophia
Book a call to explore our 9 month training called Stardust Initation starting in June
Join me for my NEW class, called Threshold - we are gonna paint aiwth power!
Come along with me and my BFF Amy Ahlers to explore navigating this wild wild world
The Neuroscience of Self-Expression: Why the Brush Knows Before We Do
I want to speak to you about something I am so passionate about — the neuroscience of self-expression. It comes from my root system, because I come from the Stardust Lineage, and we are creative, spiritual, magical women who pass tools of Intentional Creativity from hand to hand and heart to heart. This isn’t a woo-woo idea, and neither is it entirely scientific. It’s a hybrid. Sometimes the brush knows before we know what’s actually going to happen.
I want to tell you about a researcher at Drexel University who has spent a decade strapping near-infrared sensors onto people’s foreheads and watching what happens when the human brain is firing and wiring the moment the paintbrush touches the paper or the canvas. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this? Her name is Girija Kaimal — Wow. I would love to have a cup of tea with her. Of course, she doesn’t know me. She probably will at some point, because I’m going to reach out. And she’s probably never heard the words medicine painting — one of the terms we use for our work, because it’s an approach to painting that’s healing.
Her data has been confirming what the women in our lineage have known since the 1930s. Self-expression is healing. Painting for us is a spiritual practice. It is not just a hobby. It is literally a neurological event. And guess what? When you paint with intention, the event begins before the brush ever touches the canvas. If you’ve worked with me, you know I talk about this all the time as energy equals matter at the speed of light — your energy as thought, expressed through your physical body, the equal sign, manifests matter at the speed of light on the canvas. Are you kidding me? Yes. The neurological awakening of what’s going to happen happens before the brush touches the material.
You may also be aware of another piece of research that adds to our point, by Audrey van der Meer, a Norwegian neuroscientist who has proved that writing by hand wakes up the brain in ways that typing cannot. Imagine how many kids these days are no longer learning to handwrite?! Her work is finding something so incredible about what happens when people are actually handwriting — she’s measuring how the brain encodes the writing of letters into memory, and the brain is lighting up.
When Kaimal’s team did their research, they put 26 people in headbands — the kind that read blood flow inside the prefrontal cortex literally in real time. (Gosh, I wish it were here.) They were given three minutes to color in a mandala, to doodle around a circle, and to free-draw whatever they wanted. The results were published back in 2017 in Art Therapy. Guess what? All three activities lit up the medial prefrontal cortex. Wow. Wow. That region is part of the brain’s reward pathway. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? That’s the same circuit that fires when someone you love walks into the room. This is when you get to have tea with your best friend and you’re jumping up and down. This is when your lover winks at you and you know what’s coming next. This is when those of us in Intentional Creativity know that I’m going to do a power-packed livestream that’s going to knock our red striped socks off. We feel love.
The people she studied were not artists — most of them. And their brain did not care, in a literal way. Their brain didn’t care if they were an artist. Their brain rewarded them anyway, for the simple act of creating color across a page with their hands. What’s interesting too is that working inside of shapes — as in coloring — really does something powerful to the brain and to memory. It’s just so exciting.
In a separate study, the same researchers took 39 adults, gave them 45 minutes with markers, clay, and collage materials — nothing structured — and measured the cortisol in their saliva before and after. I kid you not. Cortisol in the saliva. Cortisol is the hormone your body produces under stress, the one that keeps so many of us awake at three in the morning, especially those of us going through midlife. Seventy-five percent of the participants showed lower cortisol after making art. No skill required. No talent required. No making it pretty. No perfectionism required. It is not an act of performance. It is an act of self-expression. The brain is responding to the act itself. It’s in a way metacognition — becoming conscious of becoming conscious, while being intentional about what you’re creating.
There’s something else I want to add, because when you’re coloring and your brain doesn’t have to make decisions, you can actually break a psychotic loop. This comes from nurses at Stanford who use my coloring books, Color of Woman. If they could get patients to color, they could break a psychotic loop. Wow. Why are we not talking about this more? Whether you’re in a psychotic loop or not, wouldn’t it be helpful to know that you could sit down and color and you would start to go into a different brain state? This is so important. (And it doesn’t work if there’s a blank page — for that psychotic-loop piece.)
Now, our part in this. For close to 30 years I have been working with creating with intention, and since 2008 I’ve been training others to work with Intentional Creativity. I have not been teaching people to become brilliant artists — though some of them are. I have not been teaching people to make perfect paintings, though some of them do. I have not been teaching perfection technique to make a painting that would hang on the wall of a gallery. No. We’ve been into self-expression — to see what happens inside when you express yourself.
Painting like this is a way of
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Exploring our inner world.
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A way of coming face to face with the often hidden identity within ourselves.
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A way of activating the inner healer and the energies that go with that.
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A way of catalyzing the brainwaves to move from beta to alpha to theta, so we can cross over into that state of the imagination and reach the subconscious domains.
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A way of allowing the canvas itself to be a portal — to hold what the body carries
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To express into form what was once inside and didn’t have anywhere to go.
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A composting of energy, now expressed onto the canvas. We call it medicine painting. Tens of thousands of people in our community have painted with it, and before I started doing it, we had two generations of artists who did it before me.
Here’s what the neuroscientists have not measured — but I would bet my brushes and my striped socks they would receive incredible results. The study in Kaimal’s lab gave people markers and said, Go. There wasn’t an intention set. Of course, the intention was that they were being measured. BUT. There wasn’t an invocation. There wasn’t a prayer. There wasn’t a lighting of a candle. There wasn’t a moment of asking what the piece of paper or the canvas wants to express to us. There wasn’t a moment of what message are you receiving. And the cortisol still dropped. BOOOM DIGGITY. The reward pathway still lit up. The body still received a measurable gift — and the “able to experience it” part is super important to me. Because when we do this work and invite people to experience and acknowledge that it’s happened, it creates more reward and more bliss and more affirmation and more faith that we could do it again and again. Which is why the science matters to me — because I want us to be able to do it again and again, in risk groups, in affinity groups, in groups of children, with people who need it. We need to bring this work everywhere.
Imagine what the data would look like if the people being measured were bringing an intention. An intention to heal an illness. An intention to repair a marriage. An intention to pray for the end of war. Do you know how much power comes into the field, into the body, when one of us places our hand on the canvas and the other hand on the heart and says, What wants to be revealed? When a woman holds the red thread with other women in her circle, when she blesses the water and the cup of rain with holy water sprinkled from the places that matter to her, that brush is then charged with all of that energy. When we set an intention to alchemize trauma and wounds from years ago, patterns stuck in the body — then, when the brush expresses lightning, because we are daughters of lightning, it gets moved.
In Intentional Creativity we say that the intention sets the field. This comes from Einstein’s theories “the field is the sole governing agency of the particle”. The energy around us is what’s creating what goes on the canvas. The thought we have and the intention we set will impact what shows up on the canvas. Then we observe it with our eyes, and the material goes back through the brain and translates back through the hands again. The moment you choose what this experience is for, the body has already started doing the work of translating the thought through the body, and the brush is just the place where the choice makes the inner vision possible — and then visible.
What the neuroscience is beginning to show is that this is not metaphoric. Self-expression is not just a great idea. The state of the nervous system, before this act of beauty, this act of devotion — I’m so humbled by this. You can tell I’m just all lit up.
When we come to the canvas, our nervous system is firing and wiring in a particular way. When we bring intention to the canvas, the nervous system shifts and becomes more regulated. The heart and brain can come into coherence. A brain and a mind that has been communicated with — that this sacred act will enable you to receive different signals — will receive messages you can’t even imagine. Intention is a neurological primer of possibility. All meditation teachers know this. Our grandmothers who blessed the bread while kneading it, know this. Our aunties who sew the quilts know this. Every woman in our community who has ever painted herself back into her own body and told her own story — we know this. We’ve crossed a threshold into another way of being, and there is no way to step back from it, because once you know, you know.
More studies are coming, and they will demonstrate what we have already been practicing. They will catch up to what we’ve already been doing. Consider what this means for us — for women in midlife, who have been carrying grief and rage and trauma and versions of ourselves we’ve tried to leave behind in those old relationships. We’ve worked it. We’ve gone to therapy. We’ve used our journals. And yet something still isn’t moving. Painting with intention opens the door to a healing that most of us could never imagine was possible with something so simple — something that does not require talent. The data from these researchers shows us that the brain rewards the act of self-expression, having nothing to do with skill.
You do not need to know what’s going to happen. You do not need to control the outcomes. In fact, if you try to do that, your brainwaves will change and perhaps constrict. Intention does not require a known outcome. It requires inquiry and a willingness to show up and to not be in control. You don’t even need to believe it’s going to happen for it to work. You just need to show up. Your cortisol is going to drop anyway. Somewhere in the medial prefrontal cortex, lights begin to fire and wire. The reward begins to spark. Your nervous system registers that something on your behalf has begun. And then there’s the craving — the craving to do it again.
The handwriting research showed us that we lose something when we are just typing. The painting research shows us that when we bring ourselves to the canvas, we actually create wellbeing and bliss. But I want you to hear that you do not have to be talented. You do not have to know what you’re called to. If you will pick up a brush with us and cross a threshold and set an intention — if you will ask the questions you’ve been afraid to ask in the good company of other powerful women — then we can cross the threshold together. The canvas reveals an answer. Our paintbrush is less like a brush adding color, and more like an archeologist revealing something that’s already inside. Our vision is that you already have everything you need inside of you, and what we’re doing is creating a condition in the field that allows it to be expressed.
And so, with my heartfelt invitation and my emphatic hand motions — which you cannot see — I invite you to join me for Threshold, a brand-new class that is going to rock our world, because that’s what I’m intending is going to happen, and it happens every time as long as people show up. Plus, there’s a money-back guarantee. Or if you’re ready to dive into the big mama codex of our work, it’s called Stardust Initiation. You can find everything at musea.org
This is Curate Shiloh Sophia, and I’m looking forward to gathering with you and transforming our brains and hearts and hands as we fire and wire together. As we say in the Stardust lineage: with our feet on the good red earth and our hands in the stars, our hearts on our sleeve and our hands in the medium, we create — and we become the oracle that we are seeking. It happens in real time. It happens right now. And it happens every time
- Van der Weel, F. R., & Van der Meer, A. L. H. (2024). Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: A high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1219945.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945/full
Open access. The 36-student EEG study referenced in the opening of the piece. Note: the lead author is Van der Weel; Van der Meer is corresponding author and the public face of the work.
- Kaimal, G., Ayaz, H., Herres, J., Dieterich-Hartwell, R., Makwana, B., Kaiser, D. H., & Nasser, J. A. (2017). Functional near-infrared spectroscopy assessment of reward perception based on visual self-expression: Coloring, doodling, and free drawing. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 55, 85–92.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019745561630171X
The fNIRS study showing medial prefrontal cortex activation during the three art tasks. 26 participants. Doodling produced the strongest signal.
- Kaimal, G., Ray, K., & Muniz, J. (2016). Reduction of cortisol levels and participants’ responses following art making. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 33(2), 74–80.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07421656.2016.1166832
Open access. The cortisol study. 39 adults, 45 minutes of art-making, 75% showed lower cortisol afterward, no correlation with prior art experience.
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Thoughts from Café with love With love ❤️
Shiloh Sophia
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What the Stone Did Not Forget
The lineage of the sacred feminine from Neolithic Europe all the way to the Stardust Lineage.
There is an image of a woman small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. She is less than four and a half inches tall, carved from Neolithic limestone over 28,000 years ago near the Danube River in what is now called Austria. She is all curved. A sacred feminine body with a round belly, full breasts, wide hips, a body in its fullness and generative power, honored in the most permanent material available.
She has no face. She does not need one. She is not a portrait of an individual woman. She is every woman. And she is a statement about what the female body means, what it carries, what it represents, and the cosmology of the people who made her. She is, of course, the Venus of Willendorf.
She was once tinted with red ochre, the same iron-rich pigment as human blood, and women’s blood. Even in the act of carving, there was an awareness of the connection between body, earth, and cosmos. The stone itself was not incidental. The stone holds what time cannot otherwise keep. The stone holds the story and remembers.
Across a vast arc of prehistoric Europe and Asia, from France to Siberia, archaeologists have uncovered hundreds of similar figurines spanning thousands of years of human creative life. Each one encoded the same understanding. The female body is sacred. It doesn’t represent the sacred. It is the sacred and created from the sacred. She is the source. She is the organizing principle of human life.
Honoring the feminine because of matriarchy was not something radical, was not feminism. It was not simply embedded into the fabric of early human cultures. It was actually what the fabric was woven from — not just embedded, woven from. It is the very fibers of the tapestry.
And this story lasts for thousands and thousands and thousands of years before the eventual widespread emergence of organized warfare, before the legal and theological structures that would later declare the female body a problem to be managed and named, before the invention of land ownership.
The stone did not forget, even as later cultures obscured, suppressed, and reinterpreted and renamed what these figurines meant. The stone holds the story. The clay holds the imprint.
Marija Gimbutas and the Language of the Sacred Body
Much of what we know about these ancient cultures comes from the work of Marija Gimbutas, the Lithuanian-American archaeologist, Professor Emeritus at UCLA, and one of the most important and most contested scholars in the 20th century. She spent decades excavating what she called Old Europe, the Neolithic cultures of prehistoric Europe that flourished before the arrival of the patriarchal peoples from the Pontic-Caspian steppes beginning around 4000 BCE. In the regions of what is now known as Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, the Cucuteni-Trypillia era, she documented cultures that developed sophisticated symbolic systems over thousands of years, deeply rooted in agricultural art and the cyclical understandings of life.
In thousands of figurines, burial sites, ceremonial objects, and symbolic markings, she identified a coherent visual language — circles, spirals, triangles, and the female form encoding an entire civilization’s understanding of life, death, the regeneration cycle, and the sacred. This is not primitive decoration. These are not fertility charms made for male desire. These are acts of reverence and collaboration, a co-creative relationship, symbols encoded into stone and clay, telling a story about who we were and perhaps who we could be.
And she found no weapons there until later.
Her interpretation, by the way, has been challenged and debated by subsequent scholars. Her naming, her description of the archaeomythology of the ancient mothers — to this day, archaeologists are trying to disprove her theories and relabel her findings.
And yet the figurines — it’s even hard to call them that. The mother. She just exists. The symbols recur across vast distances and thousands of years with a consistency that really demands no explanation. We honored her and her body. Whatever the precise nature of the social structures that produced them, the female body represented in these artifacts is the power. She is the primary symbol through which a civilization found its meaning.
That understanding did not disappear when the cultures that held it were disrupted. It went underground, literally, and it survived in objects and then modern day practices that the dominant culture wasn’t successful in stamping out.
So much they took from us. So much we remembered. The stone remembers, and the stardust bones remember.
Lenore Thomas Straus — Choosing the Mother
This is how it leads into our Stardust Lineage.
In 1937, sculptor Lenore Thomas Straus received a commission through the Public Works Administration — sometimes called the Works Progress Administration — in Greenbelt, Maryland. This is one of the New Deal communities being built during the Depression, supported by the Roosevelts’ vision for an American public life. Lenore worked on multiple projects connected to this era of public art, and photographs document her alongside Eleanor Roosevelt in a hard hat.
Lenore also made a note that these communities were being built for white people, but by Black people. That is part of the story. The untold story.
For the Greenbelt commission, Lenore was given latitude to choose her subject. It was going to go in the town square. She chose a mother and child — not a warrior, not a statesman for the area, not an allegory of progress or industry. A mother kneeling, with her child holding a cup with both hands. It is carved across three four-foot limestone blocks from Indiana, twelve feet of stone placed in public space, and functional — a water fountain. Just like a woman, she wanted to make sure it made sense. Utility and reverence made inseparable, the act of offering water given permanent form in stone. The sculpture was commissioned in 1937 and completed in 1939.
This is, of course, a conscious choice. With the full range of American civic iconography available to her, with the imprimatur of federal commission behind her, Lenore Thomas Straus chose to place the sacred feminine body in a public square — a mother and a child.
She also carved in a separate commission the Preamble to the Constitution in stone, also in Maryland.
She knew what she was doing. She was doing what the Neolithic carvers had done across thousands of years — inscribing the female body and the values of a society that honors life in the most permanent material available.
She wrote of her relationship to carving stone as an artist: Quietly, I bow to the stone.
To our community, this summarizes the root system of Intentional Creativity. The sentence holds an entire philosophy. The sculptor does not dominate the material. She listens to it. She honors what it carries. She brings her full devotion to bear before she raises a hand to shape it.
Greenbelt, Maryland is where Lenore Thomas Straus is from — Prince George’s County, Maryland.
Lenore Thomas Straus became the teacher of a young artist named Sue Hoya Sellers. She recognized Sue when Sue was seventeen years old. Sue had ridden seven miles on dirt roads to find her, a portfolio strapped to her bicycle, clothes starched and ironed, two years of preparation. Lenore called her a young artist, and Sue was one.
Among the things Lenore passed to Sue was an understanding that the sacred feminine image belonged in the hands of women — that carving was not decoration, that it was transmission, and honestly, a form of decolonizing the female body.
Sue carried this forward in her own large-scale work, including a monumental pregnant woman carved in wood commissioned for Alice Walker that stands at Stardust Ranch in Sonoma — the sacred feminine body again in the most permanent material available, given to the woman who had sat at the table with Sue, given to the writer who told me that to be happy is one of the most revolutionary acts.
And Sue passed this assignment to me when I was twenty-four. Sue co-mothered me, and this was among the most sacred things she passed forward.
A Cold Day and a Palm-Sized Prayer
I remember the day.
It was cloudy and cold on the mountain. Sue and I, months before, had gone out to dig the very clay from the earth — red clay. She wanted me to understand the whole cycle of making. Finally, the clay was made. It was placed in my hands, and she said: make it fit the palm of your hand. For prayer. Put your intention into it.
I brought the clay into my hands and began to shape it. I didn’t know what it would become, but I knew that I was called to make the Sacred Mother. It was the first thing I ever made out of clay.
Amazingly, years after Sue’s death, Lenore’s daughter Nora sent me a small figurine carved in stone — one of Sue’s earliest works — a goddess figurine, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It was only then, holding that piece, understanding what Sue had been handed and what she handed to me, that I received the full weight of the assignment — not as an instruction, as a lineage, as a specific, unbroken transmission of an understanding that Lenore had carried from her own teachers, and they from theirs, all the way back to the women who pressed their hands into cave walls and shaped limestone into figurines small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
It makes me think of my recent visit to Malta — how the Sleeping Lady of Malta is so tiny she can almost fit in the palm of your hand. But there were also sculptures so huge they were claimed to be made by giantesses. Lenore and Sue did the same thing — made the tiny and the large.
Lenore was a Norwegian woman. She decided to carve an enormous sculpture, a mother and child. She went on to carve the Preamble to the Constitution in stone. She taught Sue and Sue taught me — from hand to hand and really from heart to heart.
And when I think of this teaching and share it with my students today, I feel the throughline of the sacred feminine image always emerging and becoming and arriving in and through our hands. Back at the beginning, right at the time I made that sculpture, I knew I wanted to change the way that women were treated and the way that the face of the feminine was regarded in my lifetime.
Thousands of paintings are part of it. The carrying on of a Stardust Lineage — from Neolithic limestones to these stardust bones.
Us. We.
Footnotes
(1) The Venus of Willendorf is housed in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. On the red ochre tinting and its connection to blood symbolism in prehistoric ritual contexts, see: Jill Cook, Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind (British Museum Press, 2013); Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (HarperCollins, 1989).
(2) On the geographic distribution of similar prehistoric female figurines: Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (1989), Introduction; Cook, Ice Age Art (2013).
(3) Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe (HarperCollins, 1991). On the Kurgan hypothesis and the cultural transition beginning around 4000 BCE.
(4) On the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture: Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (1989). See also: John Chapman, Fragmentation in Archaeology (Routledge, 2000) for a more recent treatment.
(5) Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (1989). On the visual symbolic language of prehistoric European artifacts.
(6) For scholarly critique of Gimbutas’s methodology, see: Lynn Meskell, “Goddesses, Gimbutas and ‘New Age’ Archaeology,” Antiquity 69 (1995): 74–86. For a balanced recent assessment, see: Douglass Bailey, Prehistoric Figurines: Corporeality and Representation in the Neolithic (Routledge, 2005).
(7) Lenore Thomas Straus, Mother and Child, Indiana limestone water fountain, commissioned 1937, completed 1939, Greenbelt Homes Inc., Greenbelt, Maryland. Commissioned through the Public Works Administration / Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. Photographic documentation of Straus with Eleanor Roosevelt held in the Stardust Lineage archive. For archival verification, consult Greenbelt Museum records.
(8) Lenore Thomas Straus, Preamble to the Constitution, stone, Greenbelt, Maryland. Documented by personal visit. For archival citation, consult Greenbelt Museum records and WPA Federal Art Project documentation.
(9) Lenore Thomas Straus, Stone Dust. Exact page number to be confirmed before publication.
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Our voices have been silenced for generations
This is a call to make it really conscious so we can answer our calling in real time.
This message WILLL matter to you if you can taken just ten minutes. I made it FOR YOU.
And class on Monday!
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A few ideas to support you with regulating your nervous system and managing your energy throughout the day
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Reading of the Red Guild book of the Graduates of Intentional Creativity-since 2014 we have been signing this book at in person gatherings, this is at Wild Water Creek.
Graduation as a Curate - being blessed by a red stole embroidered by Naa Kwarley and given to me by Liz. This is at Stardust Ranch. The ring of roses is the circle the graduates stepped into….including me.
On the Cusp of Equinox: A Turning of the Lineage
“You will be bathed in stardust” Carmen Baraka to Caron McCloud
We are on the cusp of the equinox and the new Spring moon.
The cherry trees are blooming, and a fine yellow dust from the oak trees settles over everything—including me, if I sit here long enough.
I’ve just come back from a swim. I’m sitting in the sun. And as usual, my thoughts turn to you. Yes, you.
The Love That Chose Another Path
I didn’t get to have children.
After many miscarriages, I found myself holding so much love—so much desire to nurture—and nowhere traditional to place it.
I had been so deeply loved, so well nurtured, that consciously or unconsciously, I chose to channel that love into community.
But I didn’t want something temporary. I wanted something enduring. Not people who came and went—but people who might stay for a lifetime. Or maybe even longer.
Our Elder Carmen Baraka used to say, at the most meaningful gatherings:“Maybe we agreed to meet here.”
I’ve always loved that idea. This idea weaves into the ancient knowing of the red thread—that we are already connected, already called. That each of us carries a piece, and that we are here to witness one another’s stories.
Today, I invite you to witness mine. A personal and professional graduation.I recently got to Graduate with the last graduating class for Color of Woman (as it now exists). I graduated with 80 women (who will be acknowledged during the Equinox Ceremony. I am officially now carrying my title as Curate with many other women.
Becoming the Matriarch
This is the evolution of a sacred feminine entrepreneur into a matriarch.
I’m a few months away from turning 56. I still don’t have children of my own, and my relationship to community is changing.
But something else has settled in. A wisdom. An elemental wisdom.
It feels both deeply sacred and completely essential—so basic, and yet strangely elusive.
Completing a Cycle
I’ve just completed a body of work that began in my early twenties with Color of Woman—a journal filled with the images that awakened me. That became 25 years of art galleries and eventually the Intentional Creativity Teacher Training.
In the coloring book, the first images are where I came into myself.Where I said yes to my sacred work.
That cycle is completing.
What a joy.What a challenge.What a gift.
Because the truth is—
I am an artist.A poet.A ritualist.
I am not a COO.I am not a president.I don’t even resonate with the word “founder.”
I am a Lineage-Keeper.
The Teachings Are Simple
What I carry is both from this lifetime and from the ancestors.
And what I teach is incredibly simple:
Make what you make with love.Place your intention into it.When you bring your focus to what you are creating, it changes—and so do you.
Everything is frequency. When you attune your frequency, your world shifts.
This language is my mother tongue. And when women hear it, they remember:
“Oh yes… I know this.”
It is easy to understand. It takes practice to live.
What Was Taken—and What Returns
There was a time when this knowing was not lost.
But over thousands of years, systems of domination stripped women of their innate knowing. We need to restore that knowing from within our stardust bones. This is the Pathway of 9 Promises that I teach.
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Shaping who we are and who we are becoming: Identity and Living from Source
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Knowing what we wish to speak from Intelligence: Access to Voice and Speaking
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Being connected with how we fee our sensuality: Bodily sovereignty and Health
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Trust in our own thoughts and Intelligence - Curating our Consciousness
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To define our Spirituality - Aligning with our Soul and Higher Self
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To gain access to Prosperity - Activating Manifestation in the ways of women
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Unbridled Free Self-Expression - Catalyze Liberation
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Living Your Calling: Co-creating Vision and Designing your Life
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Authority: Claiming a Self Initiation Ceremony to mark moving from where you have been to where you are going now
We were taught to live from the mind, disconnected from the body.To distrust our intuition. To believe our Souls could be owned.
None of this is true.
Your soul cannot be brokered.Your body cannot be owned.Your voice cannot be taken—only suppressed.As we are seeing right now how often women’s voices are being supressed.
The Tension of Modern Structures
And yet, here we are. Here I am. Working inside systems that were never designed for us.
For the past decade, I have done my best to participate in business without becoming extractive. I’ve sat in meetings, studied numbers, navigated software, and built systems and managed teams and navigated taxes and oh so many things that were not in my wheel house.
And what I’ve found is this:
It is incredibly complex. And it is not where I come alive. (and I am not good at it)
What brings me alive is teaching.Circle.Ritual.Art.Poetry.Inviting transformation.
That is where I belong. In circle with my teachings.
A Necessary Simplification
So I am making a change.
Not because I am stepping away—but because I am stepping in.
I am simplifying everything.
What is emerging is called:
Stardust Lineage
A distilled expression of everything I’ve learned and taught.
Rooted in my book, Stardust Bones, this work will guide the next 3–5 years of my life and teaching.
What Comes Next
This work will continue to be accessible - yet centered within the one thing that I am here to teach for this next cycle. Stardust Lineage www.stardustlineage.com Enrollment is open now
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Complimentary offerings for all
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Ceremonies for all in the Cura Council
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Affordable entry points to experience the work
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Immersive weekend experiences around the world
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A 9-month mentorship called Stardust Initiation - enrollment is open now
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A new form of licensing the work so you can teach it if you are a healer or a coach - not traditional Certification like I have been doing.
This work is meant to live through you.To be taught in your own voice. Shared in your own way. Carried into your own communities.
Because the teachings themselves are simple, essential, and universal. This is a Rites of Passage I believe all women can benefit from at least once in her life.
A Living Lineage
There are nine core promises within this work—each one is a direct reclamation of what was once suppressed.
And what I realized when I taught it the first time (in a different template) was this:
These promises are not new.
They are the exact places where women have been silenced—and are now being restored.
An Invitation and a Release
Some of you will walk forward with me into this next chapter. And some of you will feel complete with the time we shared. Both are right.
I release any threads that are ready to be released—with deep gratitude. There is no need to stay if it is not aligned. You will feel the resonance if it is.
A Love That Remains
This love I feel for you—
It is real. It is the truest thing I know.
It is my mother tongue.
And as I find my way forward—more sovereign, yet still deeply connected—I carry you with me.
Those beside me.Those behind me.Those ahead of me, calling me forward.
I Am Not Stepping Out
I am stepping in. And some of you will step in with me. I will see you on the path.
Shiloh Sophia ”And the point is, you have to design a point for yourself” Caron McCloud
“We are all cooling sacks of stars” Sue Hoya Sellars
“When you can hear the stories of the past, the information of the future and the power of the now, understanding that all aspects are in play at all times, this juxtaposition of realities triggers Omni Presence in a way that can be understood. Everything actually isn’t always fleeting, not if you see it as all aspects in play simultaneously. When we can truly understand the depth and breadth, then we can understand that everything that has been and will be, the knowledge of all time, is already within us. We must move through the Corridors - the portals of our timeless mind, body, spirit, the realm of the oneness of creator, of source, the realms of all possibilities. Native peoples, indigenous peoples have an understanding of quantum physics and quantum mechanics but just have different language for it. There is no end to the circle, it is actually the everything and the closely concurring nothingness. That place where time and space are moving through you, and you are the observer and the recipient of cosmic favor. Where is the jurisdiction of truth? It's in the unfolding of the layers of our existence.” Carmen Baraka
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any” Alice Walker
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I just want you to knowthat if you need love right now,love is here.
Feel it flowing between us.
Whoever needs hope right now—there are plenty of reasons to feel hopeless.
But this message arriving to you right nowis evidence of hope.
Hope is something cultivated between us.It doesn’t just appear.
We make hope happen.
If you’re wondering who is out therewho understands,I want you to know:
there is.
It’s not just that you’re not alone.It’s that many of us are feelingthe same feelings you feel.
Even though it may seem likeyou are the only one inside this lifefeeling this way.
Isolation can make it seem that way.
And for whoever feels likethis life might not be worth it—
I’m here to remind you:
it’s worth it.
But you have to make it worth it.
My mother Caron said something once:the point is, you must design a point for yourself.
Life is worth it.But that doesn’t mean everythingis going to work out.
It’s part of the human conditionthat everything doesn’t work out.
I’m not saying life is worth itbecause things will go your way.
Some things will.Some things won’t.
That is the common thread between us.
It’s not all going to work out.
But the things that do—those need to be cherished.
Celebrated.
The rising of the sun.The first birds of the morning.
Winter citrus on the vine.
Petting your cat.
Being warm enough.
Coffee in your cup.
Waking up can be hardwhen everything around usfeels chaotic.
You must look for beautyeverywhere.
We can bring our own meaningto everything that is happening.
We have to bring our own meaning.
Borrowed meaning about this lifedoesn’t work.
I wish someone had told us that sooner.
You have to make your own meaningjust like you have to make a point.
We think a lot about the pastand how we cannot change it.
But we can find a new contextthat makes it meaningful now.
I’m not one of those peoplewho believes everything happens for a reason.
I don’t.
I believe in mistakes.
I don’t think you chose your trauma.Or that you deserved it.Or bargained for it.Or that it was karma.
And I don’t believe you agreed to itin some previous incarnation.
I know some people do.
I don’t.
I do believe in an intelligent universe.
But a universe that scripts sufferingfeels more manipulative than intelligent.
I like to believe our soulsare far too wiseto choose to be victimsand perpetratorsover and over again.
How’s that working out for us?
What I do believeis that power-over structuresare doing their bestto remove our capacityto remember that we have choice.
It’s a potent strategy.
If we believe we don’t have a choice,we stop looking for one.
And I want to validate something:
You have every reasonto feel miserable,depressed,or hopeless.
This isn’t misery loving company.
It’s simply honest.
I feel the temptation myselfbecause of what’s happening around us.
The wars.
The files.
The behaviors.
The administrations.
The commentary.
The price of cheese.
Really.
And yet—
right now,if you’re reading this,
I want to remind youthat the curation of your consciousnessis yours to do.
And truly,
that is the work.
To curate your consciousness.
To move out of the default settingsof personality and circumstanceand decide:
From now on,I will curate my consciousness.
To do that,we need intentional chemistry.
Even with chaos around you,your consciousnessis still yours to navigate.
Until we realize that,
life feels like it’s happening to usinstead of through us.
Curating consciousnessis a choiceday by day.
A choice to repair the narrativethat has been deeply impactedinside each of usthrough cycles of conquestand devastationacross space, time, and place.
Our souls knowthere is another way.
That’s where hope comes from.
Because there is another way.And we know it.
Part of what makes this moment hardis that we can feela better way is possible.
Each one of us can choose that way.
In every decision.Every relationship.Every moment.
We can chooseto lead from the heart.
The choice is ours—if we remember we have it.
I know that many timesit doesn’t feel that wayin our hearts,our bodies,our minds.
But I want to tell you:
you do have a choice.
Some daysthe only assignmentis to reach towardthe possibility of a choice.
The fragment of a choice.
The fractal edge of a choice.
Even if you cannot yet feel itas a lived experience.
Choice as a lived experienceis still there.
And I’m hereas evidence of that.
Years agoI created a paintingwith two of my dear friends,Mary MacDonaldand Shannon Thompson,founder of Shakti Rising.
Shannon passed away suddenlya few years ago.
Just when life was opening for her—a new home,married,finally slowing downafter a life of service.
She’s not here in the form anymore.
But she is one of my ancestors now.
When I would talk to Shannonabout hope like this,
she would laugh at me.
A big cackle.
At my optimism.
But we shared a devotionto life,to women,to care,to the Divine Feminine.
We gave our livesto tending that.
To curating it.
Today I don’t know exactlywho this message is for.
But I am thinking of Shannon.
And I’m thinking of a young girlwith the initials K.L.
A girl who lived in my home once.
A girl I helpedmove through selective mutenessthrough creativity.
A girl whose father couldn’t help her.
When her brother was dying,I held her hand.
When she tried to take her life,and survived,we painted together.
Her life has been hard.
Very hard.
I haven’t been in touch for a long time.
But I see her sometimes.
Her eyes look hollow now.
Tattoos on her face.
She has enduredsome of the worst thingsmen can doto women and girls.
So I send messages.
Sometimes through her mother.
Sometimes just into the field.
Speaking to herat the level of soul.
Because after what she has lived throughhope can be very hard to find.
So I speak to her.
To you.
From my heart to yours.
Right nowI’m about to have tea with the muse.
This is one of the waysI practice intentional chemistry.
Moving from beta—stress, reaction, problem-solving—
into alpha.
Into an intuitive love zone.
Sometimes sending you these messagesdoes that for me.
Loving youlifts my mood.
So from my heartand my homeand my cup of tea with the muse—
to yours.
This is Curate Shiloh Sophiawith a messageof unreasonable hope
and an invitation
to belongto yourself.
You are not alone.
Lean in.
Don’t isolate.
I am leaning in.
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Yes, our nervous systems are being hijacked right now by intentional chaos and overwhelm. I’m going to share ideas You can do today to begin to rest. Choose yourself today. You can take a break. Here’s what I do and what I’m doing today.
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Sharing three teachings about soul, which may or may not be true, but provide a wonderful point of inquiry…
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There is a field of creation and consciousness - do you remember? What is real?
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This practice that I’ve had since my early 20s feels life-saving for me and that’s why I wanna share it with you today
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WHAT YOU’LL EXPERIENCE IN THIS 20-MINUTE MEDITATION:
-
Build your personal attunement temple – a sacred space customized by your imagination, heart, and body (not just your mind) and I will meet you there.
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Ground into earth energy and call in star energy – create the “weave” that holds you between gravity and elevation, rooted and lifted simultaneously
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Move and sway to find your body’s song – gentle, intentional movement that creates coherence between your body, heart, and brain
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Travel into the quantum field while staying in your body – learn to manifest from connection, not abstraction or ego - but from the body
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Discover what wants to be created THROUGH you – receive 1-3 aligned next steps (not forcing a whole plan, but finding what’s truly attuned to you right now)
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Experience collaboration with seen and unseen helpers – ancestors, community, and creation itself are co-creating with you
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Practice “effortless grace” – everything you need has already been provided; you’re learning to see and receive it - this is about what nature has provided, and being able to see that - even with all the other things.
This week I am offering a complimentary experience in the Attunement Temple - this meditation is just a taste of it.
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Tonight’s illustration acting as prayer…
This might sound so simple. You will feel better if you pick up a pen and put it to paper. Your hands are craving the invitation to move. I am telling you the truth. These times require that we tend our hearts and bodies and minds. Pen and paper can help, really.
We need to tend our energies, not just once in a while. Every single day, several times a day, right now, is a good time to breathe. The stress mounts and the stories confound. Our reality as we know it is shape-shifting. Our bodies and brains struggle to know how to be. But I will tell you this.
