OMG! 😳 My huge breakthrough

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.LoveShiloh Sophia All upcoming events can be found at http:www.musea.org Legend will be open for registration soon. Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe

This is a new poem that arose over five hours of the painting process with my community ♥️ Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe

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, CaliforniaThis painting above was painted in Teotihuacan Mexico, it is called The Cosmic love affair between the sun and the moon Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe

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. WarmlyShiloh Sophia Transcipt:The Rise of the Sacred Feminine through the Intentional Creativity LineageIn 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. * You will have a real book with all of your paintings and the story you choose to tell.* You will have the articulation of your content in the form of teachings that can be passed on. * 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. * You will have enough paintings for a solo show.* 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.* You will have experienced a community of women who have your back and are doing their own work. * 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 BookColor 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 SophiaOur team for 2025Thank 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 EpisodeA call to creative beings everywhere! * Permission slip to call yourself an Artist* Being in flirtation with creation* Ideas for sparking imagination* Invitation to look at resistance Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe

Rancho La Puerta in MexicoDear 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 destinationa 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 outcrossing other people on the pathHopefully 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’tand I want to say to you that in this very nowin 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 handsand I have this wish that you were with meI think of how we are earth, earthing,I think of how we are this stardest, starringin our own lives, perhaps not quite as glamourouslyas we once may have dreamedbut 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 knowbut 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 childrenand your children’s children.We wake up wondering, how did we get here?We wake up worryingWhat 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 imposedunworthiness 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 onecan 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 healersI have no fear and I recognizethis 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 usand let all the beauty we choose to express flow out from us. This is a sacred exchange of energyinto the matter-based beings that we are.Between us and all creationto all the directions, all the elements, ahhhh…you are sacred beings and we are sacred beingswith you.Woman, sister, friend, I choose each step around this circleof stones and I raise my hands up to the skystars shining through rain andI 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 Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe

Class begins today! Visit Musea.org to join us! Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe

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 Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe

As I walk the moss speaksReminding me:This is sacred groundThis is all sacred groundVoices of the velvet emerald waysshimmy me shimmy meinto the deep listening placeReminding me...No!Summoning me!The first thing they do is to tell me:You are not who you think you areAnd if that wasn't enough, this:Your true name isn't spoken aloudYour true name lives insideIf you listen with the earsof your whole lifeOkay so let me get this clear -I am not who I ammy name is not my nameand somehow that is supposed tohelp me remember something I forgot?And it requires my entire life?I hear the resonant: Yesripple up from the moist red earthI feel the palpable pulseof the ripples of water ripplingThe salt water within me respondingdrawing me in, drawing me upHere's what I am thinking:The earth mysteries speakin riddle bones between bladesof dew-kissed grasses on the riverWhispering in tones of silver fishblack seal and blue heronmarking me with the invisible tattooof pre-existant beingness inmy stardust bonesAm I can getting closer? I ask?Then I cry out....Is it true?Is it trueis it true that I am more than I appear?Is it so, I have walked this pathof finding before?But...Finding, who, and finding what?Why?Why?When I weep at the sight of sunshineafter weeks of rain then there isa quickening from the crown of myvulva to the crown of my fuzzy headAll of this is a rememberingI am the sacred ground, groundingAll of this is a rememberingI am the sacred ground, groundingMy tears nourish the sacred groundQuick, can you catch my tearswith your lips?Each day there is more greyrippling in my hairMy eyesight is softeningaround the edgesMy skin is freckledwith so many sunlit beachesOh and so many late nightslistening to wavesand whispering in succulent kissesCalling to our seal sistersto come and get usDid you forget us here? Or what?The ocean always callsThe whole thing is really just amazingIsn't it?That we exist at all...That we exist at all is reason to worshipand good reason to listen to the echoesof velvet emerald moss when they speakPerhaps one day all the rememberingof this incarnation will come rushing throughFor now they give me shivers of cluesShivers up and down that spine of mineI bring these clues to lifethrough brush and penI offer what story they give me on the altarThe altar of the women who gather inThen suddenly I remember thisI do not always have my own backbut the moss,the velvet moss promises to back meUnseen forces of essenceof ancestral beautyare at my back now,singing me into remembrancewith invisible wings of lightYou are Our ancient childThey sayYou are guided by UsThey callYou can find Us in the mossesor in the rippling watersor in the chambers of your heartor in the kisses of your loverAny place beauty is, We areAny place beauty is, We areAny place beauty is, We areCan you remember this?We have called youby your secret nameYou have answered andNow you are readyReady? Ready for what???I panicThen of course, SilenceThen I breatheI touch moss tenderlyThen I remember...just enoughThe quickeningis moving through me nowI can feel thegreen fire sparks ignitingsomething true I hopeI hope it's something trueI turn towards the daythat felt dauntingwith a new daringbecauseI am backed by velvet greenI am backed by velvet greenI am velvet green, greeningShiloh SophiaMoss 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 amShiloh 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.* Exploring George Orwell’s famous 4 fingers* Gaslighting ourselves and not trusting ourselvesAccusation of the other ‘side’ * Exhausting rabbit-holing to find Truth* Do not drink the divide and conquer koolade* Hearts and braings changing right now* A Centers of Knowing Coherence practice for discernmentThis 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 SophiaPhoto by Jonathan McCloud Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe