It is not in knowing ‘things’ that you become conscious.
Rather it is in inviting the great mystery to tea,
that you find out who is actually doing the asking…

Shiloh Sophia INSIGHT painting from 2018, Off the Map

A date with the Muse that lasts two weeks…
It is like falling in love every day! Will you schedule time just for you? Get up early or stay up late?
What’s at stake?
Your own consciousness and pleasure!
Invite your Muse to a cup of inquiry!

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Red Thread Letter #771 Invite Your Muse to a Cup of Inquiry

Dear One,

I am dropping into your inbox today with an invitation to have tea with your Muse, with over 1000 women! We have a two week community wide creative cycle planned with our MUSE! For our purposes within Intentional Creativity®, we refer to the Creative Spirit and our inner voice as the Muse. Muse – not as an external force or something separate from you – but your own innate creative beingness! It can be really fun!

Here is a way to simply get started with a cuppa…. And if inspired to share what arises – join us in the Red Thread Cafe Classroom…

Invite Your Muse to a Cup of Inquiry

Gaining Intuitive Access

Yes, invite your Muse to a cup of inquiry. Ask her what kind of tea she wants. Pour it, steaming hot, out of the kettle. Ask her if she takes honey. Listen for her answers in your own imagination. Pour yourself one. Bring a stack of paper and colored pens to the meeting. Show up and sit down.

What inquiry comes to mind? Is there something you have been grappling with that could use some hot pink epiphany? You don’t need to choose answerable questions. Consider an inquiry with no known or reachable answer. Perhaps ask your Muse – ‘How do I gain intuitive access to my own thoughts?’ Take a piece of paper, give your Muse one too, and begin to doodle, while asking the question, and moving the pen. Imagine she is informing your hand as you move it across the page. BE the space where fresh ideas begin to emerge…

Whether or not you actually did the tea ceremony, or even pulled out the art supplies, while reading, your brain exited the default setting status for even a little bit. That is the power of imagination! If you keep reading, I must warn you, that hanging out beyond the confines of the default settings could be dangerous to pre-conditioned thinking.

Through the practice of inquiry, combined with intentional creativity focused on accessing the hidden worlds within us is hot hot hot! Who doesn’t want to experience what they REALLY think, feel, and, know?

As you read, just notice if you ‘see’ images emerge in your consciousness. Jot ideas down. Pause. Pontificate. Go slow. Go fast. Most of this is about just being open to what there is, that arises, and showing up for the journey. You known that already – but this is a new moment – each moment is available for revelation.

First, let’s define Muse in this context. For our purposes, the Muse is a linguistic abstraction applied to your own experience of yourself i.e. your voice and how your mind accesses your imaginative domains. It’s not something or someone outside of you. Experiences of the Muse are as individual as we are, we are simply giving it language so we can talk about ideas that often escapes us.

When we ask questions that we don’t think we have information about – we open to that which we are not seeing and who we are not being – the wild unknown. The ‘space’ the inquiry creates, is a domain for something to happen in, that would not happen otherwise, had we not intentionally created the space. This all occurs as you bypass the pre-frontal dominatrix of the brain and sashay your way into another world not continually narrated by the critic. Aka: the domain of the Muse.

Inquiry is the intentional action that engages this happening and activates the brain to move into a potential ‘not known’ space, instead of into, only what is known. Through being open to that which is not known – knowing – often arises along new pathways not previously available even moments before. Intuition begins to flow in new ways that can give well needed energy to the unfolding story of who we are. In ordinary reality, our brain, when faced with questions, will go to the past to gather evidence which is safer, known, or connected to a past story. In this specialized inquiry we are intentionally looking for ideas, not based on past experience. Therefore we are ‘reaching’ into the future space that hasn’t happened yet. POW!

Through the practice of inquiry, we are seeking, while not looking at or for answers directly. Rather, using the inquiry to create a conditional environment is about the experience of what happens when we ask a question that we don’t know the answer to. Or a question which may have no answer at all. These are the Muse’s favorite.The sacredness of “I wonder” can take you on a journey that you have never had, nor will have again. Becoming familiar with inquiry as a form of journeying can increase your capacity of metacognition, your ability to think about your thinking and therefore learning how to be with you as you are and as you dream yourself to be.

Metacognition is generally thought to take place in the pre-frontal cortex, however, when thinking about thinking is applied during creative act, a relationship pathway is forged, between the known and the unknown, which yields a third space not previously viewable, since it was just created. This can be practiced through many forms of creativity – doodling, dancing, painting, pottery, and even in gardening, beading or cooking. What is coming up for you? Is there a creative act that you have been longing to engage in? The Muse will often dare us into new territory.

Why is this important? The Muse is a ‘turn on’. We get turned on and woken up when we wake up to being a collaborative partner with the voice in our head, who knows what’s possible? So often we have shut ourselves off from our deepest truths and wildest dreams, so that we can survive, fit in, or whatever story we have told ourselves is needed. When we have access, by choice, to the hidden rooms of the soul, there is a kind of delicious sacred freedom. Let’s go there and dance together in the unknown.

Add chocolate as needed to the tea party….

Imagination is more important than knowledge – Albert Einstein

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THE INSIGHT EXPERIENCE

FREE Intentional Creativity® Painting Class Online with Shiloh Sophia

If you are new to Intentional Creativity or simply want to paint in Community for 2 weeks, Join us!

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RSVP for Insight

I had many adventures this past week, including still reeling from the Color of Woman 2019 Graduation, Rose’ & Roses at Musette and a baby girl shower blessing for the lovely Michelle Dench yesterday. Michelle is program director for Seat of Muses and we are so blessed to have her on our Sonoma team!