Breathing happens when the pen moves. Right now, you can pick up a pen and begin to let your energy flow out the end in shapes, marks, and sparks. It doesn’t matter what you draw. Just move the pen as if it has a life of its own. Let your pen be a wild pony.
You can even close your eyes. As you do this, you say to yourself, or something like, I am releasing any energy that is trapped inside of me that does not belong to me. I am letting go of what I am holding so there is more space to love and learn and be present.Right now as I move this pen, I become more myself again. It is happening now. Right now, you can pick up a pen and begin to write what comes. It doesn’t matter what you write. Just move the pen and let the words fall out the end. Watch the end of the pen as it moves on the paper.Pretend it is a thread emerging from within the inner tapestry of your body that must be stitched into creation now. And as you write with your magical thread, say to yourself, or something like, The energy inside of me that feels impossible to hold is being released right now. As I move this pen, I regulate myself,I care for myself, and I know there is enough space to love right now. I choose presence right now. I am here. I am alive and I love and I’m becoming more myself again and it is happening right now. My mother used to say we can write a poem anytime.Just pick ten things right around you and make a list and string them together like beads. Oh, won’t you… Right now, you can pick up a pen and let the energy flow out. Your body isn’t made to hold all of these images and stories and headlines.
Picking up the pen allows them to spill out of the too tight places and squished up, tangled up, emotional landscapes. They need light and pens and paper. The sorrows around us, it is all happening, but it did not have to happen. And we grieve because we know this isn’t how it is supposed to be,but it is how it is right now. The desire to help and serve can feel maddening because sometimes we feel helpless. Self-expression turns helplessness into life force. We are not helpless. We are helpful beings. We are walking each other home. We remember it will not always be this way,
Yet the turn in the story toward what our heart desires isn’t in sight yet. Right now. Will you pick up a pen and just keep that energy moving? Don’t let it freeze in place. Don’t let it get stuck. Those images and energies, they don’t belong to you. You cannot hold them all inside.It won’t help anyone for you to try to hold the pain of the world. You can love just as much without digesting the pain. Your empathy is being overtaken by the collective suffering, and that is understandable, but, dear one, right now, you can call it back.
Mark the page with your truth, your shadow, your angst, your love, your hope, your optimism. You know, the optimism that won’t go away?Bring it, bring it, bring it, bring you. The page does not fear your grief. The pen does not resist your pain. When I say you might feel better by picking up the pen...
It is not so that we don’t see what is happening or to bypass reality. Rather, it is an invitation to feel just a little tiny bit better so actions are more clear and energy is more available and heart is not defended. It is hard to not have a defended heart, the pen and the paper open.
Consider saying this or something like this. Right now I call my energy back to myself. Right now I release holding what isn’t mine to hold. Right now I love with my whole heart without taking on someone else’s pain. Right now I pick up the pen and self-express the impossible.
If this gets me through the next day or hour or minute, So be it. If this clears my mind and shows me the actions I need to take, that is good enough. If this keeps me from being frozen and numb, I will take it. This pen and this paper hold my prayer.
Dear One, your hands are craving the invitation to move. Dear ones, my prayers flow together with yours in this great river of life. Tonight, as I draw the elemental feminine rising up from stardust dreaming, I express my pain with a pen. I am stardust dreaming of becoming earth and tree and bird.I am stardust dreaming of becoming water, sparking life into creation through lightning. I am stardust dreaming of becoming fire, the sun shining on smooth skin. I am stardust dreaming of becoming the sky. The clouds rise up from my mind. The sun and the moon and the stars are in my pen and in my paper.
Without the sun and the rain and the tree, there would be no paper, no pen. Everywhere I look,I am stardust dreaming of returning home to myself. When this world has become too dense for beauty to reveal herself, then I remember I am stardust dreaming of becoming me, and that is enough.
One day long ago, a star dreamed of having an identity, and that identity is me. When I create, I remember the ancient stardust that I am. ”We are all cooling sacks of stars” says Sue Hoya Sellers.Prayers and candles and pen and paper from Minneapolis and all that are hurting for so many reasons.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is. And so we must choose to continue on in a good way, loving, healing, and becoming. Start us dreaming. Thich Nhat Hanh says, if you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.
Without a cloud, there will be no rain. Without rain, the trees cannot grow, and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist.
Sending love from my heart to yours. Can you feel it?
Shiloh Sophia
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Stardust Bones 2025 - Teaching Painting from one of the last Intentional Creativity Certifications, this is the painting that sparked the change. This is my story in a single image with hundreds of stories within…
Dear Ones,
Today I’m reminded of a letter that I received in 2020 from our Elder Carmen Baraka. It was written to me and Jonathan, and here’s one quote that I love. “To know you are between worlds, the I am that I am. I am most comfortable here in this place of giving and receiving. In this place of quantum identity where you find out and can feel this realm in a profound way. An actual view that we are all interconnected in alignment with the stars. When you can actually experience what you feel is your deepest truth. Hold it in your hand and have it be tangible. That is the gift. That is pure joy. That is the awakening.” Carmen Baraka. For those of you that don’t know, Carmen was our indigenous elder within all of our communities. We got to guide ceremony together for over 10 years. She walked into her future in 2021 right before my mom, Caron McCloud So today, I’m signaling a change (breathing)
And I want to begin with acknowledging that everyone in our community of Musea is a part of my life. MUSEA means many museums and many muses in the plural. MUSEA goes on. The Intentional Creativity Foundation, our 501c3, will continue with Musea. MUSEA is the greater community, a collective.
My art studio, is just one MUSEA, albeit it’s an important one. Yet I am taking my position as another artist in the lineage of Intentional Creativity Teachings, and I remain the Co-founder with Jonathan McCloud. Yet, it is essential for me at this time to curate my personal part of our work. Since 2008, the first legend, I’ve been bringing forth the lineage teachings as they came through. Nine certifications later, I am complete with that particular transmission with the last Legend and the last Color of Woman that I will personally lead. And all of that completes in March 2026 with our All Tribes Gathering, which is for Graduates and Guild members of the certifications.
Legend was a significant course for me. Because before 2008, I had already created a million dollars worth of revenue with my paintings. I had galleries in San Francisco and Sausalito, Sonoma and Mendocino. I was living the life of a fine artist and having pretty incredible success, all things considered. But then it occurred to me….
And I remember because I was with Mary MacDonald, it occurred to me that maybe what people wanted instead of my paintings, well not instead, but like more than my paintings, is to be able to paint their own. They were drawn to my images so powerfully, it was more than just about a painting.
We took the huge leap and we decided to teach the first legend. Mary, my mother Caron, and my other mother Sue sat down at the table that’s right in this room with me, that I call the Feast Table of Love. We sat down and we reverse engineered a way to make a painting. ALSO let it be known that it was Mary MacDonald that said -
“Let’s turn on the camera and see what she does”The rest is herstory.
Because even though I had the opportunity to be trained in painting, we say Painting with a capital P, which is a more fine art way of painting, I did not take well to it. And Sue had to create what she called “a way of working” which is not, in her world, painting with a capital P.
It’s like making a way through for someone who really isn’t able to follow the how to paint instructions. And so Legend was literally the reverse engineering of the 13 steps of how to make a painting, if you don’t know how to paint, that Sue designed for me. And we labeled them and named them. And now we’ve taught it. literally to thousands and thousands and thousands of people and probably over 800 graduates who learned the 13 steps. And it literally still works to this day… and when I’m teaching paintings of the feminine form, I still use almost the exact formula because it’s basically a build.
My husband at the time, Isaiah, was so concerned that if I taught people my method, we would lose all of our money. And guess what? I thought we wouldn’t. And guess what? We did. There was a moment at the completion of that marriage, actually, when we went to zero after creating so much abundance for ourselves and investing so heavily in community.
It turns out Intentional Creativity and the feminine image is what women wanted. They wanted to paint their own image more than they wanted to purchase my paintings. I still sell paintings, by the way. I have lots available lol. But now thousands and thousands of people have their own images instead of mine. What an incredible journey. So it took a while to rebuild with this model. But at that moment, something happened… I moved out of the individual serving my own creative desire and I moved into this bigger framework of serving the community with the feminine image. There’s so much behind why that matters, and why that’s important and how we’ve had 40,000 years of images of the feminine and then the past 5,000 to 8,000 years intentional silencing and erasing of the feminine and her presence. When women reclaim the feminine image it is so huge, and to do that instead of my own paintings has been so powerful!!And it’s also emotional because my style changed dramatically to reverse engineer it for others. I look at my paintings before I started teaching and I wonder where I’d be.. how I might have developed… a but I really did put my work in service to creation. I really did do the great work of the Ancestors. I really did bring through what my mothers taught me, and with the help of Mary MacDonald and Jennifer Owen and Elizabeth Gibbons in particular, brought forward Intentional Creativity at an all gorgeous level. I then taught it since 2008 until this year. I didn’t expect to get so emotional. Tears flowing.
So it is essential for me at this time to begin my own work with painting and writing. And it will still be in service to the community, but in a different way because it won’t be certifications which require such a high level of integrity and management. The certifications will continue to be managed by the Intentional Creativity Foundation, our 501 c3.
My own work begins now
and of course it’s still connected with all of you. It’s called the Stardust Lineage. It’s the evolution of Cosmic Cowgirls, whose anniversary founding is today in 2004. I have no idea what my new work is going to be yet, and I suspect that the new work is the old work in different forms. Especially this year because I’m crossing a bridge of change and going one step at a time across that bridge. I’m not running across. I still have lots of work to do to complete, and it’s utterly overwhelming to complete a legacy while you’re alive. (More tears)
Of course, whatever I do will be connected with MUSEA. Of course, whatever I do is coming from the Ancestors, and it’s also my work now. Of course, Intentional Creativity will continue. That is my work and many of our work. But it’s time for me, having delivered what feels like the great work of the ancestors, to now begin to reveal my own. The work started when they were living, but continues after. And so many of the teachings, they came through my “shiloh filter” but they weren’t really from me. I could never just bring that out. I think of Carl Jung’s Red Book where he said that there was more than enough material for one lifetime and that it was so much that it threatened to break him.
In 1957, near the end of his life, Jung spoke about the Red Book and the process which yielded it; in that interview he stated:
“The years… when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.”
For me, there were moments when there was so much coming through, I was like how am I gonna get this all down in time??!!?? And I did it. And I did it with all of you who participated in the certification. I don’t know what my work is going to mean from now on. I know that I had to do Path of Mystics, guiding women to develop their intuition and their spiritual gifts as a part of it. I have a teaching for healers and entrepreneurship. That’s a part of it. I mean, I’m going to keep teaching because that’s what I am. I’m just not going to do the certification. I’m also changing the name of the Sonoma property from MUSEA Center to Stardust Ranch. That’s a part of it. Stardust Ranch is a MUSEA Center. It’s just that holding and financing the entire container for the community isn’t something I can physically and financially do anymore. I have to make it more personal to me and my work because most of the time, I’m there by myself. it’s a huge space to be in, 6,500 square feet and it’s a community space but the community is not there like except for events and that’s like one or two times a month. So I have to make it my own somehow in order to continue. But we’re still a MUSEA Center. All right, let me get through this. The truth is that my brain has been entirely occupied with the certifications and the structure of the community, aka the corporation, the legality, the paperwork. Oh my gosh, I have like four corporations. It’s just insane. I want something much more simple for myself. And I haven’t had the spaciousness to develop my own work. I really haven’t. I haven’t developed my own painting.
There just wasn’t enough hours and brains in the day. This work had to come through and I let it because this work was the work of this lifetime. It’s work for these times. Intentional Creativity is what to do in times of chaos and suffering. It just is. It works. It helps every time.
I believe in Intentional Creativity so powerfully… and I I don’t regret it, although I have my moments. As most of you know, I didn’t get to have children. I wanted to. And many miscarriages. And I think of that one child who kept trying to come through as an ancestor now, Her name is Musette. She’s mine and Jonathan’s love child. And the mother love that I had for that child, literally since the time I was born, I knew she was coming. That love went into this work. I gave the mother love I had into the community and this matriarchal space that we co-create.
So I want you to know I’m not stepping out. I’m stepping in. But as the artist and as the author. Here I go. Oh, so slowly. Slowly. The reveal is almost suspenseful as my Soul is offering only one little glimmer at a time. And this is all I can take, really.
Because I still have months and months of work and paperwork and emails to edit and pages to build to complete this cycle in a good way. As you likely know, some of you don’t. My beautiful husband, Jonathan, and I, we completed our marriage at the end of last year, 12-31-2025. Our deep abiding friendship and connection is growing daily. And we’ve spent lots of time together over the past couple weeks. Including today, we’re going to be together. We are teaching a new Apothecary based on his work called Chaos is the New Black. And the class is Apothecary, which was always his curriculum. But this one is going to be even more so rooted in his work. And I’m the backup singer on this one. On 12-12, the feast day of Our Lady, with the support of my CFO (Jen) and my best friend Amy Ahlers and Jonathan and Michelle Pappe and Ali Stoddard and many community members on so many levels, I moved to Sonoma Mountain. Sonoma Mountain is the birthplace of creation of the Coastal Miwok people and is in the glen called Glen Ellen. This is actually one of the places of my first significant trauma of being removed from my home because we were under threat because my family was protecting women. Interestingly enough, I had a space clearing person clear the ranch in another part of Sonoma County, like 20 minutes from here. And they said I was forcibly removed from that property in another lifetime. So I have this pattern of being removed against my will. And then the fires just perpetuated that.
So I find it interesting that I’m back on the mountain to complete my life here. I pray I never have to move. And if I do, then I accept that. But I’m moving in as if I’m going to stay forever. There’s a burnt ridge out my bedroom window and it reminds me that everything is temporary and I honor that…and so unless fire or flood make me move I’m hoping to stay here. I am grateful to have purchased a home with the generosity of the Ancestors who made it possible. Because I did not personally have enough to make it happen. But my Ancestors made an offering that’s old, old, from my grandparents on my father’s side. And I was able to purchase this home with the down payment. Humbled, grateful, in awe.Meanwhile, the world around us needs Intentional Creativity more than ever. And even with that need of the world, I need to find a way to myself, my original Legendary self.
My first legend painting is coming true now. This is that place, and Stardust Ranch, is that ranch where my Legendary self works. So I will be in circle with all of you for the next 500 years. So please do not think I’ve gone anywhere. The Cura Council is the place where all the communities converge in ceremony.
I’m not going anywhere. Quite the opposite. I am right here. with my quantum identity, emerging my Legendary Self. Stardust Lineage is the name for my personal work, but held within the greater framework of the Intentional Creativity Teaching. So you could just think of it as my MUSEA Center, called Stardust Ranch.
My teachings are through the Stardust lineage. And anyone who works with me becomes a part of that. So this is a life…a story…a lineage to be continued. Big, big love. I just want to say that the biggest love I’ve ever experienced, what Carmen calls quantum love, which was the name of the subject line of that email, Quantum Love…Learning to love people that I’ve never met, learning to love you so much that I would actually stop my own art career and painting process in order to see if that’s what you wanted. Loving you so much to give the mother love I had for my own baby to all of you.
To Love you in that quantum way, meaning virtual, to reach people across the miles. I’ll never forget the feeling on that first day that we Live streamed. He brought the technology. and I was able to reach you all. Not just through video. But through live transmission. Everything changed. That was in 2013. And amazingly. About nine months ago, I was brought in to be a speaker at a place called Edge City that was in Healdsburg, a pop-up. Literally my exact teaching spot to broadcast from was that exact building where Cosmic Cowgirls was and the exact spot where I first taught the very first live stream. You can’t make this stuff up. You know what I mean? You just can’t make it up. I have so many more things to say, but I’ll keep saying them.
That quantum love is the biggest experience that I’ve ever had in my lifetime, and I try to teach it to all of you. I think it’s the key, actually, to our intuitive gifts and spiritual transmissions and businesses and even income and being able to create what you love with joy and service is this feeling of loving someone that you’ve never met. The first time I ever heard about it was reading in a book from Pema Chodron where she talked about the Bodhisattva, which is this unreasonable desire to end suffering. And in particular for people that you’ve never met. I’m not saying I’m a Bodhisattva or anything, but that feeling of loving you. It’s huge. It’s my biggest experience. It is quantum love and I can’t recommend it enough. And I think I do see it all the time, because you fall in love with each other. And friendships happen when you’ve never even met. Sometimes at the Stardust Ranch, I get to see you meeting each other for the first time. And sometimes people come, like a new and special friend, my Star, who come and they say, I’m here for this. I’m part of this lineage. So my life continues in this curious and delightful way. Love is here. Relationship is here. Evolution is here. Sharing my new household with someone that I love is here. Healing is here. The ongoing story of the Stardust Lineage is right here as the sun comes up over the mountain and shines its light in my home. Breathing through this share, thank you for caring enough to listen and loving me in the quantum way that you do. Sue had a painting that said, I have loved you from my deepist heart. So dear ones, with the deepist heart love and stardust, I love you. I’m grateful for you. May our journey continue for generations to come. I’ll be here.
Will you?
p.s. on the painting she spelled it, deepist.
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Oh my goodness dear ones….sigh. Big stuff happening…Here are a few invitations for how to care for yourself
Sacred Time - to slow downSacred Space - walking in nature
Sacred Self-Expression - become obsessed with your creativityand of course…
Tea with the Muse
These are ways to regulate your own nervous system by conscious choice. Intentional chemistry and intentional creativity go hand in hand.
And my thoughts on this topic, of which I know so little. Don’t take it from me, find your own sources….
Tea with the Muse features my thoughtrs, poetry and invitations to self-care and self-expressionMore to come as we learn more...
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What is the cult that keeps scarcity enforced?What is the connection between intuition and money? What can we do about it.
My revelations on Solstice!
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This is THE quantum shift in how you’ve been embodying your intuitive gifts and
accessing your spiritual transmissions.
And let me tell you, these two things...
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How you are with what you know and
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What you carry are impacting every single
relationship you have.
Time, about money, sex and relationship to yourself. (transcript continues below the image)Join me for my year of centering on INTUITION right here on this red button!
This is my work in progress for Stardust Bones - The Self Initiation journey- each Wedensday in our community we do #wip. It doesn’t matter what you are working on - come join us. On Facebook it is the Red Thread Cafe Classroom and on our private app iMusea - it is downloadable.
This is the quantum shift in how you’ve been embodying your intuitive gifts and accessing your spiritual transmissions. And let me tell you, these two things...
How you are with what you know and what you carry are impacting every single relationship about time, about money, about sex and about the quality of life.
We might not think of spiritual gifts and intuitive transmissions as informing us from the time we’re children, but it is and it has been quietly operating under the surface of your life, waiting for the lightning bolt of inspiration, divination, and revelation to land at… what I’m about to share with you.
I want to let you know that in 2026, my focus is on intuitive gifts and spiritual transmissions. And you can find out everything that I’m working on for this entire year at www.stardustlineage.com. Everything I’m offering this year will be inside of this framework, which is the evolution of Intentional Creativity relative to my personal body of work.
Are you ready? Let’s begin with the question. What do you think the biggest quantum leap is… that you could make regarding what you know, what you carry, and really who you are? Because your gifts and transmissions are shaping your identity, largely without you being conscious of it, which is why it often remains inaccessible. (As we consider these ideas - it can amplify what your understanding if you connect your heart and brain into coherence)
Here’s what I think the quantum shift is. Your intuitive gifts and spiritual transmissions are already within you. Therefore, the journey of becoming who you are is a REVEALING. And that’s the key word, a revealing. A revealing. Intuitive Gifts and Spiritual Transmissions
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is not a building from scratch
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is not an invention from thin air
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is not an innovation on things that other people teach you
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is not something you pay for or have to earnIntuitive Gifts: You just come in with your gifts and transmissions. By gifts, I mean what you know. Whether you know you know it or not. Spiritual Transmissions: I mean the flood of your insights and ideas in connection with Source in your world.
So the shift of understanding that it’s A Revealing
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reduces hustle and striving
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releases a version of seeking
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alleviates desperation
…As we take workshop after workshop to get access, as we see healer after healer, who reflects back to us what we already know about who we are and what we’re carrying. Yet acccess to intuitive gifts and spiritual transmissions has remained elusive for so many of us.
I work with thousands of women a year, and so I know this to be true for so many of us, including me. There are lots of reasons why it has been kept from our knowing. One of them is… It is very profitable for the marketplace who markets to self-help and spiritual topics to have you feel like they have the answers instead of you. Believe me, you have the answers.
The distinction from earning gifts and transmissions to revealing gifts and transmissions is ginormous. Perhaps even right now, you could feel it in your body. Perhaps right now, you could just be tuning right in to the distinction in the chemistry of how it feels to have gifts revealed.
It means you came in with them.
It means you already have them.
It means no one has to give them to you.
It means nobody has to see you for them
It means you’re not waiting to be acknowledged by others. Then the sacred work is not to call in the gift, but really to call forward the gift. The energy and emotional distinction in this is SO BIG. I hope that right now you’re feeling the change you’re coming on and coming into. And the sacred work then, of Revealing is development, is practice, is showing up, is being in inquiry, is the practice of being who you are. That is the path of mystics. That is the path we take once we realize we don’t need anyone to declare us as a mystic.
We just are because we’re women who walk between worlds.
We’re women who can see things that others do not see.
We’re women who are carrying information from the spirit realm that is distinct and unique to our identity and who we actually are.
That’s the work that I do, to create spaces for development and practice and embodiment of what is already there. I can’t give you any of your gifts. I can’t hand them to you or show you how to work for them, but I can show you how they get Revealed. The acccess to our intuitive and spiritual awareness for all of us can be amplified through self-expression, through embodied interconnection with consciousness, and through relationship with other mystics who are also on the path. I hope that this has landed for you and that you can begin to be with the Revealing.The backstory is that our art matriarch, Sue Hoya Sellers, taught us as this as a community the story. That we come in with information that lands inside of our cooling sack of stars, like codes, just as relevant, if not more than the DNA codes releative to intuitive access. They come in with us lifetime after lifetime. We can either live them or not. And the question is, will you live them?
How you live them can be answered.
But that you’re already carrying them, that’s the quantum leap. Much love from my heart to yours. This is Curate Shiloh Sophia. Sending love and stardust. If you want to play and pray and paint and do poetry with us, come see what I’m up to at www.stardustlineage.com. And let me say this:
None of the information that I have, that I’m carrying, which is about the information you have that you’re carrying, and the activation of it, is actually for sale. What you pay for when you join a program with us is the women who deliver it and the technology of the delivery.
The material is accessible to all. Much love to every single one of you.
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Show Yourself to Me - A Fresh Prayer
O great beings, source of life-infusing All of creation,
I offer my hands to you this day
so that I may assist in the great turning.
May I discover the most abundant and
gorgeous way to share the gifts I carry.
I offer my heart to you this day.
You, who are earth, air, fire, water,
crystal, stone, gold, salt, and stardust bone.
May I be in devotion to the emergent creation story
that is the most generous in these times.
These times are crossroad times
when those of us who are called to guide
the revolution are on our knees
harvesting the seeds for the future
raising up our faces in prayer
to the clearing in the sky.
I offer my mind, my conscious, co-creative energies
of thought and shape and form to collaborate
with the flow of life force,
gracefully moving through
every single particle and wave that is waving at us.
Oh, hello, I’m waving back! Since the great Cosmic Orgasm started,
the great turning,
the stardust and light has been moving
into the shape that we are, here and now,
into the shape of this temple body itself.
My cooling sack of stars, my cosmic address,
my coordinates and space, time and place,
inhabited by a personality that was shaped
by stories I didn’t even know I was choosing.
But now I choose. Now I choose my mystic path.
Won’t you come along with me?
No qualifications are needed.
No permissions will be granted.
Ritual under the moon will ensue
and be so much better with you.
May I now, this moment,
step into the identity which is truly me.
Oh, that Highest Soul Self
seeming sometimes so out of reach.
I’m ready for you to move through me now
in liberating self-expression
and the ecstatic dance of being in a body
with an infinite soul.
Oh baby, oh the irony.
How it feels to be in matter
and know I am energy.
The stardust lineage moves through me
calling on the presence of true and chosen family.
Ancestral streams of coded light pouring through me,
creating healing patterns of sacred wealth and sacred health.
Oh, intentional chemistry, chosen destiny.
Oh, the possibilities.
Oh, the power of intentional creativity.
Oh, great beings, show yourself to me.
With love
Shiloh Sophia
Well, everyone, this is my P.S. Consider this my updated prayer status.
In 2026, I am opening my mystery school called The Stardust Lineage. Enrollment in two different ways to play is opening soon. I’m offering this focus for my year onto the altar of creation with reverence for the sacredness of all of life here at the foot of Sonoma Mountain in the Valley of the Moon.
In one of our offerings, our year-long painting pilgrimage, we paint and write poetry. I used to write every morning, and today I am returning to starting my day with language and image instead of emails. Truth, though. I do start my day by putting on my fuzzy pajamas, going outside to see the stars, the moon, the sunrise.
So often here, the sun and the moon are in the sky at the same time. I don’t know if it’s like that everywhere, but it is here. On the night that I was born in 1970, the sun and the moon were in the sky. It was a full moon, not so different than this one, this Gemini moon.
Today, the glorious Gemini full moon shined back at me, winking from her Milky Way majesty. She told me, it is time to pray, and I started laughing, and this is that prayer.
If you happen to be in Sonoma or near, we have Cura Council circle on the first Thursday of every month at MUSEA Center. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cura-sonoma-womens-circle-tickets-354362235987Please also plan for the Cura Council on 12/21 !
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“And the point is
You have to design a point for yourself.” Caron McCloud
Thinking of you ❤️
Today’s message includes
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Activating the optic of desire TODAY
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Three definitions of being in a body from my lineage
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Overcoming dissolutionment through action
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My beautiful dream and why I woke up laughing
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The switch on the motherboard that I guard
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Invitation to take action today
SHILOH SOPHIA
What is the Optic of Your Desire
My mother Caron said this:
“And the point is, you have to design a point for yourself.”
Not all of us feel this deep calling that’s defined in language. A tug from the mystery that pulls us forward by some umbilical interconnection with this life and the next, and the one that came before that.
Some people feel called and are driven. Some are driven mad. I think of creators of sculptures and buildings and symphonies and people with large vision. Teilhard de Chardin talks about the sensual longing to be connected with those who have a larger vision. So those who have larger visions often have people gathering around them.
There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”
―Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Because we want to be a part of something.
But in the end, we each have to define and therefore design a point for ourselves. And the point is, we have to design a point for ourselves.
This point is not about busy work. Not about making money. Not about making an impact.
Not even about what we’ve learned about purpose, vision, and mission. This point is something else. It’s soul code. Soul code is not WOO it it is innate in your design, coded into your ituition, woven into your spirit and expressed through your identity.
The “point” is a beam of light that came through with you. It was nested within your cellular structure when you arrived in the womb and the lights came on and your identity began to be shaped. It’s part of the original matrices, the pattern upon which your cellular structure is actually built… like a lattice, like lace in the womb.
And that point, whatever that is: a point of light in matter. It’s energy equals matter at the speed of light. It is a point which populates. Imagine each one of your cells having this point, this particle, this dot permeating through all of the other cells. An original signature. Literally a point of light.
A point of light, poetically perhaps, that your Soul placed there in your genetic makeup so you would remember not just who you were, not just who you will be, and not just who you are, but who you could become if you could recognize this point of light.
Einstein developed the theory of relativity from a vision he had as a teenage boy in Italy laying in a field looking at the sky. He imagined what it would be like to ride a beam of light. I’m imagining that with you right now.
If we were to ride a beam of light to this moment:
What would the point or location of that beam of light actually reveal for you? That’s when the rainbow comes out. When something is so precise, it’s at 42 degrees. There’s no rainbow at 41, no rainbow at 43. It’s 42 degrees.
Where the light reaches the optic and the rainbow comes out….the light is effortless. The rainbow is effortless. And the optic. it reaches is your body, your stardust bones, your cellular enclosure. Your body is what our Stardust Lineage calls a body, a cellular enclosure. Or a cooling sack of stars. Or a sacred temple.
You are a cellular enclosure for cooling sacks of stars in a sacred temple, your tree of life!
Those three definitions of being in a body come from my lineage, my Stardust Lineage, the one I share with all of you. So when I invite you to create and cause and manifest, it’s inviting you to get at 42 degrees so that the beam of light that is already within you. You can direct that light through the optic of your desire.
You might not know what that is right now.
You might have just experienced a huge loss.
You may be looking at years of grief.
You may be disillusioned with the state of the world.
You may be pissed.
Today the invitation is to design a point for yourself.
What is it? What really matters to you at this time?
When I was 24 years old and the art matriarch, Sue Hoya Sellers asked me what I really cared about seeing changed in the world. I said: ending violence against women. That’s when and where my “point” was lit up as if every single cell in my body resounded with the frequency of YES! That’s Intentional Creativity. So much of my work is reminding you about that point of light and guiding process which allows it to be revealed.
My content activates your content. My codes activate your codes. My revelations activate your revelations.
I don’t know what kind of archetype I am. Some kind of cosmic catapulting activator. My cosmic handle is Chief Laughing Cloud and has been for close to 20 years. When I think about what I’ve shared my life force with and who I’ve shared my life force with, it’s all about this one thing: The activation.
My lineage activation activates your lineage activation. I
t’s like life is this huge motherboard and I am responsible for one of the switches that I guard very carefully. And that switch allows gifts to exchange with each other. It’s a shared consciousness in a relational fied. And it’s interesting because I don’t even feel like I’m originating it. I feel like the switch that got created with my name on it, is based on you. So I don’t know if I called you or you called me, but let’s turn the switch on together.
Are you willing to share time some tea with the muse, where you ask yourself: What is the point that lights up my cellular structure?
Let’s not just design a point for ourselves. Let’s Divine a point for ourselves. Around her we do that with brush in hand, song on your lips and swish in our hips!
With great heart,
Shiloh Sophia
ps. I’ll be sharing very soon what I’m up to in 2026 and invite you along on the journey, it’s all about the Stardust Lineage that I walk within, with all of you who choose.
p.p.s. This is my current demo painting in Stardust Bones where 100 women are making new promises to themselves.
You can listen to this on my podcast if you like Tea with the Muse
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Event Monday!
https://musea.org/musewithshiloh
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Dear Muses,Today’s meditatation is timely for what is happening in your life no matter what is going on… Would you like to manifest change today? Coolio! Then I invite you to
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Become present to just where you are
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Connect with your Muse to activate imagination
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Choose an issue you need to work with and dissolve it
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See the next clear steps towards what you are manifesting
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Choose a practice of noticing - can you hold the vision for what you want all day long….?
AND I am inviting you to join me Monday for a complimentary class called, you guessed it - MUSE!
Join me on Monday live or get the recording…all the details are here.With love from my cuppa to yours….
Shiloh Sophia
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Dear Ones,
People sometimes ask me - “What is tea with the muse?”Today’s podcast will share
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What I do and how to try it
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Why I do it and why you can try it too
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Both hands of the Muse - she sees both sides
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An invitation to a dare….Today is the last day to sign up for www.stardustbones.orgWith love
Shiloh Sophia
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These words… Memorizing my mother… Came to me a few days ago, and I finally had a minute today while I was at the beach to just listen to what wanted to be spoken…
ps this is very last call for Stardustbones.org
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Oh my goooooodness dear ones! I am sharing my invitation to my upcoming course starting in 3 days. I would be SO HONORED if you would take a few minutes to come see if this is for you. There are videos over there, and cool pictures and an invitation you do not want to miss.
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Realize Your Healing Powers with Wave-Energy Medicine
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Activate Your Creative Powers Intuitive Painting
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Catalyze your Manifestation Powers with Ecstatic Dance
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Are you a student ready to be an initiate?
This painting is called: Stardust Bones and is from one of my 6 months classes called the Quickening!
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Good morning everyone! I wanted to share the story of my first self initiation at 23 which was guided by my cousin Bridget. This image is the creek that I steward in Sonoma not the creek that I dunked in, but it seems like a fitting Image considering I continue to position myself next to a creek!
I was so teary after I recorded it but I called my cousin Bridget even though I know she’s getting ready for school. And I thanked her. I know I’ve thanked her before for that incredible day 30 years ago.
This episode includes
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The feeling we have when it’s time for a change
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An invitation to join me for an initiation
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The story of my first self-initiation
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Why we need it right now
I am also inviting you to join me for a self initiation of your own. My training begins October 21 and you don’t wanna miss it!
Shiloh Sophia
Www.musea.org
(you may need to cut and paste that URL)
Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe
You are invited to a “Red Thread Cafe Pop In” to have Tea with The Muse with Shiloh Sophia on Saturday, October 11 at 10am pst/1 pm estBring a cuppa something good and your journal.
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Opening Prayers + Poetry: Add your voices
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Stardust and Soil: Full Body Heart Coherence Meditation
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Share about Stardust Bones : Why this, Why now
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Share from a community member about their work with IC
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Highlight stories from my pilgrimage: Portugal, Malta, Paris, Miami
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Mother Mary Oracle card pull
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Invitation to take action towards what you deeply love
ZOOM access: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/5PSHu3WcTliGiDtruaEo5Q#/registration
Password: RedThread
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Dear Ones,
Sharing a simple brief meditation to move into presence now. Move towards what you deeply love 💗
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Letting go of old dreams
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Accepting where you are
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Turning towards what you deeply love
I’m just returning home from a five week pilgrimage and it is good to be home. Consider joining us to learn our version of working with energy medicine through The Stardust Bones Experience. Up to 70% savings.
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Dear Ones,
Energy medicine is available at all times through curating consciousness and collaborating with the intelligence of the body
Decreasing pain can increase pleasure. We get to be a part of curating our own consciousness. When we decrease pain through the intelligence of the body and energy systems we increase our capacity to feel pleasure through pure presence. Take a look at the image before you begin to give your imagination something to work with when we move into the visualization.
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Be tender with your pain, emotional, psychological, physical
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Give gratitude to the intelligent systems in the body and field
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Decrease pain by even 1 percent - wouldn’t it be worth it?
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Amplify your pure presence by choice which opens to pleasure
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Feel support in the non-linear timeline of our community
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Explore particle and wave through observation
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Look at the theory of relativity as a tool for healingConsider joining us to learn our version of working with energy medicine through The Stardust Bones Experience. Up to 70% savings for those who need support to attend this two month course.
Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe
I am on pilgrimage and I wanted to share what is coming up for me around what is now needed. Maybe before you listen and read - ask yourself - what is my ultimate question?
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Ġgantija on Gozo Connecting with the temples
Tarxien Temples are close to 6000 years old
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Sleeping Goddess of Malta
Don’t forget to join us 9/21 at 10am pst for the Equinox Ritual with Solstice energy due to the Solar Eclipse - find info at The Cura Council
Stardust Bones is coming right up - opening soon with a start date of 10/21
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I’m on a pilgrimage in Malta and we visited two sites today that fit the metaphor of what our times feel like to me. Sacred feminine temples versus fortresses. Offering a contrast. The message I heard when I checked in...
This episode explores kind of explosive topices like
Exploring the radicalization of left vs right
Invitation to think more clearly about what’s happening
Moving beyond us vs them
and more!
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Dear Guild Members,This message will touch right into the heart of why we do what we do here. If you have a blog or social and any part of this resonates, feel free to quote and share. Perhaps it will spark something for you.I am in Portual on a pilgrimage and this message for us about why I do what do and how it works with Intentional Creativity came forward.What I am carrying this lifetime. Why it matters. How I share it. And why you don't see me posting about everything that happens. Because I know my call and it is to call you towards your call in a more conscious embodied way.Many of us search our entire lives to find the deepest medicine that we carry. I know what mine is, and everything you see and hear from me is an extension of that knowing. (link in comments if you would rather listen)I sat down this morning in the sun for cafe, guided by heart visions to draw an illustration of what it is that I'm carrying this lifetime. What I'm carrying is designed to shed light on what you are carrying.By carrying, I mean medicine that you came in with this lifetime and living in such a way that this medicine gets expressed.Until we bring this sacred medicine within each one of us forward, it's as if we're looking for it in every face, in every culture, in every tradition, in every march. Your sacred medicine, what you are carrying is actually at the root of our pursuit for equity and justice. Yet if we don't know what really matters to us, and that we really matter, and that what we're carrying actually matters, it strangely makes us focus more on ourselves.If we don't know who we are, we're actually more obsessed with ourselves. When we know who we are, then we can begin to express it and live it. And that usually happens at the level of community and organization.I'm going to make the sharing of this medicine I am carrying as simple as possible.Then for those of you who feel called, I'll be offering an intensive training that is my magnum opus that's called Stardust Bones. That's coming soon. And it's for people who want to become absolutely present and conscious and clear about who they are and what they're doing in this lifetime. It's guided by my heart vision, meaning the intelligence of my heart in relationship with my mind, my gut, my vulva, my hands and my feet, and my identity, all inside of a space called Soul.You ready to hear what I am carrying? It may spark what you are carrying. Maybe stop what you're doing. Maybe you've heard it all before. Maybe it's your first time. Listen.There are outside influences that shape the story that happens inside of you, which ends up equaling your Voice. Your Voice is how you speak to yourself from within, the narrative. The narrative that you're running from within, is running your life, period. So when we are aware that the outside influences on consciousness BECOME inside story, that equals Voice. Then we become aware of how family and culture, how economics and media, how politics and health, how education and myth, that equals 'a default identity'Default identity is what ends up happening when outside influences come and shape us. All of these influences, well meaning or otherwise equal a sort of default identity “Who you ended up being” as a result of these outside influences that you weren't aware of ingesting. Plus how you experience them and how you are shaped by them.The culture that you live within yourself is often based on the outside influence stories until you choose otherwise. Usually that's when we're rebellious teenagers. But it takes a lot of consciousness and embodiment in order to rescue ourselves from those outside influences. A lot of them were positive, yet even those positive influences were shaped by the often invisible operating paradigm that those adults heaved upon us without their full knowledge or ours.For most of us, it's not intended to be a solid indoctrination, but that is what it ends up being. A solid indoctrination that we are not aware that we are operating WITHIN that shapes every part of our lives. Take that in.This influence impacts every relationship we have with lovers, with money, with food, everything. Every relationship we have has been shaped by the story we create from our default identity. When we realize it's up to us to rescue our own Self from the outside influences and the impact on our inside story on identity, then we realize that who we've ended up being was a weaving of a pattern created by influences outside of ourselves without our known consent. And this is actually normal.This is the human existence. It's not all negative. The outisde influences become negative when we're unconscious of it and when it's in charge of us. Then we bring in... how stories of love and trauma then influence the perspective we have on that inside story. As well as the worldview that we project around us about what's actually going on.The story of ourselves and the story of the world around us is often shaped unconsciously. I'm here to tell you, you can influence your own consciousness and it does require a cycle of rescue.How we do make the shift into curating our own consciousness and WHY it works. In our community, we beome conscious through meditation, movement and metacognition. We experience this usually within the framework of a teaching technology, a curriculum, and a pretty giant painting.There's something that happens when you're confronting these ideas, not as an abstraction in the mind, as a thought, as an energy form, but actually make it in matter.You're asking the question while moving the brush...How has the media shaped me? And you move the brush and listen.What stories have I taken on from my parents? And you make dots and listen.What hidden grief am I carrying about the health, of my family, and my world? And you splash colored paint everywhere.What are the hidden myths that are secretly operating in my unconscious, all these hidden rooms? And you make little shapes that represent the rooms.You externalize the internalized narrative. This is Intentional Creativity. During the creative process, you're meditating on it because you're in a flow state. You are being metacognitive because you are observing yourself, observing yourself, right? Metacognition is thinking about thinking. Metacognitive drawing and painting is thinking about thinking with a pen or a brush. And then the movement. You're moving your body across the canvas, selecting the paint, moving the brush, making giant strokes, stepping in, stepping back, turning the canvas. Seems like it's not a lot of movement, but if you've ever done it with me or another IC Teacher for a day, you know that it is.These three things, meditation, metacognition, and movement. Bringing externalized movement to the canvas brings the the internal narrative and makes it visual. This allows change because the neuroplasticity of the brain and the intelligence of the heart, the healing power of the hands, the power of the feet which move you back and forth without you even thinking about it, because you're in flow state.The systems of intelligence, the heart, the brain, the gut and the groin brings a space of coherence. Clarity can come in a way that it hasn't come before. Because all of your systems begin to align.I share this with you today, guided by my own heart vision. That my heart vision is to catalyze those who choose, into your heart vision. For you to see, feel clearly, for you to know and be clear in who you are this lifetime. Even with that amount of trauma that you've had, right alongside the chaos and the undoing, there's this thing called curating consciousness that's guided by the vision of the heart. And it works.Choosing to Curate your Consciousness, consciously brings you closer into presence, into embodiment. Brings you closer to your sensuality and the highest level of consciousness that's available to you. Brings you closer to your calling.I've given my life force bringing this sacred technology of self-expression called Intentional Creativity forward. When I express Life Force... then my Life Source, the deep nourishment, then my creative fire gets fueled.When we work in form, like at a canvas or on the dance floor or in the gardens, we give energy and mind an opportunity to be expressed in matter. This is a very specific chosen happening. It's what I'm here to bring. This is my sacred medicine which is all about your sacred medicine. That's what makes it sacred.I'm not here to report on politics and the media. I'm not here to make a poster for everything that matters to me. I'm here to focus. This is my focus because I know that those of you who are focused can come into your own sense of self and shape your own identity and curate your own consciousness and hear your own voice clearly. When you can do this you will take action on what matters to you.A personal story… I remember a long time ago after I had finished domestic violence advocacy training, something happened with a student in one of my onlines classes. I took the training because I was committed to ending violence against women in any way that I could in my lifetime. Then this medicine that I'm carrying now started coming so powerfully. I started working with bigger groups virtually. I remember working with the head of stalking in one of the states here in the United States. And I said to her, I feel like I'm neglecting my station by not working directly with the women who are in survival.And she said, The leaders who are in survival need you to teach us. I can't do my work to support women in stalking and safety one-on-one if you don't do what you're doing. I need you to do what you're doing so I can do what I'm doing.This was such a meaningful moment for me. She studied with me for years and shaped the way that she worked within her stalking department. Being stalked was one of my most harrowing experiences in my 20s. So I'm not always on the front lines of whatever thing is going on in the world in the way that people might think I should be. I'm using my gifts in other ways.Sometimes I reach a thousand, sometimes ten thousands, and sometimes one grandmother calls me. Someone I don't know that I've never met. Someone who sent me clothes, and socks when I was in a fire evacuation. They had just had a shooting event in a place where her grand children were educated and she couldn't think of anything that would make her feel better than just to call me and maybe I might answer and maybe she might hear my voice. And maybe she could paint with me that day and maybe she could then talk to her grandchildren in a different way. I am so glad I picked up the phone.So it may not always seem like I'm directly addressing all the harm and war and violence that's happening. It's not that I'm spiritually bypassing. It's that I know what my call is. And my call is to guide and support those who are called in hearing their calling.I love you more than you could ever imagine. It's quantum, yet it's tangible. That is why I am speaking these words. Holding this frequency with you, for you, by you, with earth, for earth, by earth, in earth, with stars, in stars, by the stars. We do have stardust bones, you know, and our bones remember.May we all remember more. Right now, this lifetime.With loveCurate Shiloh Sophiahttps://teawiththemuse.substack.com/p/what-im-carrying-this-lifetime
Watch for Stardust Bones - coming soon…Paint with me now here Paint with me in Miami here
Portugal
Tea with the Muse is complimentary. If you would like to contribute, that is welcome but you will hear from me without paying too. Sometimes, this platfrom asks you to pay, not me. Lots to watch and learn from rightr now.
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I’m taking a break from work but every day I still think about you and about us and where I’m headed. I’m listening to the most amazing book that I recommend to all of us. It’s way above my head, but it makes me think things and today it made me feel duped.
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Believing the women. Believing ourselves. Checking with our body when we’re ready to move on and tell our stories. my mother said she couldn’t always trust her heart ♥️
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Dear Ones,
You just never know where a sacred path is going to lead you. Right now, I'm on the balcony of a hotel on the Sonoma Plaza. It's curious finding myself here because I live here in Sonoma. But it just so happens that for various reasons, last night, every bed at the inn, including at my house, was full because we just had an event, Exotic Creatures.
As I sat in my little car trying to decide where to go next, I wanted to go for a swim. I wasn't sure where to stay. And I looked up the most affordable hotel in town, which happened to be right on the plaza. So as I made my way here and got in my pajamas after a beautiful swim, I wondered... Was there a reason that I could think of why I would be right here?
The reason why I'm right here... is to connect with my roots. Because this Sonoma Plaza is where I took my first steps. It's where I have memories of my mothers and my lovers. It's a place as close to home as I've ever known. Next to these trees. These flowers. This rose garden. This sundial. These amazing ducks. So I wanted to start my day right here. With the sounds of the morning birds. The light of the sun. The sounds of the traffic going by. And this poem/prose that I wrote from bed this morning. Ready to listen? Tune in. Because here we go. It's called the Constellation of She-Bear.
Constellation of She-Bear
The morning birds have let you know that the light is returning now. Right in the middle of where you are, there is beauty right next to the trouble. Can you pause and look for it?
Just the presence of the sun is the reminder that there are cycles within cycles and it won't always feel like it does right now. Exactly, exactly in the spot that seems almost impossible to navigate, there is an opening to go through. Look for it.
You might need to be brave because this threshold is going to look different than the ones you've known before. The trees that are blooming nearest to where you are standing have turned their leafy green ears towards your troubles. Go ahead, little one. Tell them about the thunder in your head. They already know.
This makes me think of a song a song my mother used to sing to me as a little girl. Trouble in mind, I’m blue but I won't be blue always sun's gonna shine in my back door somedayI know I know it seems as if the universe is conspiring against you sometimes.You wonder if there's any more that can go wrong. Well, let me ask you, would you be willing to ask a different question? Even though you can't see them, there are tigers right now drinking water in a powerful river of fresh, sweet water. Just knowing that offers joy. comfort.
Just think of it. Can you see the tigers drinking fresh sweet water in the thunder of your mind?
Even though you can't hear it right now, there are medicine people playing a song for you on their drum. It's a heartbeat just for you. Really, it's happening right now. Somewhere around the world,a medicine person with a drum is playing a song for humanity and you are included in that. And even better, it's a song in your mother tongue. The language you speak in your world.Can you hear it? Can you hear it? Above the birds and the traffic and the air conditioner and the sounds of coffee brewing and the sweepers are sweeping and the housekeepers are keeping and the artists, well, we're reciting poetry on our phone, of course. Can you hear it?
I wish I could rub this fragrant oil that smells like roses and frankincense into your hardening scars to soften them for you. You shouldn't have to do that all on your own.
I just noticed how the skin puckers at the site of the wound. The poets tell us that's where the light gets in, you know, through the cracks. Light comes in and out of the wound. (You know, Rumi and Cohen always speaking about these light-filled wound things.)
Listen closely now. Listen.
The bear in your heart is carrying you. The bear in your heart is carrying you. The bear in your heart is carrying you safely to the next destination on your sacred path. I know you wish it was different. I wish it was different too. And not because we're fragile, although we have our moments.Maybe it's because we're tired. But mostly because we know it doesn't have to be like this. And it makes us sad that it doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this, but it is. And so here we are.
Do you remember the day when you took shelter from that perfect storm?You just stopped running and reacting and started noticing the blooming orchids? It all just seemed so unlikely to find all that beauty right next to all that destruction. But there it was. Here it is.
As I looked up yesterday... at the woman swimming in front of me.There was indeed an orchid on her shoulder in the colors I had just painted. These are reminders that I am on a sacred path. And today I'm here to tell you, maybe to affirm for you or remind you, yes, These are fierce times. Fierce times.
We are called into a future self that's more mature than we've ever been so far. And part of us, well maybe a lot of us, just want to go back to sleep. To pull the covers up over our head. To put the fuzzy socks on and go back to sleep. Yet every day that we overcome the fear which holds us back. Every day we release more withholding. Every day that we're kinder to ourselves, we are learning to see in the dark. But today, today I want to honor all the places that you are saying no. All the places you're saying no. I love your big, bold, quivering fk no.I love your walking away. I love your walking toward your life right now. I want to cherish the few yeses that feel just right in your belly. You know the ones I'm talking about. What can you say yes to today that turns ancient starlight in your bones into actual life force you can use? You know that grace-filled stuff called Life Force?**
I've heard that even with current circumstances, there is actually still enough Life Force to go aroundRumor has it, You get to have as much as you want. You do need to ask for it, however. Not because it's moderated. Like no one can keep you from it. But because sometimes you forget it's there. Sometimes you forget that life force is there and you have to ask for it. You can hear me. Can't you? Pacing the floor in my fuzzy socks. This Life Force is here. It's between us right now. Can you feel it? I can.
I'm smiling as I think about you. As I see your face. Your smile. Your eyes. I see you. The intention of noticing myself. You, me, eyes, life force, and the bear in your heart. It activates the sparks of hidden power within us. Pow, pow, pow, there goes the sparks. Sparking. Life is lifing. Stars are starring. Hearts are sending hearts. Sometimes you feel like you're not from around here. You search the stars, you look to the earth, and you just feel like maybe you don't exactly belong here.And you, darling heart, have made an art of not belonging. You've gotten really good at it.You can still be in crowds and in groups and not belong and not panic, and you're doing all right. You've also learned to practice feeling safe without anybody needing to validate your existence. You did a really good job! You are really amazing!You know that, right? Yet, precious one, I am here today to remind you that you do belong in this constellation of being. You have been walking barefoot through the galaxies alone for long enough. Right alongside the hot mess that you are in, the great mysteries have woven a milky way into the garment of your body, your sacred skin suit.
For you, I give thanks. Our cosmic GPS coordinates led us exactly to this exact moment, the one we're in right now. The bear in my heart calls to the bear in your heart. Can you hear the call? The only thing you need to do to step onto your sacred path is to step onto your sacred path.
I know it feels kind of like a riddle to recognize it, that you're already on it. I know a woman on her path when I see it. Let me be the one to tell you, I can see you are on your path. Yes, you've already crossed the threshold
and you're in the NOW.
I welcome you here, where I live in the now. It's good here.
There's not that many people hanging out in the now, honestly. For us introverts who look like outroverts, it's kind of a cool place to be Now. It's so popular to talk about, but so few actually find their way to Now.So I'm glad you made it across that threshold.
So, you know, this circle has been called and your name was on the list again. To come and speak to us about the gifts that you are carrying. Your unique medicine. Let me just tell you nobody here actually cares if you have your stuff in a tidy pile. We really don't.
We like the steam that comes out of your compost. We all know that soon enough there will be wildflowers growing from everything you've been willing to let go of. So right beside the suffering there's this beauty to behold. That's why I'm here talking to you today to remind you to look for the beauty.
You won't have to look very far. It's right where you look right Now. I'm inviting you to find a question that feels sweet on your tongue. The morning birds have let you know that the light is returning now. Right in the middle of where you are…There is beauty right next to the trouble.
medicinepainting #intentionalcreativity #ExoticCreatures #musea
This painting was created in a weekend event called Exotic Creatures, using Medicine Painting. An ancient yet futuristic Intentional Creativity process that allows us to reveal so much of our hidden worlds and interpret it as medicine. Brave action steps, emerge, post painting. We don’t want to live the way where we’re living before. We now have the courage to try something else. We can’t go back to where we were.
One of the curious things is that we begin to watch for things that arise in the painting to arise inside of our lives. Within 45 minutes of completing this painting, I was at the pool and there was a woman swimming who had an orchid tattoo on her back in exactly the same colors as my painting. Later that night my phone showed me a photo from 2021 on the exact samed date of orchids. Then a few of us were out to dinner together and one of the women had a butterfly on her painting, which now manifested in another tattoo. Another woman had included a sacred herb in her painting, and then suddenly found out about a ceremony that included that sacred herb, and one of her other paintings. And the list goes on and on! How often we collapse the symbolic and mystical into our world in the day-to-day reality. Especially when we’re looking for it!
This painting and poem is dedicated to my students from Exotic Creatures, and also Color of Woman. I continue to be in awe at the sacred work of Medicine Painting. Painting with an intent to heal through the Alchemical Feminine and realize that we are already on our sacred path. Less withholding, more acknowledgment. Less loneliness, more inclusion in the tribe of healers and creatives who are willing to open their eyes. So good.
At the end of the class, I decided I wanted to teach more specifically about the ingredients called Medicine Painting that I have been working on in our lineage for over 30 years. Stay tuned to learn more about how you can work with painting for healing yourself and also with others. Having nothing to do with being a great painter. Self-expression offers access to healing because it activates life force. It’s the art and science of self expression that lights up my sacred path. The constellation of the she-bear reminds me of my calling. I am on my sacred path and not one single thing can take me off of it!
Love in the Now,
Shiloh Sophia
Exotic Creatures team, Ruby, Alyse, Anasuya, Ali and below is the classroom too
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How are you navigating these times?
Yes, I too am concerned about what appears to be an incoming dictatorship in the United States in an undemocratic process! I need to choose how much I focus on that. I need to keep my eye on it, but I need to focus on other things too. My life force needs my attention.
Do you need to rescue your nervous system from the hijacking of the narratives of force?
Are you willing to collaborate with your chemistry towards something that you love?
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Exotic Creatures begins on Friday - come create feminine alchemy with me
Tomorrow we have a live ritual - join usDear Ones,This is the finaly promised Re-Imagining Women’s Mythologies. Seems like I am just getting started!Today’s episode isA rejection of the normaliztion of rape stories
A call to action out of reaction
Rescue of life force from the power over structures
Touching on women’s stories where we were mis-informed
Invitation to choose your consciousness
Paint with me this weekend and talk to me tomorrow!
Shiloh Sophia
Tea with the Muse welcomes your subscriptions as you choose.
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Re-imagining Women’s Mythologies continues today with
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a look at the perilous life of Little Red Riding hood
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a call vicitims to ask when we are no longer victims
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the dead grandmother wolf archetype
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the dead mothers in stories
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transcending the need for rescue
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a general call to go beneath the layers of weapons into a pre-conquest state.Join us to paint your wild free woman archetype in Exotic Creatures starting Friday. No painting experience required.
Part Two in the player above.
Then I have included two additional audios - the 2:52 one is just a breif note on Baba Yaga. The second 42 minute audio is a re-telling of the Selkie story released earlier this year.
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OK, here we go. I’m diving in. I’ve already been to bottom recently. I’m not here to save the day. Just FYI I’m mostly gonna stir stuff up. I’m not here to change your mind. I don’t need you to respect my opinion. It’s just time to speak about the sacred cow within mythologies centering the feminine psyche.
It’s true. I take the mythologies way too literally. I do.
But when I look at the state of the world, I can’t help but wonder how these dominant narratives have shaped us into the culture We are today - where women are in need of rescue. But who will rescue us if the rescuer is also the perpetrator?
Enough.
Shiloh Sophia
PS To learn about the Exotic Creatures course go to intentionalcreativity.life We would love to have you paint with us.
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Hello Everyone! This three part series starts RIGHT here. I will be sharing an un-hinged view of the changes I am hoping we can make together regarding women’s stories. Three podcasts in three days breaking it DOWN. So we can bulid up something living.
Those who are called to become the Shereo of your own story and who want to experience my new work - join us for Exotic Creatures - no woman ever regretted spending a few days listening to the new story that wants to emerge AND making a painting that goes along with the narrative that is ready to emerge
Photos taken yesterday at Wild Water Creek by Michelle, the beauty on the far right.Norma Jeanne, Shiloh, Vicchi, Naia and Michelle. We shared a lovely day together in ceremony, story and creativity.
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Hello Dear Beings!!
I hope you can join me live today! Change your schedule, move the world, and or get the recording! Luscious is here, just click the button below to register as a gift.
Today we will reclaim all of our senses! Yes there are more than five! Let's count them together and let them speak to us!
Shiloh Sophia
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I am an exotic creature
precious, rare and endangered
Yet today
My paws remember the ground
the Earth rises to meet my path
My whiskers sense the unseen
the unseen remembers my scent
My keen ears listen to the wind
the wind whispers her stories through me
My shiny pelt grown dull
with too much to feel
reminds me how to glisten my sheen
My eyes look towards the stars
the stars look back, daring me!
The blood in the soft animal of my body
stirs with ancient stardust codes long dormant
My lips are cracked with decoding lies
Then the white hot kiss came to find me
The animystic kiss of all Creation
landed one right on my heart!
My calling flares up as a thousand suns
urging me towards a new direction
claiming my territory!
Hesitating...I step back
then leap forward into the unknown
Not with faith
but fear present!
Not with hope
but rigorous tenacity!
Not all pretty-like
with raw feral vigor roar!
Not pretty, not nice, not apologetic
I am an exotic creature grown weary of
the shenanigans of men with weapons
of every kind seeking to tame my spirit!
I shall not be tamed
I step out of domestication
I shed colonization
I release too busy to rest
I remember my sovereignty
I claim my saced path now!
I am already on my way
to find my feral sisters
I shall remind them too
if they have forgotten
their shiny pelt and sharp teeth
We shall howl under that moon
we shall walk our sacred path
we shall not turn back again
or spend our lives in reaction
Instead of being endangered
I will become dangerous
to systems that bind, trap, ensnare
Releasing false selves on the forest floor
We will create what we prophecy
We are exotic creatures
remembering our true nature
with power, pleasure, prowesss
and passionate flaming hearts!
And so it already issssss.
Curate Shiloh Sophia
Fresh of the press poetry that's been brewing for some time. A metaphoric framework for how it feels to be a woman in a dominant culture.
Exotic means is strikingly unusual or strange or unfamiliar. The word comes from the Greek, Ekotikos, meaning foreign or outside. The process I will guide you through in Exotic Creatures will be unusual. Outside of the way you have been taught and have thought all your life. We are going to step outside the normative and into the imaginal.
In my life, I am on a bridge right now. Having ompleted my first sacred assignment at 55 that I have worked on my whole life. The other horizon is yet to be revealed. I must wait and be patient.
There is a bridge between my sacred assignments that must be walked to get where I am going and take as many of you with me as is called.
That bridge is called Exotic Creatures. This is new work, fresh energy, advanced approach to medicine painting and a neo-shamanic painting and power ritual over three days. Join us on four different dates dates, Livestream, Sonoma @MUSEA, On-Demand and in Miami @COSMICA
Link in the comments. xo PM with questions.
Painting by Shiloh Sophia 2024 Animystic Kiss of Creation
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“My first day with the Muse was in 2018 and it changed my life, awakened something in me that has brought so much color, solace, movement and pleasure to my soul, and it continues. “ R.A.
Dear Ones,
I would love to have you join us on Friday for Muse of Magics.
This is my only day long class until the late Fall. It will be broadcast live from MUSEA Center in Sonoma with people painting in person. The images above share the evolution of the process we call Intentional Creativity.
Painting isn't about painting. Painting is about discovery.
Painting good is not the point, at least when you paint with our community. We are in it for the revelation. We are here for the ride. Those who want to learn to paint 'good art' can find lots of teachers to show them how to improve. We aren't here to improve our painting, not at first. We are here to break free.
We are here to reveal locked rooms. We are showing up with brush in hand to set caged birds free. We are braving the unknown by diving into the dark recesses of our psyche without a flashlight. Cuz we can. Cuz there is magic in those hidden places. Cuz something has been asking us to wake up even more.
Once we get access, there is magic waiting for us.
Yes...waiting...as if it was there all the time anticipating our arrival. This process of Intentional Creativity cannot be spoken in words, you have to expeirence it for yourself.
You don't need any actual painting experience. You won't need a flashight since what we are looking for isn't something outside, it's something inside. Stop saying you don't have a creative bone in your body, every bone is creative. It may not be 'talented' at painting, but it IS creative. You are creative, we can prove it.
The Muse she waits for you. She flirts with you. She scares you into waking up already! She is the part of you that you are often afraid to reveal because she might disrupt your current paradigm. Yet she stirs you through play, through color, through adventure. She isn't gentle though - so be warned she will request your full attention and a day of your life, focused on her medicine. It is always worth it.
The Muse, she cracks the critic code just long enough to bypass that part of the brain that keeps you stuck in those loops. So if you are open to something new and you are ready for change that challenges you in fresh new ways. Come on then
Do I think one day can do all that? I don't think so. I know so.
But it is for you to find out.
Muse of Magics is happening Friday. Make a date with the Muse if you dare. See you in class!
It isn't a zoom it is a high quality livestream - wear your pajamas and sunglasses and bring a cuppa tea and chocolate for the Muse!
This image shows the evolution of a painting in less then 5 hours. This isn't about good art, this is about feeling GOOD about your self expression and getting messages that are trapped inside, revealed.
Shiloh Sophia
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Hello Everyone,
The greatest human power begins here, with step one. Step one is a choice for consciousness and for navigating your own narrative. Around here we often call it,Tea with the Muse. A time to listen for your own voice above all the others.
Join us for On Uncommon Grounds this weekend, it’s a gift here
Join us to paint the Muse of Magics
Shiloh Sophia
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Dear Ones,
I just spent three days with 125 women virtually and 25 women in Sonoma. Sharing my heart, the teachings of the muse, and the integration of the critic. This is where my painting is at and where the poem emerged this morning. Dedicated to color of women 2025!!!
I love co-leading with two of my best friends, Lavender and Amber. Powerful women that light up my heart.
🩷🩷🩷Shiloh Sophia
P.S. check Musea.org to paint with usThere is a MUSE of Magics class coming up….
The Muse of Prima Materia
The Muse
She rises up from underground rivers
She shimmies down from stardust dreams
Wild horses ride the roads of her hair
Birds of every color perch on her branches
In her pocket, a silvery lizard rides shotgun
On her cowgirl hat, a tiny gold spider spins tales
She winks at me, I blush in dozens of roses
Because my Muse is beautiful and funny and
We like each other
The Muse
She constellates from my ancient root system
Remembering red ochre markings on cave walls
She comes to me from the portals of every house
I have ever lived in, and reminds me, I have choice
I have voice… I have choice… I have voice….
My Muse mantra releases hidden butterflies
Today, in her leopard print sunglasses
In her glittering magenta lipgloss kiss
She is impossibly bossy, and I like it, Swack!
The Muse
She says to me: Girl, it’s time to sing it!
Sing what? I ask. Yes, she replies, Yes!
Her cryptic responses vibrate everywhere
Every sensual opening humming with life
Honey Bees fly around my head, their humming
Lights sweet sparks of ancient creative fire
I know what she means
The sacred language of all women:
Mother Tongue, Yes it’s Mother Tongue timeThe Muse
The prima materia of the Muse is:
Truth so sharp it bears a double-edge blade
The original substance of creation, is me-in-matter
My stardust bones, my lightening mind fires & wires
She says to me: You are the universe, universing
as You, act like it, won’t you? Come on now!
The Mother Tongue of the Muse is a kiss of fire
and a bad attitude that’s just so good
The Muse
Her invitation to play just makes me happy
Let this be our unquiet revolution
Against all odds, a council of misfits
Gathers to enjoy life amidst the chaos that swirls
Brazen, unapologetic, extra extra women
I will see you there, at the Red Thread Café
Tea with the Muse is not just a good idea
It’s Ritual Access to our Mother Tongue
Let’s speak, let’s sing, let’s sway, let’s pray
Let’s Create!!
Shiloh Sophia Laughing Cloud
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An invitation to tea.
You are the universe embodied.
A cooling sack of stars
How will you orient yourself within these times?
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Is this an enforced crisis? My opinion is in here.
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with all that is happening, where are we? Well where are you choosing to be
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how taking time for yourself can REALLY serve you in your orientation
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our art matriarch’s essential question - who lives in here
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what about that identity if yours - what do they have to say
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with climate change and war and insecurity, chosen consciousness is key
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life saving tea time
Let’s breathe together.
Shiloh Sophia
Sue and I prepping for my first art show…1994
So here we are. But where exactly are we? Here we are right in the middle of an evolutionary change that's at such a magnificent scale that it's hard for us to grasp where we are. Whether we're looking at economics, food, war unemployment, politics.
No matter where we're looking, we can see that we're in a different place than we've been before. And we find ourselves wondering, what in the world are we going to do? Like 10 years ago, our activism looked different. The things that matter to us, diversity inclusion literally just equal rights for all let alone a freedom to pursue happiness. It's different now because we are at a level of enforced crisis. I say enforced because it's manipulated and created. Because the climate is speeded up to the degree that we can't evolve at the same degree that the needs of the planet are changing. Prophecies have indicated we are in different versions of end times, even though they name it something different.
Meanwhile, many of us have friends and family who also appear to think that there's a lot of really good things happening. And there are a lot of really good things happening.
So there's a question of where are we now as a species, as a people? But then there's just:
Where are you now? Where are you orienting yourself inside of your own experience? Are you choosing your relationship to “What Is” or just responding and reacting to the things around you?
Will you pause with me right now and just take a breath?
You know, let's change that. Let's not say take a breath.
Just receive a breath. Because the breath is happening naturally.
The most beautiful things in life. The birds building the nest on the porch right now. The rising of the sun over the trees. The most beautiful things in life right now. have always been the most beautiful things.
Of course, to be loved. Of course, to have a nest, to build a little family. To have beauty. And sometimes even quiet. To have enough.
I think the sad and sometimes sorrowing and harrowing reality is that we know it could be different. We know it didn't have to be this way. And we don't know what to do.
We're not sure where to turn. Yet somewhere deep inside of ourselves we know that we've been a part of creating, this at whatever level, you or your ancestors, or any way we look at it, we're all one, we're all interconnected. So we're all creating this and it doesn't appear right now as if we're going to be able to uncreate it in any amount of time that's going to make the biggest difference in terms of species going extinct or climate change, natural disasters.
So the thing we have is our consciousness, our relationship to ourselves, the observer looking out from these eyes. Are you still breathing?
Sue Hoya Sellers, our art matriarch, used to ask this question: Who lives in here? And she would tap her body. Who is it? What identity has colonized this particular matter called my body? Which she called my sacred address. A sacred address. A space or place where identity inhabits inside of a bubble called soul that appears to have traveled with us. Since the beginning of creation. If you are a cooling sack of stars. That iron which makes your blood red. Is the iron from exploding stars. Everything that's in your body. is also the universe, not everything that's in the universe is in your body but everything that's in your body is in essence the universe so you are an identity embodying the universe in the shape of you who is that what do they want what do they see what do they know what medicine are they holding. Are you breathing with me? Just ask the question, who lives in here?
Just for an hour, get a journal and a cup of tea or coffee and sit outside bundled up in the morning light and just ask, who lives in here? And begin to write. Because when you are really in relationship with this being who lives in here, this soul that's inhabiting this incarnate form at this time, you gain access to greater wisdom, some hope beyond hope, some sacred technologies that were different than ones this lifetime. An inner knower, an intuitive being. They are here.
You are here. So where are we now? We are right here.
And when we're here, then we have the power to navigate because we come from a place of choice.
But if you just rush into your day without stopping and breathing, without a little cafe, a little tea with the muse, it's harder once the day starts rolling. It's a hustle, baby. I'm asking you to stop hustling. And just breathe with me and be in a place of cafe. Tea with the Muse is life-saving because it helps you orient yourself to the day. Let's orient ourselves to our day right now. Not let the news or even sick family members, not letting the media or a disturbance at work or someone who's mad at you, not letting that define your orientation. It's there. You're not bypassing it.
But if your orientation comes from a sense ofSself within, a cultivation of that self. And I am lending the Self that I am to sit beside the Self that you are in the Quantum Café. This is Curate Shiloh Sophia for Tea with the Muse.
Thank you for listening. I'm grateful for you.
Shiloh Sophia
We have all kinds of ways you can play with us here at Musea. If you go to musea.org, Musea means many muses, many museums. We have a complimentary two-hour class called Uncommon Grounds. We have an in-person and virtual class called The Muse of Magics. We have Mother Nature, a 13-moon sisterhood. These are different levels of engagement, and you are welcome to join us here. I'm also sitting here in the presence that my 15-year project, Color of Woman, We have an in-person gathering, and the team has arrived yesterday and today, and then there will be close to 20 women in this space at Museum Center for Intentional Creativity and Consciousness. I'm settling into this role of teacher. I don't know what I'll do next. It hasn't come yet, but for now I prepare for Red Thread Circle. And tea with the muse.
Blessed be your day.
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A beautiful photo of a community member holding another community members baby at MUSEA. Seeing the mother over her shoulder, seeing her face.
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Purchase Your Copy of Chaos is the New Black
My moms - Jonathan’s new book is dedicated to our moms
Thank you mamas *Correction to the audio - I said public instead of private, only discovered that in the transcription - sorry.
Pride, Gate-Keeping and Keeping the Heart Open During AI Infiltration
I have two moms and I'm proud of it. I have pride that I was raised in a family of matriarchs. I have a father too. Just because I'm raised by matriarchs doesn't mean it's anything against the fathers or the men.
It's Pride Weekend. San Francisco is hustling and bustling with the freedom that we have fought to maintain.
It wasn't so very long ago that women didn't wear pants on TV. It wasn't so very long ago that if someone came out being gay, their readership and viewership dropped. Can you remember how long ago it was that you had to be married to own property if you were a woman? This entire nation has been built on injustice and inequity.
We know that already. But today, we celebrate with pride the idea that people get to love who they want, how they want, when they want, in the way that they want. We celebrate that people get to choose who they are and how they are and yes, that includes the gender that they are.
Everything is changing. It's curious that this event, this idea is called Pride, which is still a reaction to that we were shamed about who we were. When I look at the rainbow flag and the changes, the addition of the black stripe and the circle, and looked it up to see what all the changes meant to that rainbow, which represents so much, not just for people who identify within it, but for the community members and the family members and the people that love people who love, however they want. I was raised to believe I could love whoever I wanted. And I can.
And you can too. But just in this exact moment of feeling the pride for loving who we love, how we want to, when we do, and whoever we do, in whatever way we want, I just want to pause and notice that it's still a reaction to shame.
Moving out of reaction-based behavior is one of my life practices at this time. It's one of the things I teach all the time in Intentional Creativity. It's asking the question: What would I spend my life force on if I wasn't reacting and forming organizations and statements and images that are in reaction to injustice and the right way to do things. Because we have to protect, we have to guard, we have to be a gatekeeper of our rights. As Bob Marley says: Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.
Yes, they're going for our minds. But they're not just going for our minds, they're also going for our hearts. But they're not just going for our hearts, they're going for our gut. They're not just going for our gut, they're going for our private parts. Right now, We live in a world where we have to defend what is precious, what is vulnerable, and what is fragile. Right now we are in a situation, y'all, that requires us to be hypervigilant, that requires us to be gatekeepers in a way that we haven't had to be before. And I can't help but think about how so many of us, our brains are not wired, not even wired, to digest the level of information that we're dealing with.
Predatorial energy is here at an all new level. And in our community, it's been increasing for the past two weeks. I'm pretty sure most of you know this, but I'm just saying it anyway. This is part of my Pride day, which is just to say, we must all learn to be gatekeepers, to protect ourselves. And how sad that we need to do that. But we do. The AI infiltration is happening in a huge way across the majority of social and tech platforms where people gather. It's all a setup. The gig is rigged and we know it. Otherwise, we wouldn't have to be so proud and defend against the shaming.
Why does it have to be such a big deal to love how we love and identify how we identify? Why?
~ in other news…
Our private group on Facebook, which is called the Red Thread Cafe, now has a bot asking people creative questions. We got it out one time and it just came back and I just blocked the effort.
I know that Facebook was a free service and I can't expect privacy. Why is an AI bot asking creative questions such a problem? It's harmless, right? It wants to know about our creative practices. Wrong. It's not harmless at all. We have an app. It's called iMusea. We have private groups for our students, but the main thread remains open and has since 2020. Again, we've barely had an incident with unwanted app peeps, but this week we had a whole bunch of, “men” “artists” come in and start messaging people and posting ridiculously fake art. Yeah, you drew that little puppy, did you? Yeah.
I pay over $600 a month for this app so our students can get off of the social platforms and interact and build community. I tell everybody the main thread's not private, but it's hard for people to know that for sure. If I made it private, our students would have to pay to come in. Hmm, more gatekeeping.
My substack, Tea with the Muse and the Cura Council, has an infiltration of new followers. But when I click on their names to follow back to see if I might want to, nobody's there. No one. Even though they have a follow back button. What is the agenda for new followers that might not be people?
What are they gaining? My information. It is challenging to talk authentically to one's, quote “audience”, when one has built it over 30 years, when so many new listening ears are nefarious and playing on vulnerability.
Right now, if I share my truth, if I speak my voice, it will be used against me. Pride says do it anyway.
Pride says share and deal with the backlash. Be proud of who you are, who you love, and where you came from.
People that I know are getting scammed left and right. They don't know it. They can't believe it. Haven't spent the time developing that level of protection. Our brains have a hard time grasping this level of nefarious activity, all designed around greed. It's toxic, y'all. When is that new paradigm we are seeking coming into being? I know. I know. It's already here. It's just my perception. But is it? What about for those of us who are community builders, who now have to be protectors at a whole new level?
How sad that we must be gatekeepers to this degree.
What would I be doing with all my life force if I wasn't trying to protect myself and my community? They're all gathering data and preying on us. Look, I don't really have anything to hide, but as a community gatekeeper, I cannot keep my peoples safe. Not that I ever could. I've never promised safety. I've only said let's create sacred space and that we're all responsible for creating it. But if people are in there who are predatorial, I can't even create sacred space. All I'm saying is, it's different now.
And I know I can't be a good gatekeeper right now because I can't protect against the influx. So we need to wise up together. We need to report weird stuff and double check and click but not too much and realize what we thought was safe enough never was at all.
Then they're going to charge us a premium to protect us from the intruder when in many cases the intruder and the protector are the same in the capitalist world.
You might want to check out Jonathan McCloud’s new book, Chaos is the New Black. He points to the reality of where we are, how we can engage with the narrative in a new and powerful way. I recommend Chaos is the New Black book and Substack.
~
You know... Getting emails from confused women and elders asking me, is this person safe? This person who flatters me, who wants to do my portrait, who wants to buy my art for their wife. Blah, blah, blah. Take me on a date. Pay for my private jet. I'll come pick you up and whisk you away to another world. Our brains are not wired to protect at this level. We're just not used to it. Maybe the younger generations are.
There are so many things to be pissed about right now. And this is one of them. It isn't just privacy keeping. It is protecting against invasion and full infiltration. What a waste of time for good humans to have to spend so much time and money and brain and power protecting our already fragile space. Listen. There's dissonance being created.
Because what our eyes see and what our ears hear and our brain perceives, our heart will not want to accept that it's dangerous. Because our heart wants to be open in love. So to keep our eyes open and our heart open is a challenge. It's a discipline. Dissonance is here. And then let's just talk about the gut for a minute. As soon as I talk about the gut, I get all kinds of ads for gut support being sold to me for only $29.99 a month. Please just put your subscription in here. We'll send it to you every month for the rest of your life. And you can unsubscribe at any time if you can only figure out that precious password. It's a paradigm of b**t passwords. What a waste of time for good humans to have to spend so much time protecting an already vulnerable and fragile space.
And the gut, which is supposed to help the heart and the brain discern and be wise. How many people do you know with gut issues right now? So I ask you this question.
What would you be doing if you weren't spending your time gatekeeping?
What would you be doing if you didn't have to protect yourself all the time? What would you be doing if you didn't have to turn the shame for who you love and what you love into being proud of it?
I'm proud of every person in pride who has had to defend against the world that doesn't want them to be who they are.
When is that new world coming? Is it here?
Let's learn to keep our eyes and our ears and our heart open. Like the country song says…sleeping with one eye open.
So today, as I honor pride and my roots, I also honor and alert us all to what we already know. Danger is at the door. Do not let it in. Do not be taken in by false narratives. The impacts of false narratives in our lives is very real. We will grow. We will change.
We are creating the new world right alongside the one that no longer serves good humans. I don't mean good like moral or pure. I just mean we want to live our lives. I can't help but wonder if it was easier to just live one's life 50 or 100 years ago. But it doesn't matter. We're here now.
And this brave new world requires even more bravery. It requires us to be discerning. Shall we? Shall we become more discerning together? I think we're going to have to. Maybe becoming more wise and more proud could be a good time. I'm in. What about you?
Shiloh Sophia
I removed this line: “Although I wish that we would wait until we were older to make finalizing decisions”. because it was offensive to Trans. Thank you for telling me, that was not my intention at all, I want to refine how I speak about this because I honor the Trans community - and I also work with concerned moms. Looking for the balance.
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Sunrise in Santa Fe on my recent journey
Good Morning Dear Ones,There certainly is a lot to pray about right now. Today’s offering shares:A bit of my spiritual ancestral rootsAn invitation to pray standing, pray and sway with me, in community My Grandmother’s hands knitting the world as it unravelsThe history of Mother Mary being moved out to th gardenExploring your name for MaThe Cult of DeathA story of when Sue, our lineage ancestor went to see Amma and more…
With love,
Shiloh Sophia
Lots of upcoming events are happening - come see at www.musea.org
“This bio-power was without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes. But this was not all it required; it also needed the growth of both these factors, their reinforcement as well as their availability and docility; it had to have methods of power capable of optimizing forces, aptitudes, and life in general without at the same time making them more difficult to govern.” Michel FoucaultUnedited Transcript
We Pray StandingIn the sanctuary of my Ancestors, we pray standing. It's a beautiful thing to see. To look around and see people in their colorful clothing, many of them barefoot. Scarves, babies, little ones, families, nuns. Standing and moving. Moving about the sanctuary.
I'm the only one rocking back and forth as I stand. But still, I pray standing.
My Ancestors on my father's(Gregory Davis) side are from the Ukraine, so my great grandfather was Ukrainian Orthodox. In the center of the sanctuary is not a cross of death. That came much later when Catholicism split off from Orthodoxy. They moved the cross from the left, which was one of the stations of the story, and put it in the middle and moved the mother and her child on their throne to the left, if you're facing the altar. And then eventually... Many of the churches of the West took Mary outside into the garden and most of them took the baby out of her arms. (A change from life in the center to death in the center)
So she went from the center, ruling, to the side watching death of her child and then all the way out to the garden, and then no baby in her arms. Making her pure and virgin, and almost untouchable to women. This evolution of image happens over thousands of years. The French philosopher Michel Foucault talks about this idea of how the image of the feminine and of women changes intentionally. We don't even notice that she's moved from her place in the center. Life in the center. Not death in the center. We've made a cult of death. Not of resurrection. Not of birth. Not of rebirth. But of death itself.
Now, I'm not saying that death doesn't come and is a part of our natural cycle of life. But the way that we've been doing it over the past 8,000 years is a colonization, not just of lands and cultures, but of the minds and hearts of the people who have centered ourselves in death.
So I pray standing. Because it keeps me awake. It keeps me aware. It keeps me listening as if the soles of my feet have ears. I pray with eyes open, looking around me. Now that I am not in the sanctuary of my ancestors in the way that I once was.
I am now facing a stand of trees that have become my cathedral and the birds my choir.
While I have chosen not to speak out against the church of my ancestors because they are my blood and I am their blood. Still, I must speak to you from the place where I am, where life, a mother and child, sits at the center of my awareness. In our community, we just call her Ma, ancient root mother tongue.
Ma. So today, as I pray standing, swaying, I call on the name of Ma. Ma. Ma, ever-emergent Ma. Let us stand with you in prayer right now. Beings gathered throughout the world right in this moment. praying, standing.
And if you are listening, would you pray standing with me? Would you stop your multitasking and all the things that seem more important and just come with me now? Will you imagine with me hundreds, thousands, millions of people praying, standing, swaying and chanting the name Ma. Ma. ma. mama.
Long, long ago in a different lineage, our beautiful neighbor Alice Walker brought Sue Hoya Sellers, our art matriarch, to see Amma, the hugging saint, who herself had to break ranks with her tradition in order to do what she does. And certainly that has turned out well. ( Speaking to being a female guru in a culture that has tried hard to only have men, and other allegations)
I'm thinking of her, Amma, now because very recently a Native American composer who has lit up my heart, wanted so badly to give me something one day, and she gave me roses from Amma and I sang to her this chant… which I will sing to you now as we pray standing. Just through coming into presence, prayer coming into presence, even if you don't know the names to call or the songs to sing or what to pray about or how to do it just pray with me standing and sway. Sue Hoya Sellers, when she got her hug from Amma, Amma asked her, Who do you call on? What is the name of your goddess, your mother?
What a beautiful thing to say, to not insist on a “way”, but say, to whom do you pray? And Sue Hoya Sellers surprised herself by saying the name of Mary. Mary. Mary. Sue was devoted to the goddess and in our time together in the gallery, which was many years and teaching. From 2000 to 2014, so around, 14 years, she came into the place called Sophia, but we held a common ground of Mary, mother of many goddesses along the timeline of goddesses that have been appearing for 40,000 years. So she surprised herself by saying, Mary, indeed, surprised us all. And so Amma gave her this chant, which as we stand praying, I offer to you.
Om Shri Mary Ma Om Shri Mary Ma Om Shri Mary Ma Om Shri Mary Ma Om Shri Mary Ma Om Shri Mary Ma. Om. Join me if you choose. Om Shri Mary Ma. Om Shri Mary Ma. Om Shri Mary Ma. Om.("Om Shri" is a combination of two powerful words in Hinduism. "Om" (ॐ) is a sacred syllable representing the universe and ultimate reality, while "Shri" (श्री) is a term of respect, often used as a prefix to deities, revered individuals, or to invoke auspiciousness and prosperity. Together, "Om Shri" can be interpreted as a salutation or invocation to the divine, often used to invite blessings and positive energy) Google Ai Answer
Standing in the place of peace. Standing in the place of our Mother. Singing with you and to you. Tears come to my eyes. My heart slows down from its worried rhythm. My swaying becomes natural to my body. And I enter the sanctuary of community. Because that is what you are. We stand in the quantum commons together.
In the space between spaces. Calling on the names we call on. In whatever way that we do. Looking at the trees that you look at. Standing on the good ground where you are. Looking out to the future from the now. Mother of Life, we, your children, are in need of your love.
We, your children, do not know the way forward. We feel concerned for the great unfolding. As quickly as we knit it together, our loops are untied. But knit and loop we must. I see my Grandmother's hands crocheting (Eden). I see my grandmother's hands knitting, crocheting a holder for a plant, a ceramic pot that my Aunt (Janet)made.
I see my grandmother knitting my pink blanket. She said she hated pink, so she must love me a lot, as she made my pink blanket. I see my Grandmother's hands now in the ancestral world, weaving as it were, trying to tie things back together with beauty as quickly as they become undone.
So weave and knit and sew and bake and write and paint and sing. We must. We must.
Call upon the names of your sacred knowing. And if you do not know, just stand in the presence of wonder. The poet Rumi says, If you can't pray a real prayer, pray a dry-mouthed prayer, because God accepts counterfeit money as though it were real. Which makes me think of my sister Shannon. who is in need of my prayer at this time. And she never wanted to pray until I told her that. And she said: that, that I can do. And so we prayed. This is a time for prayer shawls.
This is a time for eyes open. But this is also a time for gathering yourself into yourself, into the spaces that you consider sanctuary. Sanctuary. Sanctuary. Chosen places to gather. For those of you of many different traditions where you honor Ma, or perhaps you don't, I do not propose the idea of Mary or my tradition. I simply share with you where I'm standing and I'd love to hear where you're standing too. Because in order for us to stand together, it isn't that we isolate what we believe. So that the other people are not offended. No. Our mother Caron said that's not really a community.
Mama Cloud said that real community is where I can call upon the names that I call upon. And you can call upon the names that you call upon. And that we can stand in it together without needing to defend or compete. And our many voices raise up in prayer.
Because whoever Creator really is when all this comes to completion…any true heart, that calls the name, the energy, the space, the place…Will be heard as something true. It's our hearts that matter right now. So stand with me now. Centering yourself. Swaying and praying, looking out at the rising sun. Breathing, becoming, belonging.
I'm encouraging you to pray with me standing for 15 minutes a day. Will you? Just try it. See what happens. It can only be something good. Thank you for this time with me, Circle, Council of Wise Ones. You are loved.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. given an anyhow praise. In the Black church where I grew up, interwoven with the rest of my practices, we would raise up our hands and we would say, Hallelujah anyhow. It's an anyhow praise. Let's do it now. Hallelujah anyhow. Yes, yes. Hallelujah anyhow. Here we are. Hallelujah anyhow.
Let us pray and sway this day.
Curate Shiloh Sophia
Me one year ago yesterday at the Pyramid of the sun in Mexico.
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Today I turn 55 and the storm is brewing outside. The wild flowers sway in the afternoon wind. Today I'm 55. Today I'm open to life and life is open to me.
My body temple serves me well. I experience pleasure by choice in hundreds of tiny and miraculous ways all throughout my days.
I grieve the suffering also by choice in solidarity with the world. I weave my colorful threads in the great basket unfolding and reweaving itself. I have lived my purpose. I am self-expressed and I love it. I love it. While there is always more to do and be and learn, I am complete today.
The story being told is my own legend. Self lives here in me and we are good. My cooling sack of stars is lit up by a love that feels ancient and intact.
A woman stands outside drumming, singing in an ancient tongue as I begin this message to you. I have no children of my own living.
I have few elders of my own living. Family as I knew it feels like something in the past, we do not gather the way that we used to. I love my family and yet find myself wondering about the next version of chosen family in the day-to-day life. I am sovereign and at times feel very alone in what I am carrying as a soul. I know you know what I'm talking about.
Perhaps my biggest surprise is my intentional community. The pure joy of this lifetime is this big, big love. Intentional community. Intentional creativity. Many muses in many lands with many hands.
Today, all of my marriage bonds are complete this lifetime. I am complete in and of myself. As I lay down the burden of my lineage, of my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother's called: compromise to survive. The home, the elusive home I've always sought, must now become my own living heart.
This is the practice, and the rest is the great adventure. At least that's what Mama said. So we shall see what mother life reveals in me now. I offer my services into the great weave of creation. The mountains have become my sisters, and the rivers have become my brothers.
And the plants and the animals, my cousins and the genderless trees, they are my parents now. I feel a kind of orphaning. It's not the same kind as many orphans, but there's something stirring. So I lean into the trees.
Yes, I am she. She. But beyond the need for definition lies this strange freedom.
May the poetry of life's longing make of me a pen of reverence. May the painting of the world's beauty make of me a brush of radiance. May the ceremony of the ancestors sing through me now and now and now. I used to say to the divine, use me. Now I say to the divine, show me.
Make the path clear and may there be really good coffee with honey and cinnamon and cream and morning sun always in my cup. There's a feeling I have of almost having transcended sovereignty and entered into a unity with the natural world. Not so much a dissolving, but an integrating.
Because becoming one with wildflowers in the desert after the rain is such a good idea. Many of the names I have called myself were given to me by others and fathers and also men who did not provide the nourishment this wildflower needed. Thank you, Grandmother Eden, for the name McCloud.
She chose it for herself as an elder, And me and my loved ones, we share it like breaking bread. I have swallowed a new secret name. I have swallowed a new secret name. A true name which can only be given by one's self after a long and dangerous journey in the inner landscape of human being.
You know, this all sounds really dramatic. And it is. But it's also very quiet. I would whisper it if I could. This message is signed in the white cosmos of the Santa Fe desert that appear overnight after the rain.
I am here. I'm with a group of over 25 women, but I'm not telling anyone here it's my birthday. But I've told you. Glory be in this fragile strength of becoming. An elder in training is reborn.
Shiloh Sophia
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I can’t follow directions. I only have a high school education. I am challenged to know my left from my right, but I can build a website.
I have just returned from my father’s memorial and I haven’t found words to talk about it yet, but this is what came out.
This episode is an exploration into my limitations and my gifts.
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What is consciousness? Does it have anything to do with time? Space and place? what do you think it is? Do you know how to operate it? Do you know how to get a little bit more of it when you want to?
Today’s riff invites us into conscious chosen awareness.
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Become just a little bit more conscious than you were a few minutes ago
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Explore juicy inquiries regarding time and it’s relationship to consciousness
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Be in the lived practice of becoming conscious of becoming conscious
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Explore how awareness of life force may be one of the missing gems in the jewel of consciousness
I just finished teaching a seven day long retreat with my dear friends, Amber and Mary called Legend. This is one of the layers of my painting.
Mother’s Day blessings to each one of you. Whenever I speak of consciousness, I always think of my mothers.
🩷Shiloh Sophia
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Listen in for an invitation to become who you are. You don’t have to invent a new self and a new story. It’s already all within you. If you’ve been looking for your tribe, listen to this.
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Good morning, beautiful beings, today’s spontaneous spoken word is here for those of us who want a new beginning yet need to honor the past. There’s an invitation here to slow down instead of rushing forward, to pay attention to the chemistry of transition and the sacred tension between where you were and where you’re headed. So many teachers talk about the significance of being in presence and in the now - because there is something here not to be missed.
You get to curate the future. If you do not choose to do that, it will just become without your consent. Be a designer. Chart your course. Change your story.
Shiloh Sophia
Come gather with the MUSEA community in this complimentary 4 hour class called INSIGHT. Over 3000 women have taken this class and you are sure to love it. Come see what happens when you hand over the keys and go just off the map - don’t stop at the fairy cottages even if they offer you cake.
May 1, consider joining us for the LEGEND Course here
April 15-28 Color of Woman Applications are open
Monthly Gathering for our MUSEUM Society - Riding a Beam of Light
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You won’t want to miss today’s episode on a fundamental shift in consciousness regarding scarcity and abundance and our relationship to creation. There really is enough to go around, we just aren’t living that potential out, because scarcity is enforced.
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You are enough and there is enough, here’s why
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Making a big change in our view of what abundance is without bypassing
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How I overcame scarcity yesterday on a drive up the mountain
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Activating chemistry which supports seeing things in your life in new ways.
View from Sonoma Mountain of Moon Mountain
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Hello Beings of the World,
I know I know, lots to do and see and be. Lots of chaos and breakdown. But also this: Making time for you - making time for art. Making time to have tea with the MUSE.
Come gather with the MUSEA community in this complimentary 4 hour class called INSIGHT. Over 3000 women have taken this class and you are sure to love it. Come see what happens when you hand over the keys and go just off the map - don’t stop at the fairy cottages even if they offer you cake.
May 1, consider joining us for the LEGEND Course here
April 15-28 Color of Woman Applications are open
Monthly Gathering for our MUSEUM Society - Riding a Beam of Light I will see you in circle,
Shiloh Sophia
TRANSCRIPT
Hello beloved ones. Welcome to this episode of Tea with the Muse. This is Shiloh Sophia with an invitation and a poem. The poem I'm going to be reading is from 2019. And it is a poem that came out of a painting process. And the painting process is called Insight.
Join us for this complimentary four-hour class with the Muse to open your heart and your mind to hidden insight. Experience a deeper level of intuition and guidance. And ignite your imagination through right and left brain. You can go to musea.org backslash insight and sign up. complimentary four-hour class just for you.
And here's the poem that came from it. It's called
Meet Me Off the Map
The keys you have been looking for
are in the hands of your hidden self.
The riddle is you have to know
where to find that self and how to request the keys.
If it was that easy,
you would have already found your way in.
The locked doors and boarded up windows
and cages without hinges that can hold you tight
may litter the landscape of your everyday experience,
may clutter up the clarity of your truest voice and vision.
That's why seeking the keys of the hidden self
is essential soul work.
That is why you keep looking.
You just know there's something more, to you.
After all, you are mostly stardust, you know.
Surely that means you are meant to shine.
The adventure to discovering your hidden self
can be quite dangerous to your default settings,
and your comfort levels,
because the critic may stand and say:
Hey you, there's no way in,
and there are no keys to find,
and you, my dear, are wasting your time and your mind.
The voice of your muse may seem oddly silent
in the cacophony of mixed messages.
You may find yourself saying,
Now where did that dream run off to,
and how did I end up here again?
Is this what I came here for? What's missing?
Ah, that is a good question.
Most of us trudge on, seeking but not finding,
asking but not really knowing the way,
lost in a seemingly endless to-do list.
Making the time to have tea with the great mystery
is likely the last thing on your calendar,
unless you, like me and us,
have tea with the muse.
Will you dare to join us?
Oh, good. All right. Go right at the old oak tree.
Just pass the sparkly fairy cottages.
And don't stop there, though,
even if they promise you yummy cake.
Make a left at the corner where it says:
there be dragons.
That's right, just off the map.
At first, you might feel like you're following.
And then you might feel like you're falling.
Following and failing and falling
are all part of the journey off the map.
I will meet you there, just off the map,
and catch you up here in this space between worlds.
Many adventures to be found.
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Hear the story of Café from when I was 24 years old, as well as some suggestions for how to dress for café!
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"I was born with an open wound, and colors pouring from it. Don't call me brave or a martyr; I'm just a woman who learned to love even in the midst of pain. I am a brush, I am a scream, I am broken flesh and a burning spirit. I paint myself because I am the only thing I know with fury, with tenderness. And if anyone doesn't like it, don't look at me, because I didn't come to fit in, I came to be."
Frida Kahlo
Today I want to share my story with you about my struggle to become a painter. I was so blessed to have two moms who were painters. But I wasn’t able to do what they did. It was hard. Eventually, something miraculous happened. We call it Legend. These are the origins of how the 13 steps that we teach came to be!
I have had the honor of visiting Frida’s house on two different occasions. Each experience was transcendental.
Shiloh Sophia
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Dear Community,Today I am sharing my very personal story of change you with you. It is about changes in the structure of our business, and our future, and and…. by sharing it with you I am making a declaration of change. I know so many of us are in deep change. I honor where you are even though I don’t know where that is. Now you know where I am. I am Living My Legend and this is how I create it, through image, language and connection with all of you.
Love
Shiloh Sophia
All upcoming events can be found at http:www.musea.org Legend will be open for registration soon.
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This is a new poem that arose over five hours of the painting process with my community ♥️
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Dear One,
Surviving times of absolute power requires a focus on absolute beauty.
In 1887 Lord Acton writes a letter to Bishop Creighton regarding how to write historically and morally about the Inquisition.
“I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
Since the time I can remember having self-awareness, around 5, I have been present to the danger that we are in.  It just all seemed so obvious to me that this whole thing was a set up. Of course, as I colored in my wonder woman coloring book, I was listening to the women at the kitchen table, drinking wine, and smoking cigarettes late into the night, talking about revolution. Danger and power over paradigms.
Yet this awareness goes further back than that, because as I breast fed, my mother was engaged in conversations of safety, of food, of welfare, of shelter, of care. Not just for herself, but for the other women in the community who had even less than we had. And it seemed we had so little, because we were on welfare, but then, because my mother and my grandmother were artists, we were surrounded by the beauty of their creations. They built a lot of all our furniture by hand with wood and sewed some of our clothing, and our bedspreads and embroidered our pillowcases.  Beauty goes a long way.
I think my somatic memory goes even further back, because my mother was attacked when she was pregnant with me. Research from the womb shows that the fetus has awarenessess of the things that are happening around them, that they react to the energies and language, and physical environment, how the mother treats herself and is treated by others. How could that not be the case, yet it is only recently that prenatal studies have proven the impacts on the fetus.  I think I was born hypervigilant. I feel like I was born watching.
Born watching bad men do bad things. To themselves and to others.
There is a part of me that finds myself surprised about what’s happening in the United States right now. Not because I ever trusted the government, but because the blatant arrogance and ugliness is being televised and tolerated. Yet that part of me that remembers, has been anticipating actions like this, that continue to erase anyone who is not the white male authority of the day, who declares himself in charge, regardless of the structures set up to protect us from such behavior.
Of course the system was already broken. Of course, there was already corruption. Yet, in my view, what we are we are witnessing, and experiencing in our bodies, our hearts, our brains, our communities, our stories, is absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Many of us may not have seen something like this in our lifetime. But it’s happened before. Over and over and over and we never learn because the history of what happened is written by the conquerers. Of course since there are over our over 100 armed conflicts right now, we are certainly not the only place that is experiencing something like this. I think the irony is that the world and we, have viewed ourselves as somehow an elevated nation. Then there is this: "We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within." This is a quote attributed to the late Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
This kind of dominance has been happening for over 10,000 years. Since the first people conquested, since the first oppressors oppressed others, since the first colonizers colonized land. It is worth noting that these were Tribes that were indigenous to their land, conquering other indigenous tribes, because if you go back far enough, we’re all indigenous to earth.  Those with light skin only evolved into light skin about 8000 years ago. And yet it seems that those who became “whiter” developed theories of supremacy that have absolutely zero basis in anything whatsoever other than inventing systems of power.
The loss of matrilineal cultures, the evolution to light skin, the fabrication of wars and borders, isn’t actually very old. Yet the harm that was created and has never been healed and has shaped our lives and altered the fabric of creation - to such a degree that many of us barely recognize ourselves in this tragically unfolding story.  We are in shock again. 
The metal age invader blood in my bloodline, remembers things like this and how they begin. I am humming with the remembrance of violence.  This remembrance is why I do what I do in my work with women, art, story, and healing. We turn that humming into songs of resistance.  We make beauty out of what we have to work with. My grandmother assured me that we could definitely make a silk purse out of sow’s ear.
My family left Africa over 80,000 years ago and settled in the area of Ukraine, Ireland, and Scandinavia.  All of these places have been a part of being conquested and conquestIng just like most of the places on earth. We’re not really talking about other people, these are our ancestors and there’s no getting out of it, our global family is in pain. we are living out intergenerational trauma. There does not appear to be any logic or reason or therapy that can solve the minds of the men who declare themselves in charge.  Instead of a spear, it’s a pen.
A pen that creates orders that destroy lives and rewrite history.
The reason for sharing this today is because I want you to take care of yourself. We have a long journey ahead at this time. I know that you can feel it in your bones. I know that so many of you are so worried. For good reason, and I’m asking you to turn toward beauty every single day anyway. The empaths Experience is registering such a high level of despair. The healers are inundated with the needs of other healers.
Find your village. chop wood and carry water and bring your gifts, and do not turn away from the labor of the day. Listen to your elders right now if they are wise ones. Ensure that your little ones have plenty of art supplies, and lots of unstructured time with you. By unstructured time, I mean time that is not enforced by an agenda. Time where you let the elders and the children choose how the time is spent. 
For you, the women in my life, in my village, and on the edges of my village. I call you to gather and to really talk. Talk deep into the night at the kitchen table. Tell stories on walks in nature, come together in each other’s art studios and paint and pray and gather your beautiful powers around you. As Alice Walker says, hard times require various dancing!  I had the pleasure of illustrating the cover and the images inside of that book of poems.
I remember times like this vibrating in my bones. I think you probably do too, even if you have a different language for it.  you must do what you must do to care for yourself. Only you know what that is. Yet, it would be very helpful if you had a village, where you encouraged one another to care for yourselves. Today, walk outside and connect with the Earth beneath your feet. Connect with your head in the stars. And put your hands into the garden soil, or into the creative mediums, or into the making of soup. Create!  creating will offer you tools for reflection, and resilience and offer you the kind of joy that guides us through the hard times.  join the council of wise ones and become more wise  together.
Surviving times of absolute power requires a focus on absolute beauty.
beauty will be found every time you look for it, but you need to decide to look. I am.
Thinking of you with love. This love, the most powerful frequency on earth, is real. Let’s share our love.
Shiloh Sophia ♥️
Curate at www.MUSEA.org
Sonoma, California
This painting above was painted in Teotihuacan Mexico, it is called The Cosmic love affair between the sun and the moon
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Dear Ones,
It is with great joy, and also a deep feeling of change, that I tell the story that lead to our first Certification Teacher Training, Color of Woman. I would be honored for you to hear my story and why it matters, and how it may intersect with your story. Get a cuppa tea, and a journal and come listen. Applications open on the Full Moon Lunar Eclipse. Get on the list and watch your inbox, I am offering 20 live interview sessions with me.
Warmly
Shiloh Sophia
Transcipt:The Rise of the Sacred Feminine through the Intentional Creativity Lineage
In 2010, my family and I did something outrageous. We developed an intuitive painting process dedicated to revealing the Sacred Feminine within each woman. Any woman could learn it for themselves, and teach others how to do this step-by-step process. This was a journey to direct knowing and awakening to soul. You might wonder why this matters. Well, let me tell you! In the past 10,000 years of patriarchal oppression, the image and story and ceremony of women has been under attack. This is evidenced and measured in the statistics beyond counting. But there's something more. Being silenced, burned, and scorned, and altered into an image of ourselves we barely recognize is caught up in our bones and has greatly impacted our capacity to truly see and be ourselves. The colonization plan was not just about land and culture, but about women's bodies and brains and the children that they give birth to. Yet, we are remembering now because we have to and we want to.
This has been a long journey to arrive here for many of us. It is certainly in the best interest of dominant systems for women's voices to be twisted and unable to be heard, but we know better. Let's continue to become a danger to the establishments!
The reclamation of women and our access to our power is directly connected with chosen Self-Initiation. We literally take ourselves on a Journey of Remembering. We have to. There are many ways to say yes to that experience, and one of them is through the healing arts and defined lengths of time within which we commit to ourselves and our self-expression. Most women... with dedication, can arrive at their awakening on their own, but it is best in the company of other women on the path. That's where we come in. I was shown by my two mothers and that I have spent my life sharing with women and their families, a journey toward awakening to our fullness. Gifts being passed from hand to hand and heart to heart. In the first certification training we ever offered in 2010, Color of Woman, we taught women how to recreate themselves in their own image, their own story, and their own way of creating ceremony and how to design their own workshops, courses, and circles. This nine-month journey of reclamation created a Sheroe’s journey so that women could curate their own identity and design their legend for their lives. It was an astonishment to all who have taken the training. Really. We continue to be amazed.
Every year I consider not continuing, and then every year I continue, because of the impacts. But this truly is the last year. Other things will rise up, but this is ready to complete. But it will be passed to all of you, and you will pass it to those you choose. The part that's completing is not the teaching of Intentional Creativity, but the Certification Trainings. For those of us called to be guides, helpers, and healers, in the process of discovering ourselves, we develop a hunger to share this gift of revelation with other women. How many breakthroughs have you had where you almost immediately wanted other women to know, but for them to have to not work so hard to know it? You share what you learned. That's how I felt when I awakened to my Soul Calling. I was 23. I was a total failure at art college. I thought I was doomed to work in an office until my moms, the Poet Mother, Caron and the Painter Mother, Sue called me to the mountain. For one year, they taught me to access image and language for myself. I call this Mother Tongue. My own style, narrative, and true essence began to emerge. A fire in my heart was lit in relationship to the sacred women and the Sacred Feminine.
I realized that She, the Sacred Feminine, hadn't really gone anywhere. It was us who had lost sight of Her, but it was enforced, and She was removed from our lives with intention. Her groves burned, churches built over Her ruins, Her temples destroyed, Her images buried, burned, and marred. Her story is turned into myths where She is subjugated to him. Lies. No more. She was always in every single culture in the entire world since the beginning of humans. The removal of the feminine as equal from spiritual traditions and governmental positions and leadership frameworks has truly had one of the most devastating impacts we could conceive of.
We are seeing it and feeling it now in new ways. FYI, if you think the narratives like this are somehow radical or feminist, please check your own narrative. Because women give birth to the children, and the children become the ones who guide the future. Respecting women is not a political position. It is rational humanity.
After that year of initiation, I had a fine art career for 15 years with galleries and had incredible success. I sold hundreds of paintings and reached hundreds of thousands of people with my books. Then I gave it all up for a time to teach other women what I knew and felt. I thought I could keep both going, but I couldn't. I had to turn towards teaching instead of selling my paintings. I realized that what women really wanted was to do it for themselves, not just buy my paintings. The gifts of feminine power were were within reach.
And, quiet as it's kept, you didn't need to have talent in art and writing to do this work. You just needed to be brave as you wield the brush and the pen, shaking in your boots about what's about to emerge. What is true within you will emerge in a specific sacred container as a quest to the heart of your Soul Work. That which is yours to cause and to create. It is women who make this sacred container for other women, women who have been on their path and have tested and proven the journey they offer as a pathway for other women.
We aren't some kind of pop-up certification program developed by AI to entice women to empowerment. We have been doing this work for generations. We have a lineage. My two mothers were taught by their two mothers.
You don't have to be an artist or a writer to create paintings and stories. We show any woman how to access this deep wellspring of remembering and claiming within herself to reveal her greatest work. Of course, it isn't really about painting and writing. That is simply the matter-based ritual we use to awaken ourselves to the energies living within us that are seeking expression.
One of our graduates, Kerry Lee, calls this art with purpose. It's intentional creativity. I'm inviting you to join us for Color of Woman 2025. It will be our last training of its kind. Each woman will travel around the Alchemical Compass to meet five creative Sacred Feminine archetypes and create five major paintings. And she will make a book, her own book, hard copy and digital, of her story and images and teachings, a portfolio. Each woman will also design her own content with teachings and her own course for the workshops and circles she wants to lead. Have you heard of Jung's red book, where it all began? Each woman will create her own red book.
We are deeply in need of visionary leadership from women who have done their work to Become. This approach, which we call Intentional Creativity, works within any field and any medium. It doesn't actually have to be painting. It's a philosophy. It's a lifestyle. Educators and healers from all fields, therapists, doctors, shamankas, plant medicine women, coaches, corporate C-suite career women, mamas, grandmas, and school teachers, can all use this approach to bring their work to life in living color so that she may live the colors of woman. Her own sacred feminine presence and soul rememberings. I remember when I made my very first book by the same name, Color of Woman. I was 25. I was trying to figure out what the title would be as I stood at Kinko's at midnight creating my first 25 copies, which were already sold to therapists who wanted me to put my images into a book. It was my mother, Caron who said, you should call it Color of Woman. (it had a blank cover of hand-made paper with rose petals and I hand-painted very title). Thank you Aletheia Mystea, the County Health Therapist who saw the value in my art and asked me to make a book for the women you were working with).
Consider joining us for the 2025 COLOR of WOMAN cohort and graduating in 2026. You can take Color of Woman to certify to teach the Intentional Creativity Method, or you can take it as a journey for personal transformation and self-initiation. We've never offered this before, but since this is our last year, that's what we're doing.
You will create a body of work, which is the work of a lifetime, the work of more than one lifetime. This training brings all the pieces together from all the areas of your life, weaving them with red threads into the fabric of creation that we as women co-create. You begin to see the through line of all of your life experience, all the jobs, all the workshops, all the lovers, all the moves, all the books you read, and all the revelations you had all along the way. It can all come together when you answer your Soul Calling.
If you've been dreaming of designing your own courses and want to include self-expression, if you've been leading circles and clients in self-discovery and you want to take your work to the next place on the journey, if you are a woman ready to articulate her body of work in the world in an outrageously powerful way, then join us.
At the beginning of a journey, there's excitement and fear and the feeling of possibility. A portal begins to open. But I want to take you to the completion so that you'll know what you will have in your hands.
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You will have a real book with all of your paintings and the story you choose to tell.
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You will have the articulation of your content in the form of teachings that can be passed on.
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You will have the capacity to lead Red Thread and Sacred Circles in any demographic. We have a over 200 page manual on ways to lead and monetize circle in any setting.
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You will have enough paintings for a solo show.
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You will work with the Color of Woman Intentional Creativity Guide, our manual, which will show you everything that we've learned to this point and be able to use it to lead your own experiences. You will have $100,000 Visionary Business plan for your workshops and private clients so you can create life work from your gifts at a new level.
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You will have experienced a community of women who have your back and are doing their own work.
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You will become initiated in a cultural lineage designed to last for the next 500 years.
We are imagining a world where women are equal, of course. Yet the truth is that women being in collaborative power with their own destiny will influence the lives of every single human who is a part of Earth. All life comes from a woman's body, heart, and mind. When women are vital to every decision and central to every culture, we will have the world we seek. Until then, we begin with summoning the guides.
Let's let our imagination soar to show us the path ahead. This legacy and lineage of art matriarchs has been the gift of a lifetime. I invite you to become one of the Art Matriarchs in the lineage of Intentional Creativity. While we center the education on women, graduates can choose to share the gifts with anyone they choose.
Lots of our graduates work with women, children, elders, gender fluid, and all of the above, as long as they can hold a paintbrush and a pen. I close with this quote from Carl Jung regarding the Red Book. This is at the beginning of the Red Book and also at the beginning of the Intentional Creativity Guide.
“My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life.” Carl Jung, The Red Book
Color of Woman and the ceation of your own Red Book is the stuff and material for more than only one life. Join us for the breakthrough of a lifetim!
With all blessings to the art ancestors who walked before us. We're doing the work. I hope I make you proud. With love, Curate Shiloh Sophia
Our team for 2025
Thank you Mary MacDonald for the continual support and vision.
Thank you Jenafer Owen for the impeccable delivery of this work.
Thank you Amber Bonnici for continuuing the legacy of unleashing the power of women.
Thank you NaaKwarley Amissa for standing by me and us and all women.
Thank you Liz Chamberlain for being the younger generation to carry this work forward in full color.
Thank you trish O'malley for seeing and being the work working in all the ways it does.
Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe
In this Episode
A call to creative beings everywhere!
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Permission slip to call yourself an Artist
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Being in flirtation with creation
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Ideas for sparking imagination
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Invitation to look at resistance
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Rancho La Puerta in Mexico
Dear Ones,
This is a spontaneous blessings for the women after a week at Rancho LaPuerta.
Shiloh Sophia
Woman, sister, friend,
you really have been through so much.
You complete a cycle of initiation
and a new one begins.
I am walking in a storm in the dark.
A crossroads appears out of nowhere for me,
and for you.
When you thought you were nearing your destination
a new journey opens.
It's like a labyrinth. It seems to go on and on.
Always looking to reach the center.
Then as soon as you have arrived,
making our way back out
crossing other people on the path
Hopefully when you return to your life,
you know the place you came from,
newly, for the first time.
Because after all, it is your life.
And returning over and over and over
to your same life with different eyes
This is life.
Breathe with me.
As you breathe in, acknowledge,
I am a sacred being, as you breathe out,
all beings are sacred.
Breathing in, I am a sacred being.
Pausing and breathing out, all beings are sacred.
Breathing in, I am a sacred being.
Breathing out, all beings are sacred.
Woman, Sister, Friend,
I can't really imagine all the things
that have shaped you into who you are.
You really have been through so much.
But right in this moment,
I just want to acknowledge you
for making it this far.
There were times you thought you wouldn’t
and I want to say to you that in this very now
in this now-ness, in this sacred exchange,
right here between me and you,
there's a shared field of supportive love and presence.
The colorful weaving of threads,
a fabric shawl woven to place gently about your shoulders.
While I can't see you with my human eyes,
I see you with the eyes of another woman.
The sacred in me bows to the sacred in you.
I walk around these stones in a storm
I place my hands on the flashing mica.
The rain comes and kisses my hands
and I have this wish that you were with me
I think of how we are earth, earthing,
I think of how we are this stardest, starring
in our own lives, perhaps not quite as glamourously
as we once may have dreamed
but we are still Star Girls, aren’t we?
We are cooling sacks of stars.
Woman, sister, friend,
this whole thing is an initiation!
I don’t have to tell you that,
because you already know
but it is good to be reminded.
I know, as sure as I know anything,
this it isn't exactly as you dreamed
and maybe not what you wanted
or how you thought it would go.
And like me you wonder and worry about
things like trust, about health,
about prosperity, longevity
about the state of the world
and your house
and the health of your children
and your children’s children.
We wake up wondering,
how did we get here?
We wake up worrying
What can I fix today?
I walk around the stones.
One cowgirls boot in front of the other.
I come face to face with to a giant Grandmother Oak.
I place my hands upon that mossy bark and I say,
thank you for helping me breathe.
I want to breathe with you.
Breathing in, I am a sacred being.
Breathing out, You are a sacred being.
Right in this moment
there is a sacred exchange
of energy flowing between us
that lets us know
we are so much more than enough.
Let us drop the ayers of imposed
unworthiness that we took on
without even knowing it.
Outdated patterns that serve no one,
Be gone!
Let me just assure you now, you ARE worthy.
Your worthiness is innate, no one
can give it to you and no one can take it from you.
May the voice within you that has been hard on you
be catalyzed into fierce wisdom and discernment
and sharpened as a tool with your mind.
You have honed over many years
of witnessing what was safe and what wasn't,
it tried to protect you but now it’s too hard on you.
What if your our inner voice could starts to show you
how and when to protect yourself, without hardening yourself.
Oooh. That is the riddle for women, isn't it?
How do we not harden ourselves as we guard ourselves?
Walking alone at night in this
village of wisdom-keepers and healers
I have no fear and I recognize
this is a rare feeling.
I know you know.
Yet right now, there's a field around us
a softening into love.
My bubble of love bounces up to your bubble of love
and says, Hello Friend!
I affirm you, you are so much more than enough!
And you are so worthy of all the love you have to give.
The reality that you even exist is a radiant miracle to me!
I bow at the feet of Mother Life for you at this tree.
Let us pause and let all the beauty come into us
and let all the beauty we choose to express
flow out from us.
This is a sacred exchange of energy
into the matter-based beings that we are.
Between us and all creation
to all the directions, all the elements,
ahhhh…you are sacred beings and we are sacred beings
with you.
Woman, sister, friend, I choose each step around this circle
of stones and I raise my hands up to the sky
stars shining through rain and
I say to the whole universe,
I remember you! And I do.
Woman, sister, friend,
let us remember one another and reach,
across those crossroads for one another's hands.
I feel your heart beating in mine.
This red thread extending
The song of ancestors moves in these circles of stones.
Shiloh Sophia For the women at Wisdom-Keepers week at Rancho LaPuerta
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Class begins today! Visit Musea.org to join us!
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Join me this week for a daylong experience of FLOW - let’s gather together in sacred space and nourish our nervous systems, shall we? scholarship code on check out: flow30
thinking of you and hoping you will consider joining me to flow!
❤️⭕️Shiloh Sophia
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As I walk the moss speaks
Reminding me:
This is sacred ground
This is all sacred ground
Voices of the velvet emerald ways
shimmy me shimmy me
into the deep listening place
Reminding me...
No!
Summoning me!
The first thing they do is to tell me:
You are not who you think you are
And if that wasn't enough, this:
Your true name isn't spoken aloud
Your true name lives inside
If you listen with the ears
of your whole life
Okay so let me get this clear -
I am not who I am
my name is not my name
and somehow that is supposed to
help me remember something I forgot?
And it requires my entire life?
I hear the resonant: Yes
ripple up from the moist red earth
I feel the palpable pulse
of the ripples of water rippling
The salt water within me responding
drawing me in, drawing me up
Here's what I am thinking:
The earth mysteries speak
in riddle bones between blades
of dew-kissed grasses on the river
Whispering in tones of silver fish
black seal and blue heron
marking me with the invisible tattoo
of pre-existant beingness in
my stardust bones
Am I can getting closer? I ask?
Then I cry out....Is it true?
Is it true
is it true that I am more than I appear?
Is it so, I have walked this path
of finding before?
But...
Finding, who, and finding what?
Why?
Why?
When I weep at the sight of sunshine
after weeks of rain then there is
a quickening from the crown of my
vulva to the crown of my fuzzy head
All of this is a remembering
I am the sacred ground, grounding
All of this is a remembering
I am the sacred ground, grounding
My tears nourish the sacred ground
Quick, can you catch my tears
with your lips?
Each day there is more grey
rippling in my hair
My eyesight is softening
around the edges
My skin is freckled
with so many sunlit beaches
Oh and so many late nights
listening to waves
and whispering in succulent kisses
Calling to our seal sisters
to come and get us
Did you forget us here? Or what?
The ocean always calls
The whole thing is really just amazing
Isn't it?
That we exist at all...
That we exist at all is reason to worship
and good reason to listen to the echoes
of velvet emerald moss when they speak
Perhaps one day all the remembering
of this incarnation will come rushing through
For now they give me shivers of clues
Shivers up and down that spine of mine
I bring these clues to life
through brush and pen
I offer what story they give me on the altar
The altar of the women who gather in
Then suddenly I remember this
I do not always have my own back
but the moss,
the velvet moss promises to back me
Unseen forces of essence
of ancestral beauty
are at my back now,
singing me into remembrance
with invisible wings of light
You are Our ancient child
They say
You are guided by Us
They call
You can find Us in the mosses
or in the rippling waters
or in the chambers of your heart
or in the kisses of your lover
Any place beauty is, We are
Any place beauty is, We are
Any place beauty is, We are
Can you remember this?
We have called you
by your secret name
You have answered and
Now you are ready
Ready? Ready for what???
I panic
Then of course, Silence
Then I breathe
I touch moss tenderly
Then I remember...just enough
The quickening
is moving through me now
I can feel the
green fire sparks igniting
something true I hope
I hope it's something true
I turn towards the day
that felt daunting
with a new daring
because
I am backed by velvet green
I am backed by velvet green
I am velvet green, greening
Shiloh Sophia
Moss at Wild Water Creek on Sonoma Mountain OonapaisJoin me this week for a daylong experience of FLOW - let’s gather together in sacred space and nourish our nervous systems, shall we? scholarship code on check out: flow30
This poem, crafted today, is dedicated to all the people who are my great romantic loves. All of them true loves. All of them I hoped would be forever and a day. Loving so deeply and being loved so deeply changes you of course and helps you to become more of who you are. Each one of them does that for me and I hope I do that for them too. Loving is in cycles.
Today, in poetry, they are One in me, One Love moving through as glorious green moss. Putting them in alphabetical order instead of chronological: Abe, Ali, Chris, Jonathan, Rahm Isaiah and Roberto - thank you, each of you, wherever you are, far or near, for sharing the beauty of life with me.
I feel as if I turned a page yesterday, spending the day in silence by the river. I am not sure what page of what book but I feel the great turning, turning.
The idea of moss as sacred arises from Sue Hoya Sellars. She was my mother Caron's lover. When they were first together in the late sixties, Sue and my mom were trying to find Creator together. They were on a spiritual journey. In one of Sue's journal entries she is praying to God about how to have a relationship with the Divine through the framework of an artist - and she says this:
How shall I worship you?
Moss, perhaps?
~
This poem started as worship for Creation and turned into a love story. My mom said that is what this life is, a love story. At times it can be challenging to continue to find that is the case - with so much harm happening to Earth - and to us, as Earth. But still, I will lean in and listen to the moss. Today giving thanks for so much love in my life.
Getting older is a curious thing. To 'look back' and know that you have less time ahead of you than behind you. Then it is time to do all you can, to listen for your true name in between blades of grass, ripples of water, and the sprouting of grey hair and new freckles.
People, including my chiropractor have been saying - touch the grass. I am touching the moss. Join me? It’s so very soft.
Love to you right where you, are from right where I am
Shiloh Sophia
Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe
Inner Fire 2010 Arcylic on Paper by Shiloh SophiaToday’s podcast is an exploration of becoming conscious about the illusions.
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Exploring George Orwell’s famous 4 fingers
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Gaslighting ourselves and not trusting ourselves
Accusation of the other ‘side’
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Exhausting rabbit-holing to find Truth
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Do not drink the divide and conquer koolade
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Hearts and braings changing right now
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A Centers of Knowing Coherence practice for discernment
This podcast is complimentary - yet if you choose to contribute, be welcome.
In Orwell's novel-made movie, 1984, there is a famous and devastating scene. Winston is being tortured by O'Brien, who holds up four fingers and demands that there are five. He wants Winston to distrust himself and go with the party's version of the truth, not just agree to it, but actually see it as so. "O'Brien says, Look at my hand, Winston. Right now, you see, indeed, four fingers held up to you. But as you can see, O'Brien uncovers his thumb, showing all five fingers. I have, in fact, five fingers. That is the essence of the party. Winston, you think you know the truth by seeing things with your senses. But as you can see, your senses can disappoint you. The party knows everything is everything. The party knows that there are five fingers here even if you only see four of them. The party knows the truth that you cannot see from the place you are standing at because you are weak alone. The party is strong and omniscient and therefore if the party says that two and two equals three or five it will always be right. You by yourself cannot know the truth." As each one of us experiences our own reckoning in relationship to our lives and in relationship to how we experience the nation, especially those of us in the United States, I want to invite us to continue to question what we see and think. It's curious for me how personal so much of this feels in relationship to experiences I've had in my life where I haven't been able to trust people and then end up not trusting myself.Some of them are the people I have loved the most. And in the end, it was my own hand showing the fingers to myself through just trusting my own experience over a longer period of time. Now, with the increase of AI easily showing us things that are not true, It can be very hard to believe our eyes.We are going to need other tools for discernment than we've needed before, really. I'm going to share a heart-brain coherence process with you very briefly to support with discernment. The images that AI are showing us makes me think about those Renaissance paintings where the patron would have the artist paint themselves into the scene, painting the patron inm and that those with the biggest purse strings and influence are defining the images of our times. When I offer art history tours, it is a very different tour indeed. I used to go on this tour with Jonathan and myself and our community to the Uffizi in Florence, and Elisabetta, our tour guide, would hand me the mic to give the alt history of what we're actually seeing. One of the changes that we need to make is how we're relating to the material. Because one of the challenges with truth right now is the exhaustion caused by rabbit-holing in order to discern the source so that we can figure out if something is true or not. And there goes another 15 minutes, and there goes another 15 minutes, and there goes our mood, and the algorithms, they got us. At the end, we still don't know if what we see is true, and perhaps we give in to overwhelm. One thing might upset me and another person something totally else, and we each act like the other person's concern is the distraction from what's really happening. And our critical thinking has been used in a sometimes productive and often nonproductive way, but the end result may be weary, irritated, and feeling unsafe, and deciding not to post after all. Can't we just find the truth with a capital T?It's hard to find right now. This process that we are experiencing is fundamentally changing our brains. We are also being changed in our hearts as more fear and distrust of the others around us in our lives and in the larger collective spaces increases exponentially.Divide and Conquer is here to stay for a while, so we need to not go for it. Do not go. Drink that Kool-Aid of divide and conquer. Discernment, choice, but not divide and not conquer. Because then they've got us right where they want us, fighting with each other instead of with them.Yet there is also more compassion that's happening. So the hearts are also opening because we're considering the impacts on other people's lives. People who never defended Mexicans, trans, and women are suddenly becoming more visible. We could go into all the different ways that this time is changing us and our voices.If you look back in my posts on my Tea with the Muse Substack you'll find that I've been talking about these topics for a long time. These are not new that I am suddently speaking about it. I'm just speaking about it more specifically in regarding what's happening here. But I've been talking about consciousness raising and discernment for my entire 30-year journey as a creative and someone who guides community. What I find really curious is that each side, quote, if you think of it that way, really thinks the other side is holding up the false number of fingers. Really, really, really think about this. We have rarely accused each other of the same illusionary experience and metaphor, even if the content that those hands are pointing to is different. Whose hand is it? We can begin to distrust the thoughts and feelings that we're having. In times like these, we question them and then are sometimes gaslit by others for our feelings and thoughts.We can just stop treating other people who don't agree with us as if they're just stupid. That would be helpful. Disagree, but leave the shame part out of it. The marketing propaganda from, quote, both parties is sickening. Sickening. Even as I'm making this message, I'm getting texts on my phone number from both parties about what's happening. Really.Without the heart-brain coherence pattern operating soundly within us, we become dysregulated in our nervous system. This is a real thing, y'all, not some new age idea. Our brain and our heart are communicating all the time. When we become conscious of it, we can collaborate with the process of coherence,which is always the right place to make a decision from. For those who know me, I think they can attest to a degree of severity that I carry forward. Yes, I am a wild, free woman who dances and houses with the moon and paints outrageous paintings.But I have a severity because I am deeply disturbed about the state of the world, and I have been since I was a young child, like so many of you. This disturbance about how I felt about the systems of the world was originally part of the inspiration to be of service when I was a teenager and became a rebel. I wanted to know how I could help. Now my inspiration is I'm just in love with the practices, culture, and community we have co-created called Musea. Musea, by the way, means museum in the plural or many muses. It acknowledges that we have people all over the world who are connected through creativity. Now I work from joy instead of disturbance while keeping my eye on the disturbance. The initial disturbance of how things are showed me how to become stronger towards what I care about. To be courageous at the root of courageous core, the heart.I want to invite you to spend time nurturing yourself and your heart and your brain every single day. When you are confused with something and something that needs discernment or you feel challenged, try this connection with your centers of knowing. This is about creating heart coherence.Creating Coherence in Centers of KnowingConsider physically touching each place that I'm about to mention lightly with your hands as you visualize the connection between each place. I like to see a golden ribbon of light between each area, each center of knowing. 1. Begin with connecting with yourself, capital S self, about whatever it is you're navigating.2. Ask your heart how it feels and what it perceives. The heart has the strongest electromagnetic field of the body. And the heart perceives in the field around you. 3. Travel next in your imagination to your brain and ask how it feels and what it perceives. Listen. 4. And then go back through your heart, landing in your gut,and ask how it feels and what it perceives. Listen. 5. And then when you're ready, travel to your groin region, front and back and all around the pelvic area, and ask, what do you feel and perceive? 6. And then I like to travel back up to the heart after listening. Check in on the topic. Was there agreement between those centers of knowing or disagreement? Was there coherence? And what is the decision now? In Intentional Creativity we might now take to the dance floor of the drawing board or the canvas, which is what I'm about to do on this Valentine's Day. If you check those centers of knowing and there are conflicting experiences, there is work of discovery to be done. Especially if it's just one area, then you can focus there, meditate, and see why there's disharmony. But in general, I try not to act until I get agreement from all centers. That way, I can have a clear voice, a true heart, and a pure mind experience in my decision-making and my discernment.If you would practice this even before you go online and even before you read articles and follow rabbit holes and watch YouTubes and anything else, you would be approaching this material from a very different place than what you'reencountering in the social media and news world and on your phone. I also recommend that you, before you engage, sort of open the file of engagement. And then close it when you are done looking. Don't just leave the portal open or the tab open.Close it energetically so these files are not running in the background all the time. I've made some of the hardest choices of my life through checking these areas for confirmation or lack thereof. It gives me courage. Regardless of all the challenging things, we are evolving and growing. And I believe we are becoming more conscious and more compassionate.I am seeing this time as an evolution. And we have a long way to go. That's why we need practices. I invite you to pay attention to whose hand is holding up the fingers and telling you how many there are. Can we do that? Some say that George Orwell was an optimist.Sometimes the one holding up the elusive hand is in our own minds. Isn't there so much richness here to explore in this wild becoming? I choose to see it as a wild becoming to wholeness. This is my choice, my conscious choice. Enter flow state and soak in as much beauty as possible as often as possible.And I'm sending big love as a wave out into the lives of those tuning in. And I too am tuning in to you with much loveShiloh Sophia
Photo by Jonathan McCloud
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Hi everyone! I would like to offer a little bit of a heads up that some of my posts here are about to get a bit more intense. It’s my nature to explore justice. It’s in my blood.
Did you know I wanted to be a judge when I grew up? I didn’t do it because I already thought the government was corrupt when I was 6.
ultimately, I am not trying to caretake. I’m trying to find my own voice and at the same time offer encouragement to those who aren’t able to find their voice or don’t feel brave enough to share it.
Anyways, I don’t have a plan for it, but we’ll see what happens.
I was writing my memoir, but I have been stalled because I am deeply engaged in caring for my community at this time.
If what I’m sharing does not work for you I totally understand and of course you’re welcome to unsubscribe. We each need to find the way forward together and sometimes apart.
Shiloh Sophia
This is a complementary subscription. Those who wish to donate and become paying subscribers that’s fine, I’m grateful - but you don’t need to. Even if Substack asks you to pay - as if I’m asking you I’m not.
Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe
We are cosmic pilgrims
You are an ancient identity
I see you,
do you see me,
seeing you?
You are
inhabiting a luminous garment
of stardust framed upon crystal bones
traveling on a forested spaceship
at over 100,000 Kilometers per hour
spiraling through our Milky Way galaxy
on a mysterious voyage
without a map or destination
woven within a pattern of stars
keeping time with the moon
Darling,
isn't it wonderous
to have our own moon?
That travels with us always?
You, We, Us
Are powered by an incandescent star
Our glorious sun, we worship you still
You light up our vessels of stars and water
with the sacred geometry
of your luminous nature
Am I so different
than this blooming tree?
This hummingbird,
could very well be me
We are encoded with a tender
and temperamental psyche
living within a story
we won’t be able to control
Each of us
carrying unique hidden information
that longs to be expressed
in the shape of a living myth
our hidden gifts looking for
ways to reveal themselves
through us
You are dreamed and designed
by gracious Infinite Intelligence
to have an Illuminated heart
capable of ever-expanding poetry
in a seemingly impossible situation
Darling you are a cathedral of light!
I worship at the foot of your altars
Flowers bloom where you have danced
I fall breathless into your potentials
Finding place, pace and grace
in your moon-kissed face
We don't know how we got here
We don't really know
where we are going now
But we know this
Love is at the center
Love is at the center
Love is at the center
of the Universe
We are cosmic pilgrims
You are an ancient identity
at the crossroads of
an uncertain future
Will you cross the threshold with me?
Shiloh Sophia
Revisioned Poem today adapted from the original in 2021
Oh my friends, my friends! I would love nothing more than to take a long walk with you, holding hands and talking. I want to hear from you - not just what you post when your mad, or glad, but instead the early morning joys and fears. The things you don't say at the luncheon with colleagues or the dinner table with family. I want to know about the words on the shingle you don't put out about the gifts you really have for these wild times.
You could describe me as a painter, a poet, a relucant priestess. But those aren't my real titles. The gifts I have don't work on a business card, can't be put into an algorithm, can't be seen with a machine mind looking deeply into my online history.
Who I really am is who I am when I am when I am with you. Whether that is over a cuppa virtual or in person tea with the Muse. Or most especially when I am leading ceremony and I can feel you through the black hole of the camera. My real gifts are feelings. Feeling deeply. I don't care if you know that, or if the machine knows that. You can't use it against me and I know you wouldn't even try. I am a Lover. The universe is my Lover. Like Michael Jackson says, I'm a lover, not a fighter.
The kinds of gifts we carry cannot be taken from us by wit or force or password or pressure. Your truest gifts are natural and innate - they are all innately tucked into who you are. You don't have to grow them, earn them or be certified in these gifts. You are the gifts being given through you. The pace of life, and the never-ending intensity can keep us from living them. But that doesn't mean they aren't within you.
We are worried about a lot of things right now. I know. I feel it. I see it. I am tracking the many narratives on all sides of the shadow dance of now. There is a grand confluence occuring and it hurts. By grand I don't mean great, I mean BIG. Most days it feels like an unnatural disaster that could have been avoided. But the way we are, the harm we allow and promote, has been going on for so long. No way out but through, you know?
But now that I have offerd a poem and a reflection if you have made it THIS far - I want to ask you the MOST SIGNIFICANT question or our life time. Your lifetime. Any recent timeline.
But first...the reality is we have been in various stages of oppressive culture for close to 8,000 years - archeologically speaking. So that means we spend A LOT, get that? A LOT of precious life force working on resistance and insistence. Resisting power structures, resisting false narratives, insisting on justice, insisting on human rights. The energy it takes to resist and insist can keep us caught in the worrisome battle of a disgruntled activists. Present company included.
Just for now...for right this minute in the naked now, I want to ask you a question. Don't skip ahead please. Pause and breathe. There.....close your eyes....open them...read the question and without thinking....answer without editing....
If you weren't in the resistance
How would you lead your life?
Really - if you didn't have to confront reality - how would you use your precious days?
Liberate your thoughts through falling in love with your gifts, when they are in service to beauty as WELL as in service to the modern revolutionary conundrums.
I have been living my answer to that question for over 30 years. I Trust that question and the community that has risen up around my answering that question. That doesn't mean I don't still persist in the resistance. What it means is I spend the majority of my life force centering on the joy of my heart, not the pain. I have rescued my energy from the grid of oppression. Which then works towards liberating my community as well.
so here’s the thing. I’m not saying to step out of the resistance in any way -, what I am saying is to make sure you spend time caring for your own gifts. There is a long journey ahead and we’re going to need our strength.
Your fellow cosmic pilgrim
Love
Shiloh Sophia
Aka Laughing Cloud
Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe
Beautiful beings! I hope you will take the time to listen to this brief message I exploring:
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A choice in becoming conscious
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Chemistry and mood shifts
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Who is really in charge?
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What’s the first step you can take?
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A simple process you can do right now
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Exercising your choice to become conscious and become a curator of your consciousness
thinking of you
Shiloh Sophia
The painting above is called an ancient future soul from 2023.
The photo below is from last week!
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Today’s episode offers a teaching on
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Access to your consciousness, do you have it?
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Accessing who you are ‘in here’, aka your Self
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Discovering a new awareness about what ‘getting out there’ means
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Defining ‘out there’ for yourself and activating the Observer
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Exploring the ‘missing there’ called “around here” that takes place in the field
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Invitation to become as conscious as you can become…now
Dear Ones,There is a lot of influence happening ‘out there’ on who you experience yourself as ‘in here’. Let’s have a breakthrough TODAY in arriving as yourself. Becoming as conscious as you can be. I think sometimes I am here in your life just to keep encouraging you to arrive. When we ARRIVE you can become a conscious Co-Creator. To really be a conscious Creator we have to be willing to explore the “field” Until then we are often wreckless with how we create. Because if you aren’t inhabiting who you are - then you aren’t able to REALLY create from a space of a coherent self. Here’s to arriving!
Shiloh Sophia
Here's the thing, Beloveds. Your capacity to create the life of your design is really about access to your consciousness. Without that clear access to consciousness, we do not make what we could make and we often make things that are inconsistent with what we actually want and who we actually are, because we're not living "in here"."In here", meaning in this identity. And when we're not "in here", we embark on a life where we are constantly seeking to change ourselves. Because the life we're living "out there" in the world, doesn't reflect who we are "in here" (in the Self)And when we're not who we are "in here", everything "out there" occurs for us as somehow true to us. Not going well. Uncomfortable. Not in alignment. Now I want to make a clear point - that we are not spiritually bypassing here. The reality is there are lots of influences that shape who we are "in here" inourselves because of what's happening "out there" in the world. But the power we have is the perception of how "out there" and "in here are" in a co-creative relationship with each other... or not. But the thing is, they're always in a co-creative relationship with each other.You just might not be aware that they are and how to work it.You can't influence every single thing "out there" unless you can shift your orientation to "in here". But there's more. Before we go on, let's start with what I mean by "in here"."In here" refers to the body, temple, cooling sack of stars that you are, and the Soul that you are that inhabits the space where you experience yourself as I or me. The Self space that you are occurs for you as inside, "in here". This often includes the sense of the body, but not often enough, the sense of the field and consciousness, which keeps us from being conscious Co-creators.And what do I mean by "out there"? Well, until we've done more rigorous work within ourselves to observe ourselves, "out there" is everything you do not experience as you. And "out there" often refers to what we think of as the world, yet through the framework of our worldview."Out There" a big old space that we are continually interacting with largely in an unconscious way, because we've never really defined what "out there" means. The invitation for the work right now is to arrive, to come into yourself, to become as fully yourself as you can possibly be. And yes, in the twinkling of an eye. Quickly.It's a quickening because it's available to you now, but you have to choose it.Let me ask you a question. Have you ever said to yourself: "I just got to get myself out there" ? Entrepreneurs say it, but other people say it too. It's this idea that there's a place you need to get to.So where is that "out there" for you? Have you defined it? We say it largely in an unconscious way. We don't know what we mean. The idea of "out there" can create fear because it indicates that there's a place to get to and you're not already there. (Wherever there is)This idea of 'getting out there" indicates that you're somehow going to magically get seen for who you are so you can validate your worth in the eyes of others out there so that you can feel good in here. But listen, to even attempt an authentic version of what happens out there, we have to get in here, in this sack of stars inhabited by identity. Otherwise, we're not responsibly co-creating with creation and creator and other creative beings. In our community, We get "in here" by practicing Intentional Creativity because it's a way to get to know who lives in here.Our art matriarch who walked into her future in 2014, Sue Hoya Sellers, who was also the woman who mothered me with my own mother, Caron, had a quintessential question that she answered with her whole life. called "who lives in here?". Her art, her philosophy, her spiritual path were all directed by the inquiry of: Who lives in here.The discovery of that self who lives in here often happens through observing ourselves and amplifies as we observe ourselves in the acts of intentional self-expression. Self-expression without intention is also expression, but if you don't observe it, then you're not actually being metacognitive, which actually gives you perspective on how you are occurring for yourself so you can get to know who lives in here.So yes, self-expression is a way to get to know the who is in here so that you can shape how you want to live out there in the world that you observe. But here's the thing. Really listen now. There is more than in here and out there.But we haven't been acting like it. The missing of the interstitial space between how we experience ourselves in here and the world out there has been missing for most of us. And it's called the Field. In this case, when we're talking about your body and your identity, it's a local field specific to you and how you interact with the other fields of people and places and ideas. But you have a field at least 10 feet around your body that's invisible, that's just as much you as your physical body. So there isn't just in here and out there. There's a space between you.We aren't conscious enough to look for it, but it's where all the action is. Perhaps we could call it "around here". The field is all around your body and your body is held within it and your consciousness is connected with it. But that field that you are is also interconnected with all of creation and creatorand all creative beings. This is our animistic worldview that everything has substance and aliveness. And that your substance and aliveness connects with the other substances and alivenesses. And this creates a connection with Source.So this willingness to explore "around here", the invisible space, which holds it all in place, invites us into profound self observation, metacognition, which is thinking about thinking. And the observer is the part of you, the neuroscientifically gorgeous part of you, that allows you to think and see and perceive who you experience yourself as. Which allows you to be on a journey of becoming as conscious as you can or becoming conscious of becoming conscious.When you become conscious of the practice of becoming conscious, then you can become a responsible and resilient and radiant Co-creator. Otherwise, we are often reckless in our capacity to see and feel all the interconnected parts in the field. So if there's only in here and out there and there's no space between, we're not acknowledging interconnection.And if you do not acknowledge interconnection, you do not become the Co-creator with all of creation that you could become.And sometimes I think, this is why I'm in your life. You are all out there creating consciously or unconsciously. And I'm someone in your life who continues to remind you to become accountable to becoming conscious in here and around here.We need conscious, creative, compassionate, caring, intentional community to hold sacred containers with one another right now. Our experience of what's happening out there can often feel scary. If you will tune into in here and around here, you can become powerful in your relationship with out there by choosing the framework that you're interacting with the out there space.And you can't do that without getting into the around here part, the field.Einstein says the field is the sole governing agency of the particle. That means that the field around you and around others is where the action takes place that impacts the matter you experience as your body, which then sends chemistry and signals and emotions, which then send the information from the body to the brain and the brain to the body and the heart as the intelligent mediator of this exchange. All this is happening all the time anyway. The only question is will you become a Co-creator and become accountable to who you're becoming?You could arrive to be as much you as you can be right now by just choosing. Will you choose with me?With love,Curate Shiloh Sophia
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In this Bouncing Love Bubble Meditation we include
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Initiating a state change
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Attempting to collaborate with our chemistry for a lift
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Increase heart brain coherence
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Feelings of Gratitude
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The awareness of your body field
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Amplify biophotons of love light in the body
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Release your current version of reality (for the moment)
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Travel to imaginal utopian lands - what will you imagine?
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Erupt in LOVE because you can - proclaim to the universe - I AM LOVE!!!
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Choose one small thing to change in your life
Beautiful Beings - I can ALMOST guarantee that if you do this meditation you will feel a bit better. We are capable of moderating our mood to the best of our abillity and sometimes we need a burst of JOY to make that possible. A state change, a lift. You will hear me laughing, almost crying and even my stomach gurgle (LOL) as I guide you on this spontaneous adventure into the imaginal world to experience gratitude, love, a utopian landscape of your subconsious and choose to make one small change in your life. Basically, feel better.
Today’s meditation is inspired by Holly, Lavender and Michelle, three women in my community with teenagers or youth. When I first came up with this meditation I imagined them being able to listen to it and get a lift, but then it went too long and it might not work for the attention span. BUT you could try it. Soft blankets on a big couch and a cuppa tea and this…you could try. I will attempt some other ones for youth soon, I am sparked to do something I can to help with our nervous systems by choice. We can’t explain the bizarre time we are in to them, deep inside they know we have failed them in this society. So now it seems like it is time to offer them as many tools as possible - and for me this begins with claiming their imagination. Really it is more like rescuuing it from the reality they have been sold and told.
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Children of the Flower ChildrenWe are the childrenof the flower childrencoming into full bloomThe seeds of their hoperise up in our colorful bonesWe cut our teeth on their resistanceWe were then a people unwillingto accept an invented narrativewith fighting cloaked in peaceWe dread times like theseWe spend our livestrying to prevent the need for revoltWe would much rather grow foodand call the circle to gatherRather play with children out in the parksOur energies are miss-spenton trying to protect the precious liveswhen there has been so much intentional lossEven as we plant our seeds,they are tearing up the groundand poisoning the waterOur grandparents could drink the water,our grandchildren cannotWhat else do we need to know about times like these?They changed the roadway in front of my little old houseOne of the last old houses for milesNow there’s a freeway hereMost of the birds have goneand street lights shine into almost every window at nightinstead of the trees that used to stand herethe big semi brakes are squeeling the 4 am beginning of lightNo way to stop it nowYet there’s good news herebecause the oranges are almost readyand roses are early bloomingIn truth I never stopped putting flowers in my hairBut now flowers in my hair is an act of resistanceIn solidarity with my AncestorsThere are over 100 wars nowI refuse to be a part of a warThe one that we are fighting hereHere in this nation it is just heating upthis one continues onfor the battle of our mindsI shall use my time wellin these coming yearsFor I am called to gather usI could use my life forceto dismantle the patriarchy brick by brickBut I think I’ll call a circle insteadWe will put flowers in our hairWe can already see what’s going onWe will Organize with Love at the center of our choicesHere's the best news I can dream ofThis will be a time of great poetry and storytellingand songs and marches and depth conversationsand paintings that speak to the future we believe inWe will be here with you gathering flowersand pouring the strong tea of revolutionand laughing our asses off as often as possibleLet us speak the language of flowers,for we are the childrenof the flower childrenAs the daughter of a poet,my pen must be aflamewith the beauty of justice and kinshipSoon I will find my voiceand until then I will speakthe language of flowersShiloh Sophia
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Today is a big day! I have two ideas for us. I’m sending blessings to everyone.
Shiloh Sophia
Our event today is at Musea.org
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The idea presented here about choosing to respond instead of react, is something I learned when I was 23 years old from Sue Hoya Sellars, my art Matriarch. I will never forget the day She proposed the idea to me that my activism could be a response instead of a reaction.
This very brief podcast is an invitation to
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Choose to respond instead of react
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Rescue your energy and life force from distraction and reaction
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Consciously choose your relationship to what’s happening around you
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Engage with responsibility
love ❤️
Shiloh Sophia
Ps I hope you choose some time for you this weekend. And if you wanna join us on Monday for our day, long event visit Musea.org
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Oh my goodness you all. I’m not sure exactly what to say right now that matters, other than that this is the time to express ourselves. I was moved tonight to let you know that I am here and paying attention and going through some of the same things you are. And I’m also as ready as I can be to support us during this time. I’m pacing the floor tonight. These are my thoughts. I want to recommend that you record your own thoughts, even if you don’t share them. Or write them out. Or dance them out in pink sparkle uggs!
I replaced the audio from last night…it felt too vulnerable upon waking. I tried another one that is better I hope.
I am not speaking for the community that I serve. I’m speaking to the community that I serve. What is useful? I’m grateful and what isn’t just compost it.
Shiloh Sophia
Www.musea.org
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Happy new year beautiful beings,
I’m so grateful to be sharing tea with the muse with you in 2025. For every single project that I work on, I’ve asked myself, do I still want to do this and am I called to this? Is this still benefiting people? What do I really have to say that really matters right now?
I’m happy to say that tea with the muse is going to continue. I love connecting with you. I have another episode of my memoir coming, but I’m going move it to a different channel so I’ll let you know about that. I realize that my memoir has been hanging me up from the regular tea with the muse style posts that I love to make.
I hope you enjoy this teaching, which is one of my core teachings about thoughts and feelings, waves and particles, and how to prepare the mind to create transformation!
New year blessings to every single one of you! I am truly honored every time you listen, read, comment and appreciate the workings of the muse!
Shiloh Sophia
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Good morning dear ones! You haven’t heard from me for a bit because I didn’t have any Internet in Mexico. I kept recording things for you but couldn’t get them posted ~ so for today I’m posting a poem that I wrote on the plane, but in the moment, I embellished it as I spoke it. Perhaps it will stir something in you ~ maybe pick up your own pen or magic keyboard, and see what shows up!
Shiloh
Photo of self portrait on Christmas while I dream of wings
Dedicated to Julie and Sage and the sandwich that I got to be a part of
Www.musea.org has all the things
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Dear Ones, I’m in Mexico for the holidays teaching art and I was thinking of you and our struggles to become. Here’s an approach I learned from my 2 mamas.
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Why asking if you are good enough won’t work out
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How our environment keeps us grasping for belonging
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Considering your ideal question for you as authentic to you
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My proposal of a better question
And yes…there are wrong questions and mistakes.
Loving you
Blessings Shiloh Sophia
Ps: pausing on my memoir for the holidays because it’s a little depressing in this juncture. I’ve recorded the next episode but each time I try to push publish I just can’t yet.
pps this is a photo of me in the hammock yesterday contemplating my ideal question
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Dear Ones, These are my thoughts this morning on
how much energy it takes to resist the power that be within and without
the power of rebellion but not just against outer structures but inner ones
the shaping of idenity and how art works with that
and
here’s an invitation to The Quickening - our upcoming training for those who also want to work with artist archetype
Love
Shiloh Sophia
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Sometimes when you feel a smile in the body and you give the muse the pen or mic, she’ll give a poem to you right in that moment
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Good Morning Community,
Wow did I have a big change, it is still taking time to arrive within me…but I wanted to share it with you and perhaps ask you…what is the IDEAL you have been living by and is there unconscious resistance that keeps you from receiving it?
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My ideal has changed….here is the new one
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Invitation to interview with me for The Quickening
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What is your ideal? Has it changed over the years?
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Do you have an unconscious resistances that is informing your conscious ideal
Our community had an exquisite day this weekend of doing clean up at Wild Water Creek on Sonoma Mountain.
Blessings to each of you
Shiloh Sophia
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Hello everyone! Please forgive me for a little foray into political discourse this past week. I am doing my best to show up for my community instead of going quiet. Because it directly relates to women and people of color and safety, and even the way that we self express, it actually comes into my lane. I will likely be complete with my commentary soon. But for now this is how I’m showing up. Take it or leave it. In a way I am modeling, intentional creativity through sharing my process in community. This is the painting I’ve been working on during the cycle. #wetpaint
Shiloh Sophia
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Hi community! I know there’s so much going on, but please take a listen on a walk or while you’re painting if you are interested at all in why I am taking a stand in the middle, which is not a neutral stand. This arises out of my concerns for the golden age rhetoric that I’m seeing and also how we are being so divided and just saying, actually that doesn’t need to happen.
Onward with love 💗
Shiloh Sophia
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Sharing my thoughts with my community this morning. Come share with us ❤️
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Painting of me at 27 by Sue Hoya Sellars
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Hello everyone! I’m so excited that we’re starting legend today! A seven day immersive experience. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Ali Stoddard about why legend works and why we do it. Here’s that conversation.
We start today with circle ⭕️ and livestream on November 2.
Honoring this day as a day between worlds and giving things to all of the ancestors who make our work come to life! Shiloh Sophia
Www.musea.org (not live-linked)
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Good morning everyone! I am dropping in here with a regular tea with the muse episode with a teaching you will find in all of our work. I’ve reframed the language a little bit with hopes that concept is graspable and actionable. This is part of a series of talks and teachings designed to increase consciousness by one percent through the awareness of the field.
The photo was taken seconds ago, as I was out for a super early morning walk and discovered the a lucky snapshot of the invisible self and her wolf companion out howling in the dark with me…(in water on the sidewalk)
Curate Shiloh Sophia
For those who wish to explore this in more detail, you can join us for Legend in November www.musea.org (not a hot link)
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good morning! Today I’m sharing
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What’s happening at my place this morning including why it smells so good
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Following the urge of the muse
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The actual history of the practice of red thread café ☕️
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What’s on the table to talk about and what’s not
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A dare to have cafe! And share! #redthreadcafe #intentionalcreativity
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These are rough and curious times. Today I have been particularly challenged and I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone. I know sometimes my life can seem shiny and amazing, and it is. But I also go through all the really hard things just like so many of you. I have lots of tools and so my resilience may be different in my capacity to respond, but I too am being challenged. This is a time for ecstatic discipline. I could not be more grateful for intentional creativity, and for this community. this is not about misery loves company, but it is about not feeling singled out in anything hard that you’re experiencing. ❤️ Shiloh Sophia
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Hello everyone! Get a cuppa tea or coffee, a journal and let’s dive in! There are lots of juicy nuggets in here to explore and begin to practice on your own!
“who lives in here?” Sue Hoya Sellers.
This episode explores the neuroscience of your inner voice and then illuminates what I think is the missing piece to understanding the greatest influence on your inner dialogue…
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How the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system form a matrix for right decision-making
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The essential stress response that you get to choose “find”
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How self-expression is the key to work with the Neuroplasticity of the brain, because you’re using your body and not just your thoughts
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Reframing the critic as fierce wisdom so that discernment is alive, but self criticism diminishes
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Your internal dialogue influences every single area of your life, even though it’s happening within you, therefore it’s impacting everyone and everything
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How flow state can get interrupted and how to work with new patterns
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How we work with the concept of the muse to regulate the critic
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Invitations to join us for our upcoming two week class and certification training with group coaching
This is the detail of the painting for our year long course Abracadabra
www.musea.org
Blessings on your day!
Curate Shiloh Sophia
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Today’s episode invites you to
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Identify the places where you can lean in when you’re having hard times
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My story of my password meltdown yesterday and what I did #Intentionalcreativity
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The places I choose to lean in
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Why I don’t give myself a choice, and how that only works if I’m prepared…
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Offering certainty in times of uncertainty
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Places that you can lean in in our community
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Coherence meditation ideas
and a brief prayer including thoughts for Florida community members
This photo was taken last night while I was painting. Because usually at night and in the wee hours I paint in the dark.
🌺❤️🙏
Shiloh Sophia
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Good evening from California, I found this poem of mine from 2019 and it made me think about how much we focus on being open…Versus how little time we spend refining, emptying and being quiet. This is a call to strip the altar of the old energy and invite some emptiness and recentering.
~ Shiloh Sophia
We are just a few days into our year long course, abracadabra and you’re still welcome to join us
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You do not want to miss this. I am offering something today that you can put into practice immediately. I’m going to identify the three false teachings of manifestation and then invite you to the truest one I’ve ever discovered.
And we also start our yearlong class today if you want to join us!!!
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Painting in Process - Animystica - Cura Archetype
Good Morning Muses!
I woke up smelling the change in the air and the seeing the light shifting towards this coming Equinox, officially on the 22nd at 5:43 am pst. For those in the Northern Hemisphere we turn towards Autumn. For those in the Southern Hemisphere we turn towards Spring. On September 18 we have a partial Lunar Eclipse visible from Mexico, Canada and the United States. The moon is 97percent full as of this moment and will be full in one day and 11 hours and 38 minutes. There are things we can count on, at least for now. We can count on the moons relationship to the sun….let us honor that relationship.
I would love to be someone in your life you can count on to bring you insight and inspiration…I would love for our community at MUSEA and the Cura Council (our ceremonial branch) to provide a place of continuity and compassion. I would love for Intentional Creativity to provide a consistent go-to practice for you to be nourished by. Our community is going to be here for you, this is our sacred assignment. I would be ever so grateful to invite you to join us for a ceremony we have coming up is September 21 at 10am pst. Yes it’s another Substack and yes there are scholarship free levels available. Here are the details.
The Substacks (Tea with the Muse, The Cura Council, and Gold Mind) we offer provide more immediate messaging in real time. Like today’s poem just landed this morning so it is freshy-fresh.I also have a complimentary class coming up on Friday, Attunement Manifestation.
Thresholds
for Equinox
There are these
strange quiet cycles
where one life is completing
and the new one
is just beginning
There, in the in-between
Then it is time to nap under
the giant oak
with the first yellow leaves
of this season
and listen from insideThere are these
loud chaotic patterns
where who you were
isn't matching who you are becoming
and there is just so much noise
to stay the same
But you can'tThere in the spaces between spaces
Then it is time for you to sit in ceremony
listening to the wild geese moving
and the last of the pink cosmos
blooming and blowing
in a fresh wind from the South
There are these
dances that can only take place
at a crossroads
Dances for change that are
rhythmic and restless
Moving at the center of
the many directions and decisions
Some that you think you want and
some you do notYou,
you have outgrown your old life
Yet the path has yet to appear
clearly Then it is time
to slow way down,
to lay down right there
in the discomfort of the crossroads
Where you have always just
danced for your life, for survival
to keep going no matter what
Just Slow Down
The changing of the light
will point you in the right direction
when the time is readyIt is not your concern
how long this cycle will last
Many moons and eclipses
have already come and gone
After a time you will pick up
not where you left off
but somewhere new
Will you trust this?
Just as you trust the green
hills to turn gold and
then to green again? This is what we do,
we Earth, we change
and we keep changing
crossing the thresholds
at each point of this
sacred wheel turning
Turning turning turning
towards center
turning towards you
--Thinking of you as I am about to have morning cafe with kitties,
Shiloh Sophia
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Good morning ☀️
I know how hard it is to make change. We all do. Make a change today ~ yes today! This will be worth it!
The goal is to arrive at action steps that are served from your subconscious.
Overview
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Choose one thing to change
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Activate imagination and create sacred space
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Connect with stars and sun and the mountains where you live
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Create a field condition for change
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Make a cognitive leap from the imaginal to the real honoring Neuroplasticity
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Illustrate the change/s
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Receive insight about your very next steps to take in this 24 hours
Plus ranch updates! A new feature I’m trying out to let you know what’s happening here. The photo is the sunrise at the Ranch @ Musea.
Intentional Creativity Process for making a change today through receiving heightened insights that result in action.
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Change: The first piece of paper is for the thing you want to change that you were shown or created - just a few strokes to indicate and honor.
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Changed: The second piece of paper is the change already happening and how that would look and feel
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Action: The third pierce of paper is for the prayer and action steps that are revealed to take.
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Greetings everyone! In order to achieve attunement when you are creating your world with your word to yourself, there needs to be reciprocity. There is an often missed piece about the energy exchange of gathering and giving. For manifestation to be attuned and good for you and for all - the energy of giving and receiving in a sacred exchange is actually essential or there is mis-alignment. How do we condition our bodies to create in the fullness of our being-ness?To get into the optimal condition, we need to work with a collaborative idea - Nervous System Reciprocity
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In today’s episode, I’m going to relate giving and receiving to the nervous system function
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The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system aren’t a division but a collaboration
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You can consciously choose a different trauma response if you knew there was one available, there is
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Invitation to understand how these systems are influencing your capacity to create what you wantI hope you find it useful, I am no expert but am stretching to understand how to make things come to life in my life and support you in yours.Warmly,
Shiloh Sophia
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my prayer… “little bit of grief move though me now”
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Ideas for navigating grief that may be different than what you’ve tried before
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Why I think it’s time for a new metaphor
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Alchemy and titration and teaspoons of water
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Heading to this canvas for Fire and Water 💦
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My relationship with traffic at the ranch and overcoming the shame
“Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go” Jamie Anderson
And in our case, that grief goes onto the canvas…
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“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell youDon't go back to sleep!You must ask for what you really want.Don't go back to sleep!People are going back and forthacross the doorsill where the two worlds touch,The door is round and openDon't go back to sleep!”
―Rumi
Dear Ones,
Good Morning on September 1! This is a message for the women who have gathered for Abracadabra, our yearlong course. Yet as I made it for them (you) this morning, I wondered if there was something in here for you too, here at Tea with the Muse. So I am sharing it with you even though that is a bit of a rogue move, I am here to be a disruptor and a weaver, both! If you haven’t join us yet, you are still welcome to join us (with $1000 savings through midnight).
Overview
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Exchanging peaches for songs and beads
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This isn’t a class, it is an exchange of energy
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We are not replacing other voices for mine, we are seeking yours
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Speaking words of power is what called us together into this portal
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Acknowledging that we called each other changes how it feels
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I won’t be at your dinner table but I am at the cafe with you, right now
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Our amazing guides have gathered
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Let us prepare our spaces and our schedules for a yearlong experience in community.
Whatever you are navigating, whatever you are feeling blessed by, I send a message of love to you this day. Blessings on your day,
Curate Shiloh Sophia
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Learn about Abracadabra here - scholarships ending tomorrow night at midnight
Dear Community,
I am pretty amazed about what is happening with this course and all the women coming in. Clearly there is a call to power at this time.In this episode I cover
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The Top 5 Reasons women do not speak their minds
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Addressing power
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Shame, Fear, Silencing and somatic memory
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What stops us from within and around us
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What we can do about finding our voice
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Identifying the core issue which is our voice
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Acknowledging the impact of a world where women do not feel free to speak
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How creation stores are spoken, and yet we do not know what to say
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Invitation to Abracadabra + Exciting news about SONG in our course!Can you imagine gathering weekly to focus on what matters to you? I sure can. I just spend from 5am to 1pm finalizing the schedule with our journal jams, our heart storming cafe, our song times and our painting portals. This is a live real time class, not a canned AI replica of a woman or a course. What’s real? Women gathering is real.Listen to this song by Copper WimminI am all lit up with excitement for what is possible when we gather ourselves together. Warmly,
Curate Shiloh Sophia
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Hello Beautiful fellow Tea with the Musers!
I am in the studio today getting my material ready for today’s complimentary class - and here are some of my thoughts on
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The MOST important “law” - what do you think it is?
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How we can begin to be in relationship with this law or condition.
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The repair we need and why
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Reclaiming the Matrix and getting what it is for us
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How this connects with manifestation and extraction
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Yearlong Course link: Abracadabra!! $1000 savings through 9/1 at midnight
-
Complimentary class today - instantly recorded so watch this weekend anytime!!
Thanks for tuning in - love to hear your thoughts!!
Warmly, SS
Painting in process for Animystica - my exotic inner wildnerness re-wilding and re-oning with the universe
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This is a poetry reading from my book Tea with the Midnight Muse 💕 it’s for you today. Pull up a chair or take a walk and join me as we pray for the artists everywhere to continue the good work of their hands, hearts and minds. This the multi-faced Sacred Feminine.
Are you a creative, a poet, a sculptor, a dancer, a chef? Take a 👂 listen.
~Shiloh Sophia
This is a recent painting, called Mystical Mother 💕
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Good morning everyone! I’m thinking of you today and wanting to pass on one gorgeous nugget today about how manifestation works. AND set you free from thinking you created all of your harm. I have created a lot in my life, and also worked to uncreate things that no longer serve. Sharing this one teaching with you helps engage change. It’s like unlocking a riddle in our awareness. AND setting yourself free from the shame and blame game. I will also share my observations about how the deck is stacked against us. And the power we have to do something about it!
Here are a few ways to more fully engage with the teachings.
Complimentary class Manifestation Re-Imagined on Friday, August 30 Yearlong Course in the Art of Flow and Attunement Manifestation
Overview - In this episode
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The power you have to respond to the conditions of your life, it might not be what you think :)
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Hear how I believe the decks are stacked against us and so therefore why it can be challenging to create what you envision
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Learn one powerful manifestation tool that you can begin using immediately, hint, it goes both ways
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Become more conscious about the reality sold to us and how it has impacted our inner narrator - such that we are not operating in a clear field of potential
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Questioning, if you really really agreed to the things you are experiencing this lifetime, did your Soul REALLY agree?
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Invitation to a complimentary class on Friday
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A Call to join me for my only yearlong course likely until 2026! There are 1000 scholarships towards tuition, making the price almost 50% savings, and if you need more, more is available when you apply.
Heading for a swim, then a daylong painting class! Cherishing the great parts of my life even as I am also challenged by what I am experiencing here on earth. Still I choose power with. AND choose to teach, I love sharing time with you so very much. I think the place I am the richest woman I can be, is in the good company of all of you.
Love is flowing.
Curate Shiloh Sophia
If you are ready to dive in, and you want to commit to a year with me, then let’s do that, come on over. Almost 50% scholarship savings, and you apply if you need more support than that. Payment plans are available.
This is the part where I offer some of the most juicy nuggets as gifts, as I can’t NOT share. I have been sharing complimentary education since 2004. I won’t stop, can’t stop. I know many would love to join the longer experience, and I will continue to offer all along the way. For now - join us for Friday, August 30
P.S. I also want to offer a shout out to Anita D. for her support in sharing this post and process. I am grateful for you.
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Confronting unconscious beliefs that cause shame
Inquiries into cause and effect
Challenging our projections on the Divine
Everything CAN become a teaching bit that doesn’t mean God or life created it to teach you a lesson.
Invitation to the middle ground of co-creation
Seeking collaborative power
The field condition
Blessings ~ Curate Shiloh Sophia
See all upcoming events at Musea.org
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Dear Ones,The reason we create our world with our words is because we create our world with our thoughts. By world I don’t mean just the world around you, but how you experience the world around you, inner and outer. By word I don’t just mean the words you speak out loud but the words you speak to yourself in your inner world. Intentional Creativity has a solution and we want to show it to you, share it with you and have you share it with others. If you can’t hear your own voice, the voices of others will control your thoughts, and your actions. Let’s move towards liberation.
Shiloh SophiaHere are the options right now for participatingComplimentary 2 Hour Class
https://musea.org/creating-your-world/ABRACADABRA Yearlong Course
https://musea.org/manifest/
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Good Morning Everyone,
I am excited to invite you to join me for my upcoming course, Abracadabra.
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Sharing my heart 💜 and how I work with Intentional Creativity to mend my heart after shock 😳
Sharing how I do it
What Intentional Creativity is
Embodying impossible grief to release
The role of poetry as a spell breaker
How it all began at 23 with a key question
My story of recovery from my 16 year marriage
From numb to aliveness
blessings!
Shiloh Sophia
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Good morning most Precious Beings of Earth and Star
This is for you, for me, for us, for anyone who isn’t sure which way to turn and you are seeking true choice. If you treat this as a meditation you will receive increased results.
When you are done listening ~ what choices are revealed?
Curate Shiloh Sophia
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This is my story. I needed to write it and record it to complete a cycle of my life. If you want to know what’s been going on for me this lifetime, it’s right here. I published this a few weeks ago on my Facebook friends profile and received hundreds of responses - it’s struck accord and other people started to tell their stories. This is creating art in community. ~ Shiloh Sophia
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An invitation to shift your context and increase pleasure. Does the term Peak Performance speak to you? Or maybe not! Here’s another way of thinking about it!
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Do you think everything happens for a reason?
What role does self-expression play in your life and then that of creating community?
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Good morning dear ones! This message certainly didn’t turn out the way that I thought it was going to. I’m sharing about what it feels like to steward big community, why I can’t seem to stop crying today, how excited I am to teach today, why I think change is so hard to make, and how I love ❤️ you no matter what! Shiloh Sophia
If you would like to join us today, it’s not too late. All you need is pen and paper. Add paint if you want to.
With love,
See you in the next circle
Shiloh Sophia
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Sharing big changes with you ❤️🙏
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Tragedies to Remedies
You are You
I am I
We are We
You are not the stories you tell
to yourself about yourself
You are You
I am not the projections about me
that in the past have bound me
I am I
We are not the accumulation of wounds
Inflicted on us by others or ourselves
We are We
You are not your woundings
even with a persistence of tragedies
You are You
I am not required to walk in apology even
with the mistakes I made, healing is here
I am me
We are beings capable of recovery
self-forgiveness just walked into our discovery
We are We
You are You
Stardust, Water, Soil, Sunshine and Self
You get to tell a new story today, ready?
I am I
Gloriously shaped by life’s tapestry
I alchemize the rich colors that are ripe in me
We are We
Beings capable of ecstasy and creativity
We are the storytellers of our intentional destiny!
Little Darlin of your own Destiny
You don’t have to fight or flee,
You don’t have to fawn or freeze
Find you, find Me, find We
You will bring compost into your apothecary
I will remember that choice is my own alchemy
We will weave our tragedies into remedies!
You are You and I choose I you as you
I am I, and I honor my emergent identity
We are We, and what delicious company!
SHILOH SOPHIA
Paint with us now! The class is all ready for you!
Shiloh and Jonathan painting in Apothecary 5.0
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Enjoy a conversation with Shiloh Sophia and Ali Stoddard about the power of painting! https://musea.org/apothecary-2024-invitation/
Open to all!
SS
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The STUDIO (for those who don’t think they have room)Let’s start with what every studio needs. Every studio needs a work table, a place for an altar, a place for supplies, a journal and a teapot at the very least. Usually the Muse also wants a plant. Oh and a hammer and nails. Hand-paint your hammer so everybody knows it is YOURS. My mother Caron was also never without a tape measure. My studio must-have is sandpaper. I also like a painting rug for where I stand. An easel is awesome but a few nails on the walls works just fine and you can have multiple canvases up at once. For all of these solutions, if you use oil or acrylic you will want painter’s drop cloth from the hardware store to protect the innocent surfaces of your home. If you live with others, this will be important for ongoing relationship.
Once the artist moves in for good, things can get a little challenging, because your priorities have literally changed. Maybe even your values, and how you like to inhabit spaces changes. In other words, pristine white couches are now an endangered species. YOU DO have options for having a studio and it is needed if one is to choose a creative life, that is oh so romantic. Sue Hoya Sellars used to say, Being an artist is so romantic. So let’s get to it. I want to tell you that the physical-ness of a studio is rad cuz you work there, but it is more than that. Even when you aren’t in your studio physically – YOU KNOW IT IS THERE and IT WORKS YOU. I hang out in my ‘studio in my mind’ all the time. 1. Guest Room: Clear the guest room that is often empty, and make your guests sleep on the couch. They will understand when they see what is happening in there, if they are lucky enough for you to show them. The bed is fine to leave, add lots of pillows and take naps there. Muses love beds. But the dresser is now a surface for painting to perch and journals to be spread out as if it is an altar. The nightstand is an altar. Sorry if you have a white rug. If you plan to live there a long time you might just choose to let the rug be a painting rug. What have you got to lose? (people who don’t paint hate this idea, but painters are so relieved)
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Dining Room: The dining room, how often do you eat there really, put a drop cloth over the table and voila – it’s a work table. All creatives need work tables if they are serious. Move most of the chairs out to the garage or the street. You need room to MOVE all the way around the table and at times you may find yourself needing to lay right on the table. You might need to put up a curtain if you don’t have doors on it. A shower rod is a quick fix without needing to drill for a rod – honestly you could have this going today if you want!3. Bathroom: The bathroom, especially if you have two, is often so under-used unless there are two people and you both have do go number two at exactly the same moment. Poor lonely bathroom, use the shower stall as a place for a small desk or a stack of paintings. The water is right there and the toilet works just fine for a table. Plug in a teapot instead of hair drier and it is all ready for you.4. Laundry Room: The laundry room is often the last resort because there is too much coming and going. But the tops of the machines make a fine work table. It smells good in there and there is often a window. But clean clothes and paint are magnetized towards one another.
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Bedroom: If you are single, your bedroom can work and that way you are surrounded by your creativity. Do not do this if you are in a committed relationship. Your part-time lover will think it is sexy at first, but then they will want more room for themselves. Be careful here, and don’t compromise your creative space. You can always have sex on the couch or the dining room table.
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Garage: Finally the garage. Now I will be honest about this. Lots of people pick this one and start parking their car outside. Big move. But unless it has access to air, unless you can move smelly things out, unless you can regulate the temperature, unless you can really make it feel good to you – you won’t go in there. You know what I am talking about. If you add a fancy rug you can get paint on, a disco ball and a stereo and a nice big chair it COULD work. But if you try this option and the Muse doesn’t want to go there, then you MUST find another solution.7. Pavilion of Plein Air: If it is warm enough where you are, there is always outside. Sue Hoya Sellars got an Easy-UP and called it a painting pavilion. She added chimes that rang when the wind blew. Begin to think of all of your outside spaces as additional rooms, even if it is just a deck or an entry way. Take over. The Muses have requested it. 8. Imaginal Dream Studio: But the most important studio is the imaginal one, the place you set up in your consciousness for the Muse to play. You can think of this like a chosen department of your inter-consciousness where your Dream Studio is. Build it out, see the windows and the plants and all the space. See the view and the giant chair big enough for two. Set it all up and then hang out there.Sue used to also treat her journal as her studio. She would go to Denny’s get a cuppa coffee and sit all day – she called it her studio. So really you have no excuse.Whatever you do put a sign on the door: The MUSE is in. To anyone who might be passing by, this is a CLEAR SIGN not to disturb. Except the cat or the pup. They always want to be where the action is. Oh, and one more thing, a painting bathrobe. You need a robe that you can grab in the wee morning or the middle of the night and get right to the studio without thinking or talking yourself out of it.
Finally and perhaps most important. Each time you create set up for the next time. Whether that is a jar of water or a blank page with a pen perched. Do not give yourself the CHOICE not to go. Do not want to feel like it, just get in there. The MUSE is always waiting. Tap tap tap…. Hear that? That’s the end of her paintbrush, which is a magic wand…anticipating your arrival.Excerpted from my upcoming book, Rodeo of the Soul, Cosmic Cowgirl Poetry & Painting Prose
Shiloh Sophia
I haven’t had a functional ‘studio’ of my own for over 2.5 years. Those of you who have been at MUSEA know that there is a film studio, which is very different than your personal paintings studio. I know I am spoiled, I have a whole room and places to sit and a fire place. Don’t be jelly, go make your studio today! Here is one of the first peeks at it….this studio was created for painting by the previous stewards. I used to have this studio years ago and I have to say, I am so relieved to have it back.
s
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A poetry reading for you from Tea with the Midnight Muse for you - a prayer 🙏
This painting was from a starry starry night paint and sip inspired by VanGogh of course 💫
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Dear Ones! Today’s message is a call to action!! Plus a video I just took of the kind of teaching paintings I have done the past two years. Come see.
~ Shiloh Sophia
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Hello Everyone,
It’s Shiloh Sophia on a lovely Saturday morning. This new one minute poem came through and dropped itself like a delicous dispensation of honey.I am working on the draft manual for our only new training this year, Animystica. For healersa nd leaders to learn 4 specific healing arts. When I am designing new curriculum it feels like an extreme sport - my heart races, my body is filled with life and there is this curious precious pressure that moves me forward. It is a calling.If you are called to work with me over the next year on a training delivered in real time - this is it. Come see, and then choose if you want to apply and then book an appointment with me one-on-one next week. That’s it! So if you are called to the healing arts, to medicine painting, and to the path of a healer through self-expression and leadership - this is the thing. See you in the next circle,
Shiloh Sophia
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Dear Ones,
I have JUST recorded this. I painted with my eyes closed and hand oustretched while I listened to messages arriving within. A posture of giving and receiving, of opening myself up to listen to the deeper messages that become available through painting. Then I turned on the audio and let the transmission come through without editing. I had my students do the same thing. Paint and listen and establish a strong bond with your between worlds giving and receiving. Brave, and edgy to be sure. Before I did I taught them about discernment and protection and distinctions. We aren’t opening to non-specific of planet beings like a channel - it’s more personl and specific to you and your Soul. We painted for two whole days prior to attempting this level of receiving.I am teaching today for our course, Red Madonna, a 13 moon journey of connection with your Guardian Angel and who you are as a ceremonialist, what we call a Celebratrix. You can still sign up for the next two days.I am also teaching today on ritual painting. All of the access can be found at the button above. Join us to begin receiving your own information through Intentional Creativity as a Path of Practice.
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Dear Ones, Thinking of you with an invitation to join us to paint two paintings over 13 moons - come see! This painting is called Dream of You and is painted, and beaded. Shiloh Sophia
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Hello Lovely Ones ~ Today I share with you:
A reading from my upcoming book Rodeo of the Soul: Quantum Red Thread Cafe
The teachings of the Red Thread we follow - all four of them in a few minutes
The origins of Red Thread Cafe and what’s included - with gratitude to Sue Hoya Sellars on her birthday tomorrow (April 20)
An invitation to join us in our imusea app (as we choose to define how engagement happens in community - not on platforms that are always tracking us)
You can find the app through just a websearch, imusea and you will find the one that is right for your phone. BUT also please know the app is ALSO able to be accessed via desktop
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Quantum Red Thread Cafe
There is a quantum café right herebetween tomorrow and todayYou will find us here waiting for you since foreverThis is the Red Thread Cafe located in every place there is,including in the most important place of all,your connection to your imagination and the MuseWhen you arrive, you can’t miss meWatch for the cowgirl hat with a red rose and the kickass red bootsI will be the one with my heart on my sleeveThis is a place to gather yourself up,pull up a chair and have tea with the many MusesYou will see, you will be in good companyWe are the Cosmic Cowgirls gathering in the bounty of Intentional Creativity ~ did you hear our call? There are ancient stories to be told under the smiling moon!There are present day stories rising up with the laughing sun!There are future stories being woven with the fabric of our hopes!We have our heads in the stars and our feets on the good earthWe are both/and womenWomen who straddle the worlds We ride in the rodeo of the soul
We are women from the ancient future!
Be welcome here! Whatcha working on? Show us your stuff!We have anticipated your arrival for lifetimesWe are so glad you are here! We remember you!
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A beam of love 💗 for you flowing from Grace
Purple Tulip at MUSEA this morning
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Good morning, dear ones! I wanted to create a context for how, even though we are broadcasting across the world, it’s still a very real “place”. I’m inviting you to bring your studio into a context of togetherness with all of us. Here’s how I think about it - with an invitation to connect with your environment.
It’s not too late to join us if you want to jump into True Colors www.musea.org (this link isn’t hot just cut and paste)
I will see you in class
Shiloh Sophia
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Good morning everyone! Yes, an invitation to walk away from the dumpster fire of the projections and rejections you’ve experienced. Let’s get free and more free, shall we?
And nothing against black sheep people or black sheep in general, lol just working the metaphor a bit, likely over-working it lol.
Shiloh Sophia
Paint with me this weekend, 50% off - full money back guarantee - don’t miss this!
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Good morning everyone! It is such an honor to invite you to get a cup of tea, pick up a journal, a paintbrush, take a walk, and listen to this reading and conversation.
I am joined for this Tea with the Muse Saturday morning café at MUSEA by Ali Stoddard. Ali has been studying Intentional Creativity for the past five months and is a Functional Medicine Coach that works with us at Musette. I have been sharing with her about the way we pass on information in our lineage, the spirit of guardianship and how we create our lives. What a better way to share about our lineage than to read from one of our ancestors in the movement, Lenore Thomas Straus. She is the one who trained Sue, who is the one who trained me, and I get the honor of training many of you. In this reading I also discovered some of the ‘romance’ ideas that Sue brought to her work, as well as the animistic nature that Lenore brought to her work.With Great Love in my heart,
Shiloh Sophia
Lenore is the one in the middle, this is when she came to teach us meditation, Sonoma 1975.
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Sharing my story…
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Join me for an honoring of the body in all its wonder. Let us say thank you. Let us welcome beauty by conscious choice.
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Painting in Process for the Intentional Creativity Guardian Training
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Hello Everyone! I’m excited to share with you that women I work with in Sonoma, who are part of our healing arts collective, will be offering in-person speaking salons at Musette, and appearing here on the Tea with the Muse podcast! Tune in! This is part of our work to call in the village healers. Many in our collective are also offering private sessions!
In this podcast, I have a chance to talk with some of the healers and learn about the work they are bringing in!
Our first Speaker Salon for those of you who are locals is happening tonight, March 14th at 5:30 pm, with Functional Medicine Coach Ali Stoddard. Here is the link to register by donation. We pre-recorded this audio just for you!
Blessings to each of you ❤️
Shiloh Sophia
To view all of the upcoming speaking topics visit http://musette.life/
Pictured are the women featured in this podcast Michelle Dench, Ali Stoddard, Vicchi Oleski and me!
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AN INSPIRED HEALING JOURNEY with two women intuitive painting side by side - We begin tomorrow!
A Message from MUSEA'S Co-Founder, Curate Shiloh Sophia
Hello Dear Ones! I am so glad you are here! In our class, INSPIRED we will be guiding you through a step by step healing journey that includes conversation, education, stories, inquiries, meditation, drawing, AND intuitive painting. You can choose to heal your trauma!That said you don't need to be an artist in any way - the painting we are doing is for processing and for the integration of the material. It isn't about making a cool painting, although you might. It is about bringing you deeper into the story you are working to heal through working with image and language, right and left brain, with a big beautiful heart right in the center.For each of the step with the INSPIRED Curriculum, you will be doing a painting step that pairs with the content offered by Lissa and Jeff from the lifetime of experience with healing and the Guidelines of the CDC. You will also be able to hear from my husband, Jonathan McCloud as he shares with you the way we work with creativity to create a pattern interupt to our default thinking. So you will be experiencing, layer by layer by layer, healing occurs and is realized in ways that it hasn't been able to before, and it is evidenced within the conent of the painting itself.
You can enagage while you are creating with flow state, nervous system regulation, healing your stress response and increased insight - and of course, INSPIRATION! This is BECAUSE we are including the somatics of the body AND the intentions of the brain - as well as your eyes, which witness the visible changes in real time as you move through the storyline connected with how you experience your trauma. Obviously we use the term, "trauma-inspired" as a play on trauma-informed. We don't want to be just trauma-informed, we want to be inspired to act, and do something about it.One of the greatest challenges with healing is not being able to bring the mental concepts of healing to the somatic realites that the body experiences. We need a process that brings them together. We often do one and then the other. We go to the therapist and talk and we go to the bodyworker, and work the body and the energy worker to shift the energy - and yet how are they woven together?
You are the one responsible for weaving them together but maybe no one ever mentioned to you that you get to do that. The trauma that we experienc is stored in the mind and the body - so don't we need to access both if we are going to heal both? We think so. As well as a shift in the storyline we are carrying? This requires some deep diving into the way that we are thinking and the way that we are carrying the trauma in our body. Once again, brain and body. Our approach is designed to access mind and body at the same time, with the power of the heart at the center beaming like a sun!Through self-expression we engage at a WHOLE new and deeper level of what is possible because we are embodying the change, therefore our brain believes we have made the change. Our body records the change through our senses and movement is made in ways that talking and processing alone do not offer. With Intentional Creativity Intuitive Painting, you create a visual artifact of the work you have just done. The entire journey puts you on a path of believing yourself, and believing healing is possible. Believing healing is possible is one of the that is both on Jeff and Lissa's list for healing. In Inspired Lissa and I paint side by side in the videos and you get to paint along with us, tune into our conversation and be inspired in your own healing journey. All the the backdrop of music by the amazing Karen Drucker.
Feeling inspired guides us along on our path, encourages us to keep going. And we sometimes need inspiration to keep going. As you well know, healing can be a long and hard journey - and sometimes very mysterious. All for of us have been on a journey to discovery a pathway to healing that we can repeat again and again. We hope to provide you with tools for inspiration for what you are working to heal now and in the future. Really, you will be able to use these tools again and again. We know that some of you might be afraid of the creative process, you think you don't have skill or you know you won't be able to control what happens. Here's a hint, not being able to control what happens in the painting is part of what brings you to such a richly textured edge within yourself - from here, we dive in. Creativity poses no real threat, but we are often afraid of what might happen! A lot of this stems from childhood trauma related to our creativity, vulnerability, there are people who put the crayon down when one person said one negative thing and never picked it up again. Let's pick up the crayon! Let's be brave, dive in and work with the elements to support us. We will be painting inspired by earth, air, fire, water, sunshine, stardust and moonlight. Let's gather together!Curate Shiloh Sophia
Our Inspired Healing Journey combines an intersection of disciplines - here is the path we will follow.
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A call to ecstatic love - spontaneous riff for you - take a loving action today!
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Good morning everyone! Today we are welcome Dr. Jeffrey Rediger to Musea for a livestream on the 4 Pillars present in spontaneous healing. You can always find everything we’re up to at www.Musea.org
Today’s episode introduces a new F word in the stress response lexicon. I recorded this yesterday in preparation for today.
Today’s image is the Morning Sunrise from the hot tub. This is one of the places I pray in the morning and watch the morning arrive.
❤️ shiloh sophia
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Dear One,
Happy Saturday - here is some Rogue Wisdom from my upcoming book - Rodeo of the Soul. Blessings on your day and all you do and who you are.
With heart,
shiloh sophia
Sapienta By Shiloh Sophia 2021 - Available at Musette Atelier and Apothecary
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Come on over to The Cura Council if you want to join us today!
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Sending Blessing Beauties,
I love calling you beauties. Because you are beautiful to me. I have been working on this post for a few hours - and I do it for you, for us, for the Muse, for the Ma!
I am inviting you to join us for The Cura Council Ceremony on February 1 that will have a Celtic Poetic flavor with stories of Brigid. We gather virutally at 10am, featuring Lavender Grace with drum and Kathleen Brigidinia, with story. For those of you in Northern California we have circle at the Ranch at 6pm. February 1 is thought of as the first day of Spring in some places, including Ireland, and it is half way between Solstice and Equinox so a cross-quarter day, or what we might call a Peak Season.You can sign up at The Cura Council to get all announcements. This is my other substack that centers ceremony, futurism, activism, community and the wheel of the year.Today’s episode started with waking me up this morning. I am here three hours later finally ready to share it with you. Yep it can take 3-5 hours to get you a post if I really do it the way I love to. There are so many steps, so much technology, so much time, and yet it is a part of my devotional practice. For the post, I found this old painting of mine from over 15 years through googling Shiloh Sophia, Mother Art. I don’t know what it is called…yet I love the feeling.
blessings
Curate Shiloh Sophi
Sign up for the 8 Ceremonies of the year hereLearn about all upcoming events from MUSEA University here
Support this publication, letting artists and poets and storytellers know their work matters to you…
Churning Butter of Remothering
Today the paper white narcissus
called to us and we answered
We bowed our heads at their glorious entry
into a landscape of black branched trees
against a soft velvet sky
They are sending us a herald to Spring
A garland for St. Brigid's head,
offering the hope we need at the start of February
The start of February in the old country
was the beginning of Spring,
and we needed to see it,
even if most of the buds stayed wrapped tight
in their little fisted nest
We, we walked with the full moon overhead in a blue sky.
We were amazed at the verdant green of the meadow,
the softness of the meadow's hair
looked like a mermaid's mantle after a sea storm
We heard frogs calling to one another,
a call and a response that delighted us
Childlike, we listened for their song
Brigid, will you churn the sweetness
of the butter for us and pour us a good measure of ale?
(Continue listening and or reading along)
Have you noticed the transcript button? You can watch it move on the text as you listen, it’s a really cool newish feature. I am still working with it because it is hard to edit so there are some discrepancies.
Tea with the Muse is here for your delight and encouragment. An invitation to beauty in hard times. Poetry, paintings, possibilities and passionate musings. Sharing of your resources is always received with the utmost of gratitude.
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Hello to you! I am coming by today to share my WHY for a trauma-inspired approach.
Join us for INSPIRED - you will be inspired looking at what we have dreamed up!
Here at MUSEA we are ready to take trauma-informed to the next level. We all have work to do to heal - let’s try a fresh perspective.
Blessings
Shiloh Sophia
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The Tenth Muse and
the Midnight of New Beginnings
The Muse is at the back door of your heart
She opens it without a sound
and enters in with bare feet covered in red dirt
She holds all the colors in her nimble fingers
She strokes you gently
You feel the colors blending
She causes your wild animals to stir
Your body is filled with
the passion of sunset orange
the melancholy of blue sky turning pink
the longing green of soft moss after too much rain
She opens you to magenta with a kiss on your open lips
You can feel it all the way inside the wilderness of you
A pulse, a power, a paint color you can’t even see
A pulse, a power, a paint colorIn the depth of your forest your animals awaken
Your black bear blinks
and nurses her cub with white milk in a pink cave
Your tiger roars from deep within the stone enclosure
and moves out solo onto ochre soil to huntYour swan chooses a mate forever, opalescent feathers flowingBut it’s the snake that surprises you, she always does
She is licking the air
testing to see if you are paying enough attention
The Muse always brings her own weather
Are you paying enough attention?
You have a crush on the Muse and for good reason
Even your wild animals are no match for her colorsAs you accept from her open hand,
the color bone black, you shiver
It’s the black you know you need to use now
to paint your bear!
You are afraid, and rightly so
She wants you to go deeper,
to go darker into that cave
She wants you to drink her milk
To suckle the teat of life
She wants you to renew yourself
She is here to help you
She is here to help you
You don’t really like the word help.
but that is what she is here to do
She is wielding brushes of hog hair,
magic wands to make your worlds awaken
You aren’t sure you want to be that awake
You don’t know if you are ready
The soft brush she uses on your arm,
the hair from some exotic animal long ago
It’s the brush from Paris in the shape of a ram’s horn
It is the horn itself
She is smoothing the hairs as you begin to breath rapidly
What exactly is she inviting you into anyway?The lines of creativity and sensuality blur and blend
Your heart stirs as your thighs turn to liquid
The tiger leaps ahead, her black stripes blinding orange
The swan’s open black beaks to make babies with red nostrils
The snake is the color of midnight with a pink tongue
You smooth the canvas with an open palm
You kiss the fibers and you breathe a prayer
You dip the brush into liquid black with flecks of gold and
You begin
You just begin again and again and again
The Tenth Muse,
The Muse of Painting and Pleasure has visited youYou are covered in black fur and white feathers
You have your own pink tongue to flick
You begin You
The Midnight of New Beginnings
Is upon you
Begin beloved with honoring
What makes you come fully aliveWhere do you come more fully alive?
This is the place to begin the painting of your life
The Muse is at the back door of your heart
She opens it without a sound and enters in
with bare feet covered in red dirt
You aren’t exactly sure what she is inviting you into
But you just say YES, YES and YES!
~
Happy New Year Dear Hearts!
This is an excerpt from the book, Wishbone Tattoo.
Blessings on your new beginnings.
Those of you in Temple, this is your Invocation to the MUSE.
Starting my new year at the Beach, and yes, it is warm enough for bare feet.
Love me some California.
SS
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Hello Community,
Today’s topic, pleasure, had me crying right away, lol. I want so much for us to have access to pleasure in our Path of Practice, and as a way to navigate pain and increase the quality of life. You might think I work too much - but you will hear the truth in how I navigate my day to day in this episode. AND how I want to share it with you. We have a lot of pain ahead of us - so it seems like a really good idea to choose pleasure along with everything else. Over 100 of us are starting the New Year together with a focus on honoring our body and spirit connection through Temple. Videos start January 1 but our first Live and recorded broadcast January 4. Everything is available at your fingertips :)
And if you aren’t joining us for TEMPLE - STILL listen in so that you can CHOOSE pleasure for yourself in the coming months. What have we got to lose? A lot of joy is what we have to lose. ALSO today join us LIVE for our MUSEUM Show - CURA -FUTURA - you don’t want to miss this! It’s complimentary and recorded.I am going to take the rest of this month in quiet time - so I will see you next year dearest ones!Let’s explore,
Shiloh Sophia
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A morning poem for. your enjoyment. Have a beautiful day!
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Today’s message is just a quick hello and invitation to more pleasure!
Thanks for turning in❤️
www.Musea.org
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Dear Ones,
I think a lot about what women have experienced in our lives and the evolution of our rights. I am grateful to be raised by women who were laborers, carpenters, seamstresses, potters…even plumbers.
My mom Caron used to brag that her mother Eden could plumb a whole house and shoe a horse lol. She could also fix most machines, made our clothing and could feed us from her garden. I think about how the brain development of our ancestors and grandparents would be so different than it is today, simply based on the way we use to labor. I love to labor and use my body and I know it is because of what they taught me - to use my hands and my body. I do not know the origins of this photo but I read that they are in men’s overalls - I have a pair like those myself, and that they are Dutch women. Today’s episode is just a teensy story about remembering to truly hold the vision and how Intentional Creativity can help us do just that.
Shiloh Sophia
Who wears the pants: On May 28th, 1923, the US Attorney General declared that it was legal for women to wear trousers anywhere. Women dressed as men for many reasons: practical necessity, fighting in wars, independence, safety from rape and murder while traveling, orientation or identity, etc. Legal restrictions and punishments were necessary because, “by wearing pants, women appropriated male dress, and by association, male privilege, and power.” Punishment ranged from burning at the stake to prison time and using sexist character assassination: for wearing Turkish trousers, Frances Wright (1795-1852) was called “The Great Red Harlot of Infidelity, The W***e of Babylon, The Voluptuous Preacher of Licentiousness, The Priestess of Beelzebub, Miss Epicene Wright,” etc. Dress codes were used as a loophole: female senators were banned from wearing trousers on the senate floor until 1993. (Fischer, Gayle V. ""Pantalets" and "Turkish Trousers": Designing Freedom in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States." Feminist Studies 23.1 (1997): 111. ProQuest. Web. 10 Apr. 2023) LINK
“Good mental health and clear thinking depend upon our ability to store and manipulate thoughts on a sort of “mental sketch pad.” In a new study, Yale researchers describe the molecular basis of this ability and describe how a breakdown of the system contributes to diseases such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.”
LINK
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Hello! Today I am sharing one of our root stories with you and inviting you to StarSong - our annual community gathering! https://musea.org/starsong/
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Event Horizon By Sue Hoya Sellars
Dear One,This is one of my favorite Sue paintings. For those of you who don’t know, Sue was my other Mother, I call her my Earth Mother, she was also my mentor and my painting teacher. She is the one I learned about Intentional Creativity from. To really see what is going on this image you need to look really close - see the trees at the top of the Event Horizon, then the one at the edge on the right is starting to bend. According to sources, the event horizon is the spherical outer boundary of a black hole, loosely considered to be it’s surface. Nasa says that the gravitational influence becomes so great, that not even light is fast enough to escape it. In a black hole, the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light. The theory of general relativity that we are familiar with says that nothing can travel faster than light….at the speed of light….Therefore nothing inside the event horizon can ever cross the boundary and escape beyond it, including light. In other words if we happened to travel there - no message would be able to get back from where we came. But then….who knows? We are learning more and more as we discover the James Web imagery with such granularity. I love comparing the Hubble images, which I grew up with, with the Webb.
Theories say that anything which goes beyond the event horizon is simply added into the black hole. Also since time distorts close to the boundary, it appears to be moving slow. Black holes result from the death of a big ole’ star.
Why am I telling you this today and how is it connected with consciousness? Good question. I can’t say for sure to be honest. I woke up today thinking about this painting of Sue’s and how she as always reconciling the cosmic sciences with spirituality. If she was here to ask a question I might say - Can you map the reality of the event horizon with awakening? What is the correlative.I know she would have an answer. I however do not. It is like this sometimes. I have a feeling in my body, then I see an image. Then I think of you. Then I turn on the recorder. Sometimes it is a clear prescription and a clear map and others, like today will leave me in deep inquiry about the connection between the event horizon and waking up, or as I said in the spontaneous transmission, waking in.
Perhaps in this offering on the altar of the great mystery - an answer - or at least a better question will occur for me, or for you. Perhaps you know - what might the event horizon have to teach us about what it means to wake up in this body and navigate this wild experience of soul? I have heard it said if you can’t find the answer, ask a better question. Working on it. Because I am concerned at the level of consciousness I see, and I know there are more options, and I am committed to discovering the path to awakening with my work that anyone who chooses can take. I am here to wake and waken. It’s an honor. As I say in the transmission - awake for me means you are as awake and aware at any given moment as you can be - according to your soul’s invitation. There isn’t a hierarchy, it is individual and personal according to each person. Can I tell if people aren’t awake yet? People ask me. Well usually yes, but only according the level of my own awakening journey. Mostly you can tell in what people say - and how fixed their beliefs are - how rigid their worldview - how they treat others….I have a whole list but that might be for another day and another event horizon.
Blessings to you and big love on the edge of awakeing,
Shiloh Sophia
Me and my cousin Bridget, that I was raised with like a Sister. Here we are at Wild Water Creek on the new moon.
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Callings come with a thump
They rattle your dreams
Startle you to attention
Callings don’t creep up all quiet and nice
They don’t ask if you are ready
or wait for an invitation to arrive
They aren’t concerned so much
with the dramas or the traumas
that you use as your reason…why not
What is the reason why anyway?
The reason you hesitate or
Will not say yes to the call?
Callings come with a bump
They stir up your mediocrity and
Summon your courageous parts
Callings come through you
Lightning sparks in your
darkened bone-house of being
Suddenly you are turned on
and tuned in and shaking
in your cowgirl boots
Callings can scare you and certainly
will dare you and they do require
your attention and devotion
Callings don’t go away, dear one
Callings come from inside
The nature of callings is to arise
Arise! Arise! Arise!
There is a risk if you say no
It might go dormant for a month or 2
Or 10 years, Don’t miss this, baby!
Callings request a level of presence
In the one being called
They are temper-mental creatures!
So if you are brave enough
and you make an offering on
the altar of Big Change
Or you can also call the
Muse for tea and see if she
Is in the mood to help
I will warn you though
Once it starts to arise
it will begin with a thump
You will feel that throat lump!
Your heart will pump it up!
And you are off into the stars baby!
I will see you there! I work in the
cosmic callings department
Here at the mothership of life
Perhaps you have seen me?
A mystical muse-infused character
Here to activate sacred assignments
I have been waiting for you
I knew you were coming onto the path
How then, shall we begin?
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Shiloh Sophia JOIN us for our annual community gathering centering on callings and community and your earth-star being nature.
This painting is my “work in progress” for ORIGINS Intentional Creativity Guardian Training at MUSEA University.
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Do you ever feel like the life you have doesn’t quite fit who you are? Are there these moments where you question everything you know? This episode is a call to honor the wild one within in the “safe” and sacred container of creativity. Get a cuppa tea and join me in an inquiry 🌿
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Good morning to you 🌈☀️💧
The spontaneous spoken word of this episode is inspired by a quote from my mother, Caron McCloud! It’s an imagining of my teen self speaking to her….
“The point is you have to design a point for yourself”~ Caron McCloud
image from Flow Nouveau painting on Equinox
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Dear Ones ~ What is your relationship with time, rest and renewal? I am sharing my practice that I have worked with since my early twenties about chosen and bracketed rest. As well as I work with painting in relationship to this choice. I also share the qualities of FLOW that can be chosen. And how I sometimes move between the computer and the easel - there is goodness to share with you here.If you want to join us this weekend to “REST” into creativity and experience flow with Jonathan and myself - either in Sonoma or virtual. This is how we are spending our Equinox - with our community - Flow Nouveau - we call it Medicine Painting.The above photo is from last week, at Wild Water Creek with my dear friend Amber.
with heart,
Shiloh Sophia
Here is the painting I am working on - and the kind of painting we engage in to induce chosen flow….
Hello everyone! Today I am sharing about my relationship is the time and rest!
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Dear Ones,
Every day of our relationship since 2013 Jonathan and I have Cafe’. Cafe conversation is what happens at Tea with the Muse and I learned it from Sue Hoya Sellars. In this case, we are are both the Muse sparking the inquiry. The idea is to pause in your life and see where the conversation takes you…to allow the Muses to have their way with you. To see what arises. We were having an early morning cafe (in Napa yesterday) and I was talking about how much cause I have or don’t have in my life at this time and how that feels. Lots of things seem able to be influenced (mood, exercise, creative time) and lots of things don’t seem to be able to be influenced (taxes, inflation, world news). And he started responding with some interesting ideas so I said - Can we film an episode? Sometimes he agrees, and sometimes he does not lol. Cafe is not structured, we talk about everything under the sun, and the moon!Blue Moon Blessings to you! We share this with you from our heart and cafe to yours. Shiloh and JonathanA few links for you
Color of Woman Applications Due nowOur upcoming complimentary seminar Ultra MetacognitionOur class happening virtually and in Sonoma that he mentioned: Flow Nouveau LEGEND Clan Cura - October 1 Blue Moon Meditation - lives on The Cura Council Podcast and you can also see the wheel of the year there that we use.
He took this photo and we just loved how to sun arc came through….
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Dear Ones - Today I am sharing about my health recovery. I am not sharing the photos to be crass like “look at me now” - but rather to just show the changes that happened due to these two simple things. I am so happy I am feeling SO MUCH BETTER!
Much love, Shiloh SophiaIf you would like to join us for a celebration of food and wellness - come see Blue Lotus here.
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Dear Ones,
I know that I am one of the people in your life that ‘rains on your parade’ through asking you to keep questioning the norms. I hope I provide sufficient encouragement and creativity to balance out the times I ask you to pay attention and labour towards justice. I am not apologizing, I am acknowledging. As a community and those of you who are listeners here, I want us to be as awake as we can be about the power structures present in the places we live, especially ones that seem invisible, or that would be unpopular to bring up. Like - can’t we just have a 4th of July, Thanksgiving or Christmas without Shiloh busting our myth? Well. Sometimes. But mostly I am going to bring it up.
As part of our work and financing revolutionary work, we are having a gathering focused on justice and creativity a week from now - through the Intentional Creativity Foundation in collaboration with Sacred Echoes of the Well - Musea’s Black, Indigenous and Women of Color sisterhood. I hope you will join us. Thinking of you. Of us. Of my hope for justice that just keeps moving through me.
Shiloh Sophia
RESOURCES Smithsonian article that is updated with Native stories regarding the 4th of July https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2020/07/01/do-american-indians-celebrate-4th-july/
“Jefferson's reference to Indigenous people as "merciless Indian Savages" was in his 27th grievance against King George, in which he accused the king of encouraging "domestic insurrection" by Native Americans against white colonists.” Russel Contreras
Article on the line in the Declaration about Native Americans - have you even read it and did you know this was in here? https://www.axios.com/2023/07/04/merciless-reminder-indigenous-history-july-4
“Black people in the early years of the United States had a complicated relationship to the Fourth of July holiday, Spires says, confronting a “national double-speak” in which white Americans celebrated their freedom of political expression while supporting the enslavement of Black people.” Derrick Spires
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/07/july-fourth-and-early-black-americans-its-complicated
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Dear Ones,
This is my wedding to Jonathan in 2014 in the Cathedral of my Ancestors. A most glorious day and I am so grateful that three of my four parents were with us!
Having them leave the physical form on the planet and enter the realm of the ancestors, has been such a journey of grief, and acceptance. And also immense gratitude, because they all taught me so much. They shaped me in immeasurable ways and were not abusive to me. I feel very blessed to have had a great relationship with my parents. At times, things were challenging with my father because of his lifetime of addiction. But in the larger ways that matter, love flowed between us.
Our community right now is in our annual event where we have a rites of passage in paint called Legend. One of the things that happens in legend is big shifts become available. I’m ready (I hope!)!
I’m sharing my story with you so that I can be heard on this change and also potentially provoking you to consider your own relationship with your family, or what needs to be complete and composted so you can open towards what’s coming!
thinking of you with love❤️ SS ❤️
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An exploration of the gift of how I came to teach painting. The struggle, and Blessings.
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What does SOUL mean to you?
No one taught us so what does it REALLY mean?
Let’s dive in…..
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How is it possible I could be speaking to you? This sensual emotional center is something I want to share with you
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An invitation to explore legacy and lineage and our bodies of work, and how we choose to shape them.
Photo ~ the first graduating class of Color of Woman Teacher certification in 2010 ~ this is the place where I first shared the deepest Teachings that had been passed me in image and word.
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Tune in to hear behind the scenes reasons for why I do what I do…. And my invitation for you to join me.
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In this podcast I talk about things like…
-
the first time I encountered consciousness
-
awareness as a conscious choice and not a default setting
-
how we don’t always use ‘sub-consciousness’ in our community and what we say instead to link to imagination
-
unconscious behaviour according to my two moms ( racism, sexism, capitalism)
-
my mother’s only two rules and how she let me change my name
-
a movie that was life-changing for me (Warrior Marks) and how it informed my work in Intentional Creativity
-
a very sad wedding I attended and how it connects with suffering
-
an invitation to see self-expression as a way to work with coming into being
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What choice do you really have in life? Where are you not being at choice in your life?How does Self-Expression translate into a choice?Come listen and have some tea with the MUSE today!
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How does the Soul reveal itself through you?I rise in the dark. It is so early in the morning it is still nighttime. The dark of the moon and the mist reveal no brightness. Yet my Soul stirs me to take up the pen. Who is doing the talking here? I wonder. I want to write a poem but something else is being requested. I submit and write the first sentence…
“Every single one of us comes into this life as we are.”
From there the pen flows without stopping, as energy moves into form, organized in black words on a white page. I co-create with the life force flowing through me. I want poetry because of the liminality it brings, but instead I get the hard questions, the provocation that challenges beliefs, and the call to more awakeness than we had before. Here are this morning’s pages, perhaps they may be of service to you in your own discovery process, and always in service to the Great Work being lived out in each of us, whether we are conscious of it or not.
~
Every single one of us comes into this life as we are.
This is what we call our Soul, our innate ‘us-ness’ seems to ride in with our incarnation. We come in with our own flavor and sass and sometimes a bad attitude and sometimes an innate call to do the work of saving ourselves and others.
All of us are carrying innate qualities, like imagination and identity –and the soul in which our being has being-ness. A conversation with our Soul is something we all need to have… But how do you do that?
How does each one of us navigate arriving here and not really coming in with a map of where to go and how to get there? Well. That is THE Question of Questions. How do we navigate this thing called life? How does it work and who lives in here?
How I experience my relationship with my Soul is how I live my life – yet it is through a veil – sometimes clear and at other times hidden. I always say that being awake means: As awake as our soul is willing to be at any given time. To me it seems as if soul moderates what we can handle, and safely integrate. Kindness seems to be the mode of the soul towards us, and…creativity.
Self-expression is one of the ways we can get to know our soul-stuff. When we create, who we are gets revealed in the visible world and we can take a look. Soul cannot be understood in abstraction and the mental constructs only – our body is the prism through which the currency of soul is reflects true colors.
The idea that the Soul is carrying information specific to it, seems possible. But can we say for sure? Do we need to assert surety? Can mystery be included when we speak of the Soul? For me, mystery must be included whenever we are speaking of soul, and the work of the soul. When we are born, we inherit a cultural familial framework and dna package that we did not choose. Or did we? What is your belief about it? Whatever it really is, my belief is that no one here really knows.
Do you think we have access to knowing if we have pre-destined choice?
I always feel unease when someone asserts that they know we agreed to whatever it is our soul is experiencing. Maybe for some of us, but for all of us? Is it true universally that we chose our challenges this life? This belief feels rigged and life doesn’t feel rigged to me. There seems to be much more organic influence happening – less control – not more.
I know I want to engage with coherence with what is possible for me. How can I learn the power of my own soul without needing to assert I know what is going on here....
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Hello everyone! A little something uncommon today as Jonathan asked me some questions about my approach to business (we are starting a 6 week course today.) In this convo I share a story about sleeping under the drawing table while my grandmother and mother worked all night. Whether you are in business or not, this should be fun to listen to and tune into cafe with us. This is our daily ritual and it truly is the foundational fabric of our entire life….
Have a great day and a good morning, with heart,
Shiloh Sophia
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For all upcoming events go here: Study Intentional Creativity and the Power of Imagination here
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Dear Ones,
Today I am sharing my poetry writing practice and the results of it from today - as well as a personal sharing. AND I am inviting you to notice what framework you are looking at your life through - to get it conscious for yourself.
Today’s poetry prompt was an open gate, a metaphor that allowed this poem and to come through. It could just as well be an open window overlooking Florence like this photo that Jonathan took in 2019! This was our last trip before ‘shelter-in-place’ was a thing. We haven’t really travelled since then and things have been on the rough side for us for quite a bit. So I am noticing that gates, windows and doors are showing up a LOT.
I am still not sure what the open gate really meant for me today but it is in the exploring of it that that poems sometimes spring out. I am still on the despair and desire theme too. Maybe you will write a poem in response or your own? That is another practice, reading any poem and then using something in it, even one word or a feeling as a jumping in place.
Sending love for your day,
Shiloh Sophia ~~~
Open Gate
Between the apple tree
and the dappled blue spruce
There is an open gate
If you should find yourself there
on the edge of things
pause with respect
before just walking on through
On the other side of the gate
you can never be sure
what you may find waiting
Usually it is something
you have wanted to avoid
and you just can’t anymore
and despair is Just. Right. There.
OR
You find something
you have desired
all your life and
suddenly there it is…
Only now you aren’t sure
you want what you thought
you wanted before
That is because who you were
before
just isn’t who you are now
Before.
Before is the place where
you didn’t know just what love
would ask of you
when you agreed to share yourself
in exchange for a chance
at a heart filled with impossible light
Light that cannot be contained
That desire you have been nursing
was before you needed spectacles
to read the evening poetry by firelight
Sometimes if you look into the flames
with a soft and sleepy gaze
You can even see the open gate
and your despair or desire
winking and twinkling through
This opening is not a sentence
or a summons
The open gate is finally coming
to the awareness of choice
When you gain awareness of choice
you garner favor with the poets
We all want that!
Oh… all the times you thought
you didn’t have choice
when you actually did
can sometimes be
a stunning reckoning
but then you hear your lover’s voice
calling from the other room
and you realize you would risk it all again
and again and again
Their heart is the opening
and there is no gate needed
at all between you
You just must remember
who they are
while not forgetting
who you have become
and how they have become
more of who they are
No one said there would be
a clear path through the
wild garden of berries and
bramble bruises and skinned knees
on the way to the open gate
The open gate is awareness
of choice
and the acceptance of love
and the writing of this poem for you
Right here between the guardians
of the apple tree and the dappled spruce
This love is
Shiloh Sophia
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Sacred Encounter - Painting by Shiloh Sophia
Dearest Hearts,
Oh so many things. Drinking tea and watching the sunrise and thinking of you. If you have read Jonathan’s substack, The Intentional Table then you will know what ecstasy and despair I am speaking of. Breathing a sigh of relief, and drinking tea that he has made for me. I am thinking of you and knowing all that you are also going through.
“Then a woman said, speak to us of joy and sorrow. And he answered:Your joy is your sorrow, unmasked, and the self same well from which your laughter arises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” Khalil Gibran, The Prophet I remember reading this when I was a young woman and asking myself the question,
Is this true? In order to have the amount of ecstasy that I'm seeking…Ecstasy that the poets speak about and the painters paint about, and the dancers twirl about, and the gardeners plant seeds about, Must I also have the sorrow? Is it true? Is it true that the counterpoint to the critic, the voice of meanness inside has a sister called the Muse? Is it true?Well, now, at this time in my journey, as I reference that quote by Kahlil GibranI will definitely affirm that my ecstasy and my despair are riding to and from the roads of my life on the same horse. It continues to perplex me as this horse of ecstasy and despair, trots in and out of every single day, the depth, the impact, the emotional and somatic swinging from laughter to tears.
Sometimes in the same second, an orgasm could turn from laughter…to absolute tears. Bad news could make you shudderand then you feel a sense of absolute soul, soul filling, gratitude….
The body could be in pain so deep, you wonder when it will ever leave. Will you ever feel the same again? And then you feel a sense of relief for whatever reason at the pet of your dog or your cat, or a sunrise through a cloudy day…And there it is again, a sense of freedom. Moments later, the pain returns. What an experience as a human being to navigate this juxtaposition between ecstasy and despair. This horse of ecstasy and despair comes be-jeweled into my life and shimmers as she waits for me to hop on. She does not promise safety, but she does promise she will carry me through the ecstasy and despair. My only consent to riding this horse is that I recognize both for what they are, to be clear on the distinctions and to begin to notice when one flips to the other.And… watch that switch time! Pay attention to when energy becomes matter and matter becomes energy. Dance on the equal sign as it changes. And if you can learn to be soft enough to notice the change, it won't take you so much by surprise. You won't feel as crazy. You'll know that joy and sorrow are sisters and the ecstasy and despair, are sisters. You will know, this is just part of the human experience.You won't need to resist it so much. You may even learn to welcome it.
You may memorize the reality that this despair can turn into ecstasy in time. You will not be able to control the timeline and that pisses us off. But if we can pay attention to the alchemical moment of change, then the horse of ecstasy will let us ride and ride and ride. And when despair comes, her shimmering jewels will remind us… as they dim down into darkness, only a glimmer of light remains, but still a glimmer because you memorized the brightness that was there before -and to not demonize one or the other or exalt one as better or worse. To see both simultaneously as the human experience, then something happens…..I wish I could say it's understanding, or even better… peace, but it's more like just being here and not resisting being here. When ectasy comes, throw open your arms. When despair calms, throw open your arms. And when that horse rides…with youholding on for dear life, remember, you carry both. Life isn't doing this to you. Life is happening through you. No, you cannot control it. But yes, you can enjoy the ride.This is our choice as humans. Will we choose it? I will.
Shiloh Sophia
On another note…applications are closing today if you want to hop on a horse named desire for sovereignty with me - GLOW here
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Hello Dear Ones,
Yes it’s true, the 500 year Circle, The Cura Council is open today. What is happening on that thread is different than this one. Time will tell if I keep both - for now Tea with the Muse will remain poetry and stories and prayers. The Tea with the Muse podcast today tells the story of WHY I am doing this - and how it all started with hearing the cries of the world and saying yes to my sacred assignment (after I yelled at God)The Cura Council is focused on the longevity and committment to village. And I had to do it today - in honor of my Mama Cloud and it being the anniversary of her walking into her future. To be honest I felt like I didn’t really have a choice - I have been putting it off for a very long time. So here I am, showing up. The reluctant priestess finally gives in. I am surrendering in trust.
Hugs all around,
Shiloh Sophia
Below is a video of Mama Cloud….at a Color of Woman Gathering
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Has anyone ever told you 'you don't need to save the world' ~ this is for you...I am offering another view and an invitation to inquiry....
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You made it!
You are here on earth,
with earth, and with us
“Here" is a place we spend our lives
discovering and coming into
When you pause
to comment on the clouds to your lover
amazed at the miracle of sky blue and
white poofs that make you smile
When you point at the moon
to your child, and make the shape
of moon with your lips...
drawing out the mooooooon, like this
When you take a picture of yourself
in a beautiful garden to send to your friend
When you sip this cup of coffee
with something close to reverence
When you ask the Divine for a sign,
even a small one,
just a teensy weensy one
(because you don’t want to be rude)
and an entire person reveals
they are the sign sent!
Then you are practicing
Being Here
Maybe you stopped believing in
the divine order of things
because you mistook the hard stuff
as some kind of lack of affirmation
I don’t know who made up the story
that it shouldn’t be hard here
but clearly that isn’t the case
Just being in a body
requires so much care and
it often hurts to be in here
and it also feels so good too
We were given pain and pleasure
Still…you are here
This is where here is
It is a wild garden of a place,
isn't it? Who knew?
You aren’t a stranger here
even though it is sometimes strange
to be here, like this
with all our curiosity and confusion
and unmet needs for big love
and our desire to be seen
as we learn to see ourselves
Being here is precious and precarious
but here we are
and I just wanted to
mention that being here with you
is way better
than being here without you
You make here
a wonderful place to be
Shiloh Sophia
Painting in process - A Ribbon of Hope Running through Her Mind
"The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally, somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move."
~ Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times❤️For those I love and that love me
Shiloh Sophia
P.S. a few complimentary calls coming right up if you want to be on a live line with me and us…https://musea.org/university/
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Today I am holding the first circle of a 500 Year Circle. I’ve been in council circles since I was five years old. We have already been running circles from the past twenty years through Cosmic Cowgirls. This is a story of continuity that weaves the past, and the future and the present. And choice. Always choice.
Join us today here: we have a complimentary call today gathering called Re-mothering and we also have our yearlong Sisterhood of the Red Madonna for those who want to paint with me and us starting. With love, let’s begin on Spring Equinox on the eve of New Moon - sounds like a good time for new beginnings, don’t you think? Now it is time for cafe with my LOVE and my kitties who are waiting for me to put this futuristic device called a computer down.Blessings on your day, dear hearts!
Shiloh Sophia Thank you Mamas. Thank you Carmen. Thank you community and friends.
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When I really look at the way that our lives are designed around their lives, it helps me see the patterns that I need to adopt myself. Play more, nap more - come meet Frida (seal point) and Diego (lilac point) in my morning musings
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Dear Ones! I hope you enjoy cafe this morning with Jonthan - let’s ride the equal 🟰 sign together! To explain my point - of noticing how energy works - I’m choosing these three paintings as a framework for looking! The close up is part of the customization. I completed these yesterday and they are going to their new homes soon where they can resonate energy as it is perceived by their new collectors.
Join Jonathan and I every month for a live conversation Learn More as part of our Intentional Creativity Museum (501c3) We are a hundred percent volunteers - your membership fee goes entirely to be a part of funding the work of centering on the work of women and our stories and our livelihood. Choose the Society level to hang out with us - the next call is coming up tomorrow night - join us for happy hour.
Have a gorgeous day!Shiloh Sophia
“Somewhere between action and reaction there is an interaction, and that’s where all the magic and fun lies” Tyson Yunkaporta
Correction Footnote - Aboriginal Rock Art - in the recording we talk briefly about an amazing book, Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta - which does not speak on rock art -but does talk abou the limitation oflanguag e- I wanted to set the record on the mistaken comment. Instead of editing it out - a husband and wife may differ in our awareness. I am the cave art geek!
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Dear Ones,
Today on International Women’s Day I am writing with an inquiry about your relationship to the Divine Feminine…is She included in your life? Your tradition, your practice, your faith walk? There is no tradition on the earth in which She isn’t present, even if She has been hidden in the places you have been practicing, look deeper, She is there. Always here. The Divine Feminine isn’t returning to us, we are returning to Her. She has always been there/here.Here are Musea one of the ways we are WITH Her in our lives is through making “Her” in our own images, the places within us that ache for re-mothering, and the images we carry in our collective history. I have been painting Her since my early twenties as a form of devotion, and a rites of passage. Today, pause with me to look for Her in your own life. Is She nature? Earth? Mother Life? Divine Mother? Sometimes, poetically speaking, I feel the Father must be very lonely for Her - but then I know it isn’t the “father” or the masculine that removed Her, it is humans. Yep, us again, only we blamed in on them. Both of them, Mother and Father, taking the rap for our need for power-over structures to keep things in place that benefit the few. What a great tactic for oppressive structures - remove the mother from the children - and then watch who we have become. What a tangled story we must each unravel for ourselves - and hopefully - at times together in sanctuary and sisterhood. Shiloh Sophia
Curious? Explore Sanctuary Red Madonna Sisterhood 2023 here - we have been leading this community if women seekers and teachers since 2011. You can read my entire writing on this topic on this page link.
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Hello Everyone - May this podcast about Medicine Painting be illuminating and inviting.
We start today if you want to join us to experience healing and intuitive awakening through Intentional Creativity https://musea.org/apothecary-2023/
Blessings on your day
Shiloh Sophia
Cosmic Hand - this is my hand painted by Sue Hoya Sellars in 2000
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This is just a little check in from me to you… a word of encouragement
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Cosmic Cowgirls Creed
We are
Women Between Worlds
transforming Lives into Legends
and these are the 13 stands
of our community
We are
Inspired Revolutionaries
We do our own work,
choosing to do whatever it takes
to be truly who we are now
and who we are becoming
We are
Cosmic Connectors
We have been called to gather
in red thread circles,
trusting that our paths have led us
to one another and this circle
We are
Mysterious Muses
We are feisty seekers,
living from a space of muse-led
inquiry where we gather insights
and take inspired action
We are
Intentional Creatives
We choose to consciously create
through unbridled self-expression,
moving ideas and energy into form
We are
Everyday Alchemists
We embody our capacity
to be at cause for transformation,
collaborating with quantum potential
through art, poetry, dance and ritual
We are
Dangerous Thinkers
We create our own innovative culture,
challenging systems and paradigms
We are both pattern-breakers and
pattern-makers who stand for
freedom for all
We are
Generous Visionaries
We transform our stories into
teachings, seeking to uplift the.
mythology of our kin,
our families, communities, beloveds,
and Earth
We are
Courageous Rebels
We dance between worlds,
weaving the irreverent and the sacred,
taking our own mighty stands
and respecting the stands of others
We are
Blazing Peacemakers
We believe in justice, safety, equality, equity
and care for all living beings
We encourage a global inter-generational circle
that is spiritually and culturally diverse
We are
Unique Individuals
We hold true that each person
has their own information
and a sacred responsibility to their
own piece of the red thread
We are
Legendary Weavers
We are badass mystics, edge-walkers
and mavericks living in the mystery,
who choose to author our own futures
we claim a chosen lineage
We are
Radical Sovereigns
A Cosmic Cowgirl chooses individual insights
and her own creed to live by
We are a community that does not require complete
agreement in order to stand, dance and create together
We are
Wild-Hearted Women
We are born to love!
We choose to be fully self-expressed beings
in this rodeo of the soul!
With our bare feet on the red earth,
our heads in the stars and
our hearts on our sleeves!
And we all said, YAHOOOO!
Dear Ones, Today, February 22nd at 12pm PT, we honor the works of our Legend Students during our LIVING LEGEND GROUP EXHIBIT presented by Musea Intentional Creativity Museum in connection with the Intentional Creativity Foundation 501(c)3.
Register for your Complimentary Ticket Here.
Join us at 10am HT | 12pm PT | 3pm ET | 9pm CEST | Next Day 7am AEDT | 9am NZDT
We will unveil 14 years of the Cosmic Cowgirls' LEGEND course and the artwork of over 100 women showcased, including an amazing display of over 100 legendary images!
The Cosmic Cowgirls have been serving up Legendary Lives since 2008 with thousands of women taking the course around the world. This is an opportunity to witness the archetypes of women who accessed their true voice and story through a framework of living their most epic Legendary life.
These paintings will have a huge impact, expanding your mind, heart and ability to consider what is possible for your own life, should you choose to claim a new story that you create on your own terms...
Admission is complimentary and we look forward to gathering in community for a truly Legendary event!
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The White Birds of the Bone-House
I want to light a spark
in the darkened
bone-house of being
I want to look around
with golden eyes
that see in the dark
To see what is here
that I haven't seen
inside the cave of me
there is story
waiting to take wing
I hear that there is a cage in us
with a thousand
white star-birds flapping
against their constraints
waiting for us to open the door
My ancestors keep
pointing, their long fingers
extending
past the gossamer garments
they wear now
"look here, now here
CHILD! There it is
Can't you see it - ?"
But....But...I complain
Sometimes I don't want
to be spoken to
in grey-misted mystery
Sometimes cage and bird talk
don't make me feel good
I want plain speak that shows
a clear path and guidelines
of how to stay on track
I want you to be with me
I want to feel you near
I want some tea time
with you near enough
for me to smell you
I want to complain
and have you listen
as If I was laying on your
softened lap with heaps
of embroidered pillows
under my sleepy head
Why didn't you tell us -
You can choose
consciousness
and open the greening portal
to the inside world
where the red poppies grow wild
I don't remember you tellng me:
You can design your identity,
just open the treasure box
with the broken lock
Why didn't you teach us
to summon the self
and change our identity
by showing up for the
festival of colored lights
and that broken down nights
will only last so long?
Did you tell me
and I missed it?
Must we discover
everyting ourselves?
Inside of here...
if we can ever figure out
where 'here' is:
There are
many women dancing
and soft pink beds to rest upon
for as long as we need
But the path is washed away
from that last hard rain
You know,
the one that washed away
the two rocking chairs
I didn't sign up for a race
I don't know what this is
but I don't remember
being invited to a competition
to get ahead, be more, do more
There has to be another way
There has to be
something more here
We must be more
than we appear?
You mean,
the instruction manual
is encoded within me
and to read it
I have to learn a new language
made of soil and fur and sun?
You mean the path only reveals
as each foot falls into wet earth?
But wait...you told me all you could
and you love me even if I am
complaining with the tears soaking
your between-world fabrics
I lay with you so long
even the stitches from your
invisible garment imprint
my face
when I wake
When I awake
What I see
amazes me
So today I wrote this
to tell you about it
How each person, opens
the portal through
releasing their
own trapped birds...
sometimes they get caught
in your throat on the way out
sometimes they don't
Look up!
The white birds of
the darkened
the bone-house
are setting themselves free...
with or without me I give thanks
I give thanks
I give thanks
Now to learn how to live
consistent with what is known
while being aware that most of it
will remain unknown
not because it is withheld
but beacuse
we weren't ready yet
Let us ready ourselves!
Let us ready ourselves!
Let us ready ourselves...
the time for expanding our
capacity to love is here
if you write poetry with a firey pen
if you pray with paint-stained hands
the birds will begin to fly
Pray for me! Pray for me!
I too, I will
I will pray for you!
Shiloh Sophia
(painting layer from Tempo painted yesterday - with graphics added)
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Listen now | Inquiries into loving more + why anti-racism work might not be landing for white people + story about my mother's inter-racial marriage when I was 8 and more to ponder with your cuppa tea....
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Dear Ones! Today I have a potent invitation for you. An invitation to claim your time back from the 7 days a week, 8 housr day, M-F, blah blah time paradigm. Now I know most of us have to work. That said. There is a way for you really be sovereign in how you spend your time and it requires planning. I just spent 3 hours working on my calendar for the next six months, it is a ritual in claiming space for you. Even doing the planning lets your whole self know you are choosing to claim your time.In 2022 I worked 7 days a week most weeks. I was trying to get ahead from getting so behind during COVID. Well. It didn't work. I kept getting more behinder. So I am trying something different - I am reclaiming my time. I hope it works. lol. Once you start working that much it can be hard to slow down.Ten days in Mexico and a little bitta tan and saltwater and time with real people was a perfect inspiration. I mostly just don't want to live my life like I was living it. I LOVE my work and this community - but it isn't working really to sacrifice my time. I want more time without computers and more time with my local village. So I am sharing this with you and an inviation to join me in claiming your time.My color-coded 2023 for the rest of the year calendar includes:One and a half hours of creative time per day for the Tea with the Muse - for me this is drawing, writing and designing time.Cafe and Happy Hour as a bookend to single every day. Cafe is usually between 7-9. Happy hour is usually between 5-7. With My Love.Days off - one or two per week - that means no appointments at all, unstructured time. One Week per month with no virtual appointments at all 2 Weeklong vacations from work per year booked - oh yes! Weekly financial review and planning - important! Studio Days for specific arts like painting and writing #musedays Friendship windows for luncheons and slumber parties Swim times + Lunch times five days a week Nature time at Wild Water Creek Half hour breaks betwen calls when possible No more than 3 zooms in a day on zoom days and only two zoom days a week if possible. Sometimes three if I have private clients. 8 Feast Days - Solstices and Equinoxes and cross quarter peak days New Moons and Full Moons* Two community calls per month to connectWhile that sounds really structured, and it is - in this there is freedom in knowing I have space. I have been living by what my calendar says for about ten years - and while I would - like almost everyone - prefer nothing on my calendar - my life just isn't like that right now. So to create freedom and flow I need structure.Perhaps the biggest change which will take about 6 months to put into place (and that impacts all of you). I will be having two primary calls per month with our virtual community. One will be Imprensiva - Society Membership with Jonathand and myself - we are focusing on the Quantum Cascade - and one will be 'Shiloh time' - still picking the name for this circle - and I am planning on doing it for 50 years - to create the pattern in the field of space and time. The 'Shiloh time' (as Virginia calls it) will take the place of me needing to be on calls in every program - it just isn't working and I am too spread out. I know our community will honor this change as it begins to unfold. We have been trying for years and doing better - but there comes a time when we just have to say - okay - something new.I am thinking of you all today. Wishing you all health and wellness and spaciousness. I have so much gratitude for each of you in my life and in our life. May every Musea Studio be humming with the joy that is Intentional Creativity.If you feel called to share - your response to what I am sharing or an action you took for you - please do. I know those who love me will be happy to hear me stop saying how I am working 7 days a week lol.Even the idea of 'spending time' needs a change. I don't want to spend my time at all. I want to experience time in my life, not spend time. My time isn't really for sale. Not really. I choose what I do with it. The sooner I can really live this reality - the sooner time will be on my side.Time is on my side. I don't know that there is any 'side' to take it from because this is not a competition with two sides. That said for today I claim time is on my side and that I have all the time I need.Today I will experience the last day where I have back to back appointments from start to finish. I got up a 4 so I could map out my life. Today there is little time for lunch or swimming. Looking at my schedule today was my inspiration - no more. So thank you busy day for being my teacher and my catalyst and my invitation to everyone else to join me.With joy and the love that flows between us and a wink from the MuseXOShiloh SophiaTwo Cups of Coffee in Careyes, Mexico
IF you aren’t in the imusea app and you want to join us you can: search imusea in your app store and you will find us and it is freeeeeeeee…
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Hi Ya’ll ~ today I decided to turn my letter from the red thread café into a podcast. Discover the super cool things happening at Musea right this minute!
SS ❤️⭕️❤️🍫
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A Vigil to Honor My Father
The Greening Side of Things
When I think of you
it is always the deepest color of green
Not the green that the sun kisses
to make it glow with light
The green on the underside of the leaf
where the spider dwells
The dark under the log
where the salamander sleeps
The green on the inside of a tree
where only the elvin ones can see
Once, once I told you
you went wrong
when you should have gone right
You are a poet like my mother
not an outlaw for a Pa
You were a mystic gone wrong
and finally you took the wrong turn
for the l last time
What were you feeling
in those last moments?I hope it was a burst of joy
the one you always left this world to seek
I hope you saw the colored lights
the ancients send out as beacons to the lost
But then perhaps you never lost your way
instead honored your broken
and beautiful greening way.
I think of you often,
with neither anger or regret
and most days
I just wish I could have shown you
that I see the magic too
You weren’t the one who showed me
but I always knew you saw it tooOne day you came to my house
for breakfast unannounced I had prepared a quiche and as you
sat to eat in silence – you said
This is what I really really needed
and I just didn’t know it.
Thank you.I hoped you would see in me
all you hoped I would become
but you never said
You just told me you prayed for me
and I also – pray for you.
I would like to think on you as ancestor
but when I reach in the spaces between
it is only the greening I see
not the identity that was you
You have returned to the soil
and I will honor you here in green dirt
with the passing of each season.
Rest well father of the greening
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A message from me at the sea…
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What’s blooming? What’s being turned in? What colors are you noticing that are different from a few months ago…
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Dear Ones
I wrote this today. I have so many things I would love to share with you. Big big stories as big as redwoods and small stories as tiny as a baby ant!But for today, just this poem, and an invitation to join me for a complimentary class on the Wheel of the Year on Sunday with my friends Lavender Grace and trish o’malley,
The painting below became a kind of fortelling of something I will share with you on Sunday about Wild Water Creek on Sonoma Mountain. We were adopted by a creek and I want to tell you why….Love,
Shiloh Sophia The painting is called The Birth of Sonoma Mountain.p.s. You can now make a contribution if you want to Tea with the Muse. People were pledging even though I didn’t have the button turned on. It’s all still free, I am not going to make exclusive content for the time being. But thank you, those of you who offered even when I didn’t ask.
The Wheelhouse of the Mother
Do you see those planets dangling
from the hem of her garment?
Oh! When she dances, how glorious!The stars sprinkle through her skin
Shimmering in the black silence
Bearing witness to ancient stories
Her face is so radiant, you can’t
even see her eyelashes most days
just a twinkle here or there
The moon is her beauty mark
and depending on the day
she shows us a glimmering crescent
She is like that, just dazzling…
our most amazing mother
filled with the beauty of creation
Her breathe the air
Her love the fire
Her dreams the earth
Her songs the water
Her stories the core
Her family the cosmos
All of it is her great big
beautiful body
Me? Oh I’m her daughter and
I live here at the mouth of a waterway
Moving up and down the mossy rocks
in rubber boots and flannel
Keeping company with the redwood,
the oak and the wild grape
Having tea with deer and dove
and pink cake my lover made
I used to live in caves before houses
I used to spend time, instead of time
spending me, long long ago
I was wild once, you know
and in my soul I am still
and so are you
Do you remember how we played?
I must remember, and you too,
That we are more than we appear
to be, we shall see
Did you see that bird fly by?
To remember who I am I must
make parties, feasts and dances
Eight times a year, then I remember
Will you come to supper with me?
I follow the patterns of her sun,
her moon and her feisty eclipses
I watch her face for my actions and
I count the days on hands and knees
I am part of creation creating itself
The milky sky high-way is our
home and if we really know that
we can see how this unfolds
There are stars under my skin
There are rivers flowing in my heart
There are people I have yet to meet
There are stories we, beloved one,
are yet to tell
I believe, I believe
Mother will show me the way
We live here safely in the
Wheelhouse of the Mother
For A.S.G.
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“We must refocus our collective memory. The necessity for this has never been greater as we discover that the path of 'progress' is extinguishing the very conditions for life on earth.” Marijah Gimbutas Dear Ones, I am inviting you to join me LIVE for a ritual to end the dominance era plus design a personal path of practice. Part history + Part Story + Part ritual + Intentional Creativity process. My friend Anasuya Isaacs will join me for this experience.
Recently over two hundred women joined in this ritual live a part of a class - and we wanted to offer it to all of you as well. All spiritual traditions that are welcoming are welcome. See you in circle
Shiloh Sophia
Cucuteni Culture - The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, also known as the Tripolye culture(c. 5500 to 2750 BCE) Eastern Europe.This image has the word dream time, a brand across it - but this image can’t really be copyrighted can it? Leaving it for now.
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Hi! I’m sharing about how I work with my theme for the year. What’s yours?
My personal theme for the year is: I am connected!
Thinking of you ❤️
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Happy New Year to each of you. Today’s riffing with the Muse is an invitation to inhabit your imagination. With love, Shiloh Sophia
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Good Morning! I had a significant inquiry arise about patriarchy being a trauma response last night after studying all day long. My heart started beating and my mind spinning. There was a softening in me I hadn’t had before. Since I, with many others work to complete the era of domination all the time. A trauma response to a cataclysmic natural event like a flood?
I wonder what I would spend my time on if I wasn’t trying to bring right to where there is wrong?
Anyway I dove into more and more research and was even more compelled. Maybe this has been spoken before - I don’t know - I am not going to look yet - I want to form my own opinions first and hang out in the right brain heart feeling - what if we are acting like this because we have been hurt - it was normal to form a patristic structure for a while but it has gone on too long and moved into areas we never dreamed we were capable of. This audio is my unformed morning thoughts as I prepare to welcome 200 women into painting their version of the Divine Feminine today. I have put questions with floods in certain places until I can do more research.
Join us here today - or in a week complimentary session - The End of the Domination ERAThis and other things like a good cuppa coffee,
Shiloh Sophia
Link to the Goddess Timeline
Link to join us for MATRICA
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Father Christmas and Rudolph are thought to be, based on historical evidence, a take-over from stories centered in the feminine. For me, these stories are worth being told and it is a part of my own geographic heritage.
I am not going to duplicate the text, it’s in the audio. However you honor and celebrate these times - I hope you will look into the not so distant past and find the missing mother, who isn’t missing at all. We have been behaving as motherless children, and we are not. Not at all. I declare the end of the dominant era in my own life. From here, we heal. I call this journey and this information - Matrica. I have to start somewhere. Why not start at the source, the mother.
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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com
My family has so many stories…here’s one that has informed most of my life. What started as a criticism became a family legend. A fun listen, and hopefully a laugh with a cuppa something good….
Shiloh Sophia
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Dear ❤️ Hearts ~ sharing how I’m feeling today about Musea University starting… Shiloh Sophia
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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com
Freedom
by Shiloh Sophia
The unsolved mysteries
of the heart are always present
It doesn’t matter how many times
we have been loved or been hurt
Still, the heart is a grand mystery
We cannot control it
we cannot make it
do what we want
We cannot predict what
it will feel or see
But there is one thing
we can do
We can listen to our heart
and what it has to say
We can listen to the hearts
of those around us
We can be a healing presence
from one another and the earth
We can practice
falling in love with mystery,
in the infiniteness of not knowing
When we stop trying
to figure it out
we can find freedom
If we listen to our heart
our heart will listen to us
This is the journey of a lifetime
and our heart is the guide
How blessed are we
to be able to listen closely
and lean into love
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com
The Perfect Studio
The Perfect Studio
has a door that closes
There’s enough room there
to not have my back to the door
the kitties are present
There’s a big table
to spread out and make a mess
marked with years of creativity
Of course, there’s a comfy chair
that is big enough for me
to sit cross-legged
or even better,
a chaise lounge
A rug that’s colorful
that I can get paint on
and splash as I choose
Bright leafy green plants
to surround me and
keep me company
A candle that smells good
An altar that changes
every time I come in
A chocolate stash
A fuzzy robe covered in paint
A tall bookcase
filled with inspiring images and stories
A wall of photos of people I love
A sign for the door that says:
The MUSE is in,
so don’t come in
Yet also people who respect that sign
and people who can come in
for tea because I like them
but only when they are invited
There’s a teapot
with tea seaping that smells so good
that my lover made
and a handmaid cup from a friend
There’s a jar of local honey
from people that I know
and bees I am sure to cross paths with
on my morning walks
There’s music that makes me dance
There’s lots and lots of paints
and pens and pencils and charcoal
and places to play
There’s a stack of empty notebooks
awaiting my pen and story
There’s a window for seeing far
And when I get up really early,
seeing the stars
There’s always a jar of water
awaiting my brush
It’s an invitation and a blank canvas
or one that’s ready to be painted over
And of course TIME
Time to spend there, here
Intentional Creativity time
I want to have tea with the Muse
as I choose
What about you?
What kind of studio is perfect for you?
Shiloh Sophia
Dear Ones,
The photo above is our ‘film set’ and while I paint there when I am teaching, it isn’t my personal studio. I feel so grateful to have so much space to work in, but I also share this space and rent this space - and I can’t close the door - or make a mess and keep it messy.
This has been a strange phenomenon for me - to have all this space to manage and use to teach in but not have it be personal space that I don’t have to share. I have moved my studio at our campus likely 40 times at least in the past few years - and this particular set up just happened because we converted the actual film studio into a dorm. My actual studio here we rented to another artist. While I am super glad she has it, I don’t have it and I miss it. So I am just coming to terms with this feeling - of not having a room that I can mess up and keep messy that no one can come into with a closing door where I can paint and be messy and be a mess. #hotmess seeks room for rent lol. A film set is not a personal studio. This feels important for me to just acknowledge so I can move on. And since we rent the space I try to ‘un-shiloh’ it on a regular basis, which again means I am continually moving my personal space and items around. I know, I know many people don’t even have one place to paint, so is it really a problem? Get over it I say, but then I am not being honest. I need a big open space and place to work and dream and invent. Because the companies I run and the offerings I create come out of my own mind/heart sacred studio space which is mapped to the physical space where I work things out. So today I am just owning this need for a closing door so I can see what else wants to come forward. To be able to dream into what I would really like.
Sometimes I get up really early and go paint in the classroom or the gallery - but I always have to clean it up and make it nice again right away. So am I really asking for a space to be messy? To cry? To experiment while not making product or on the camera? A place I can have a private slumber party? I don’t know. I just know that writing this down was important for me. I have so much - I truly do. And something is needed and I am just exploring that. I also feel that sharing it may spark something in you too - about what you need. Even if you can’t create it right now - you can make a perfect studio list and honor it. Intentional Creativity is this - being intentional about writing this poem and sharing this and it moves energy - and creates a clearing for something new to emerge. I feel better already. I started writing this in New York and finished it this morning during cafe’. Blessings dear one, and may be get to the studio…
Shiloh Sophia
p.s. the above film studio photo has a quilt from Sumaiyah and a painting by Sue in it and I am finally making the wall behind my chaise lounge personal with photos. I will not move them….I will learn to occupy in a good way.
p.p.s. I am also wondering if my next studio will be around pottery - I have spent years potting in the past and I miss it. Maybe I am seeking something else. Musing on it.
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Shiloh Sophia by Jonathan McCloud @the MoMa and Fur Breakfast by Meret Oppenheim Le Déjeuner en fourrure Au the MoMa
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#letthemusechoose Tiny Portal: Choose one of your more abstract paintings or an under-painting layer. Look at it with a soft gaze. Imagine that one part of it suddenly becomes a portal door and lights up! WOWZA there it is! Honor this arising. Be surprised....(Muses love to surprise you)
One word of advice - the Muse does not want to be dominated in any way - but if you are in a particularly tender or tempermental place you can request - 'only loving or kind messages to appear' - no one can guarantee compliance - but it does set the tone. Muses can have a bad attitude at times. Okay so let's continue....for some of our Muse Choose I ask you not to read the whole thing first, for this one, go ahead and read it and then begin.
Ready? With a heartful intention to see or hear something fresh from your Muse - invite your imagination to OPEN the tiny door slowly and see what is waiting for you there.
How does the door open - try to watch it - does it swing? Pop? Flow? Glow? What do you find? Is it a note? An image? A symbol? The first line of a poem? A new tool? A dare? An invitation? An oracle reading? What has the Muse left for you to find?
Once you see it/know it/hear it - ask more about it. Why this message and why now? Journal as you choose. If you don't see something or hear something just hover there in the "not knowing" and then choose to reveal something from within your subconscious space and place it there. This works too!
Share the painting you chose or the tiny portal and what you saw, if you want, with us in the imusea app (search for the app in your appstore imusea). We learn by doing and also by sharing. Sharing helps to shape the content of what gets revealed and strengthens the portal practice. Even if the message you got is odd or you don't know the meaning yet - attempt to 'trust' it enough to be with it without needing to change it.
Over time we develop a pathway of trust with our inner world and our subconscious via the hand of the Muse will continue to show us more and more. If we doubt too soon and with exasperation we ask - WHY the f-ing yellow banana? Why did I hear that bell? I don't want to see that old symbol again etc..... then the trust doesn't get to grow. The Muses might be testing us. They do that.
Instead consider deep curiousity and surprise - WOW the yellow banana again - tell me more! OH that bell, where is that sound coming from anyway and how does it feel in my body? AH! That symbol must be something special - let me draw it out.
(If you are new - come post and join us in the imusea app and share your image and what you discovered)
In Intentional Creativity we work this way with imagination development. By intentionally using our own paintings as the mythical landscape to journey through. The power of suggestion aka "tiny portal" coupled with the personal tangible image and the anticipation that the Muse will really communicate this way with you - is a practice. For some of us we have been developing the faculty for years - and for others of us it is new.
This is a core aspect of our practice here and I invite you to really try it.
Ciao!
Shiloh Sophia
This is a tiny portal from was a painting exploring communicating with the ancestors. I opened the white curve and it shimmered. Behind it was an image of my mother's hands. She was in my dream last night. The message is to be close to her today in my spirit.
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The muses, the graces and the flurries are stirring things up again and they are feeding my my own medicine.
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“An average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.” da Vinci
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” da Vinci
We went to see a da Vinci exhibit in the Blue Ridge mountain territory. These quotes really struck me as both true and harsh. Did he really mean “classes”? Perhaps not like today.
I know that part of my sacred work is to invite seeing and encourage deep feeling. So on this rainy day I invite you to look outside and see, with me…to choose to be one who sees.
With ♥️ and rain,
Shiloh Sophia
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I am thinking of you today....
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My mom taught me that I had choice. This phrase "the great adventure' inspires my life and this painting by the same name.
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Dear Ones,
Generations of women have been taught and programmed to believe we don’t matter. The suicide rate for girls is getting younger and younger. No matter how many articles we write about it and how much therapy tries to address the root cause of the issue of irrelevance, it persists and insists. But not just in young girls. In most of the women we actually know, there is a deeply embedded framework of feeling like our voice is silenced, even and especially from ourselves.
This message came through early this morning and is for you. We are in a four day event with women and families from around the world so it is ever so important to share with you. This asked to be spoken. I listened. I hope I am speaking to someone who needs to hear it. I sure did.
~ Shiloh Sophia
For you Grandma and you Mama. I love you ever more each day. Thank you for providing good mothering soil for me to grow up in.
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Painting by Shiloh Sophia: CeremonyIntentional Creativity is mindulness in motion
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Oak Tree Covered in Moss at Wild Water Creek, Sonoma Mountain, California
Intentional Creativity is mindfulness in Motion
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Wild Water Forest, Sonoma Mountain, California
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Enter the Portal of Compassion
Dear One
I often wonder
why some people care so much
and some people don't care so much
Is it possible to teach compassion
or do we have to awaken to it
through personal experience?
Compassion is as mysterious as grace,
a gift to the Human Spirit from the Divine Spirit
A way to open consciousness rooted in love
Compassion is elusive to teach
or to compel, when someone is adverse
to this kind of heartful care
and loving kindness
At times we almost seem afraid of it,
What might happen if we love that much?
Might it hurt? Yes it can hurt, and it can heal
What needs to happen to open the heart?
To say to Life and to feel in one's own life
"May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings awaken to the
light of their own true nature.
May all beings be free."
When I sing these words from the Metta Prayer
I always cry, because I really really really
feel it and really really really mean it
with my whole being
Is that so strange to feel? So uncommon?
I remember the day my heart opened
Since that day I have not ceased to do my part
to open hearts too, to a deeper level of caring
Mostly it is a long journey to teach this,
not because people don't care but because
they are truly busy, truly challenged, truly afraid
and find this life difficult to navigate
I do understand
I want so much to speak of the quiet joy
that comes from loving so much even
so much that it hurts sometimes
I want to sepak to what is possible
when compassion comes to live in your home
I want us to care more
Oh I have plenty of places where I am
challenged to care - usually when there is
lying, cruelty, rudeness, lack of care or witness,
addiction without acknowledgement
It challenges me to find new places
as I lean into my edges
It isn't that those of us who are teaching love,
have it all sorted out and can share it with you
so you can do as we do - not so
Rather, those of us in teaching love,
learn to love more
and that is pure joy
I just want us to care more
and I also want to care more
and allow my actions to follow that care
May the portal of compassion be opened
to every being who is ready to receive
May the portal of compassion be a tender
teacher to every being ready to give more love
May the portal of compassion show us
the way to be human together
and fall in love with Creation
Everything that is on this earth
was given by grace, given freely,
this is our paradise given
Oh please let us know this with
our whole soul
Portal of Compassion - 2022 Painting just finished by Shiloh Sophia
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Dear Hearts,
How do you wake up each day? Do you pick up your phone? Listen to the news? Rush to the shower? Grumble about what is before you? The most sacred of all things for humans is the awareness of choice....So today, or tomorrow since you may already awake today lol, may you find a way to wake up slowly and savor.
Big Love,
Shiloh Sophia
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Dear Hearts
I just wanted to extend a soft word of encouragement today - an invitiation to choose beauty. Blessings wherever you are and whatever you are dealing with
Big Love,
Shiloh Sophia
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Painting: Cloud Portal
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Too Much Woman
Watch out!
A wide load woman
coming through!
She laughs too loud
Talks too long
Wears too much red
Walks too heavy
Dances too wild
Howls too crazy at the Moon.
Hips too big
Cleavage way too in your face
Too much glitter flying
Gives too much
Too big for her britches
Too smart for her own good
Her hair is definitely too big
She is a too much woman
She apologized too long
So now she’s just too much
But without the apology part
Sometimes too much is too good
Watch out!
It’s a wide load woman coming through!
She’s a piece of work!Why not?
Shiloh Sophia
intentionalcreativity
inspirationalpoetry
toomuchwoman
cosmiccowgirls
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Quantum Café
This is a quantum cafébetween tomorrow and today
You will find us herewaiting for you since forever
This is the Red Thread Cafe
located in every place in the world
including in the most important place of all,
your own heart and imagination
When you arrive, you can’t miss me,
watch for the cowgirl hat with a red rose
and the blue shirt
and the kickass red boots
I will be the one with my heart on my sleeve
This is a place to gather yourself up,
pull up a chair and have tea with the Muse
You will see, you will be in good company
We are the Cosmic Cowgirls
gathering in the glory of Intentional Creativity
Perhaps you heard the call?
There are ancient stories to be told under the smiling moon!
There are new stories rising up
We are women from the future!
Be welcome here, you may already be a member!
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Behold!
The Muse deals in riddles and rituals
when she invites you to tea with uncertainty.
Will you show up?
The Muse has a bit of a limp these days,
and is only willing to work with those
who are edge-walkers, fire-breathers,
circle-callers and skin-dancers.
She will even invite you to sit in her chair.
The Muse doesn't have a preference
for whether you are brave or afraid.
Makes no difference to her,
only that you show up like you mean it.
Between the mythical and logical
there is a holy wild place anticipating your presence.
The imaginal domain awaits your full attention.
The Seat of the Muse straddles both worlds
If you are truly interested in what it takes,
you will need to position yourself
so you can see
in all directions at once.
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Thanks for reading Tea with the Muse! Subscribe and let the Muse inspire, encouage and dare you!
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Beyond Punishment and Reward
When you think of the word
and the meaning of up,
what's the very next word
that comes to mind?
Is it down, or something else?
And if it was something else,
what would it be?
When you think of the word…right?
What do you think of next?
Do you think of the opposite?
Do you think of left
or do you think of wrong?
Where does your mind naturally go to
when you consider words that have meanings,
that appear to have opposite potentials
When you think of the word here,
As in I'm here,
then where are you?
Or where am I?
Are we also here?
Are we there?
Are we over there?
When you think of suffering,
What comes to mind?
What comes to heart?
Is it pleasure
or the release of suffering?
We've largely been living in
an enforced either/or construct,
even though we're all aware of AND.
Every concept has a spectrum of possibility.
Yet humans through education
and certain religions have come to
create a kind of forced polarity
competition and separation
This has resulted in a way of thinking
and being that could be
an illusion
What do you think?
Does it feel like an illusion,
the vacillation between the either/or?
For this politician or not for this politician,
for this vaccination or not for this vaccination,
a good person or not a good person
Even when we generalize
about regions of the world,
this state is that color, this state is that color.
and that means what?
Generalizations about entire countries
as if that somehow impacts
the soul of each person
Does it? What do you think?
How much sovereignty does
the individual have
in determining their identity
and their outcomes
and what is the path of practice
or the way to determine one's relationship
with one's identity?
Can we truly author it
or are we just simply stuck with
what ended up happening
based on our life story?
Do we truly reap what we sow?
We want to think so,
but then we wonder how people who are sewing,
terrible things like the poisoning of water,
the extraction of gas
through the blowing up of rocks
We want to think that, what?
What do you want to think about
those activities?
Have you even made that and either/or
has it informed your activism?
The riddle of being is here
We can't understand how someone
who could be a part of extraction
that leads to collapse…
How could they do that?
Don’t they also have a family
and why are they not
reaping what they're sewing
or experiencing the karmic wheel sooner?
Why aren't they stopped
before they do more damage?
Sometimes we wish it's more quick,
whether we acknowledge it secretly or otherwise
What way do you live?
Do you go about your day
from waking, to dressing, to eating,
to walking, to working,
to being with the pets and the children,
and your lover, your mother, your father
What approach
is it chosen
or a default setting?
I don't know about you all,
but I'm interested in exploring
something other than
up/down, here/there
good/bad, left/ right
and the punishment and reward structures
that have been seeped so deeply
into our consciousness
Such that
we can barely get out from under it
to think an original thought
When I think of my path of practice,
starting with leaving the corporate world,
leaving the corporate education system,
going to the mountain to study at the age of 24
now being 52 and
what have I got to show for myself
other than a chosen approach,
but I guess that's what I was looking for
An approach,
an approach I call intentional creativity,
which isn't just a way of making art,
but actually a way of living life
And at the root of it is inquiry
to question ourselves, our thoughts,
our defaults, our hopes, our dreams, our desires,
our relationship with suffering,
our very relationship with up and down
and not just to arrive at a middle path,
a place of neutrality or even inner peace
when the rest of the world is at war,
but actually to just be at cause
for doing the thinking at all
For asking the question,
How might I free my own identity
from the punishment and reward structures
set up by power-over systems,
by people I wouldn't invite to my dinner table?
Why would I allow the worldview of people
I wouldn't want to share a meal with,
to shape my consciousness any further
than I absolutely had to..?
There comes a point
a reckoning in all of our lives
where we simply say
enough
I must learn to think my own thoughts
I must discover the way to compassion
on my own terms,
but not just own as in alone, but on your own
within the context of community itself,
there's a continuity here
There's a morphic field been building
many, many, many, many years,
many thousands of people practicing
And there's an opportunity
for the kind of discovery and waking
and being that I know many of us seek
because you tell me and because I seek it with you
So let us go forward together
on a path of practice, an inquiry, discernment,
the awakening of true compassion
and the exit in each our own time
from punishment and reward.
What fertile deep, delicious place might exist
if we weren't always trying to
avoid suffering in this life or the next
or achieve reward in this life or the next,
what is there
when you remove that illusion
and you sit right in the center of self
or in my case,
I meditate standing
So when I stand right in the center of my myself,
it helps me stay alert to be in standing meditation
and inquiry and ask the impossible questions
of my heart and invite those along my red thread
to journey with me
I know there are more places for us
to explore together
and I'll be with you providing encouragement
for our journey
Big love, big love, big, beautiful love
coming to you from right where I am here
to right where you are, here, in my heart
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Blessings!Cloud Temple Painting by Shiloh Sophia
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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teawiththemuse.substack.com