The Great Mountain of Inter-Consciousness – A Portrait and Poem #767

Shiloh Sophia|October 17, 2019

I just want to remind you we are all a detail in our galaxy. Our galaxy cannot do without each of us. The body we live in is our Cosmic Address at this time. We are transisterized versions of our true size… We are much bigger than we think – as Cosmic Cowgirls we will come to know how huge a power we are.

~ Sue Hoya Sellars

The Great Mountain

Let us leave the gateway

of the known shore

the familiar door

we have gone through before.

We shall sip star milk

from the cradle cup of the new moon.

Sip to remember a way not lost,

yet not known,

yet sought for.

Our illusions of how this should be

take off their dresses of conformity

and do a jig on the floor of fallen masks.

If we are lucky,

not just any kind of happenstance lucky,

then the Muses of forgotten forest

may part the mist for us.

(Certainly don’t count on it.)

If the Muses should let you remember the forest,

bring an offering from your medicine bag,

the thing you thought you could not live without,

and put it on the Muse’s threshing floor.

To get to this place on the path

you have to leave what you know,

release your cherished beliefs

cast off your systems and footholds

release your beloved strongholds

and let yourself be folded in.

(It might hurt, but it won’t last long.)

Soon, but not too soon,

you will see

that exiting paradigms,

undownloading systems made by men

for purposes different than how you use them

is a path worth risking for.

The path of a true human being

is unique to your own content-laden codex.

You are both a cosmic pilgrim and archeologist,

using a compass with no hands to travel.

No one can chart the course for you,

your way is off the map and yes

you will have to pass the dragon’s den

to get where you are already going.

If the fire breathing doesn’t scare you back

into the luring submission of domesticity

then the dragons will make a bbq of the bull

you carry as a cherished story.

The belly bowl of your being,

now filled with the milk and meat

of something much more real than you

have known before.

Who you are is hidden within layers

within layers of densely woven sedimented fabric

programmed with the sleep of reality.

Nights of sleeplessness and forgetting

entirely what you might have loved the most

are just part of the human initiation.

Banish the thought that you

could have found the passage earlier,

while it might be true,

inquiries like that are useless here.

Yes. We gave up so soon on the mystery.

In our defense, we didn’t know

what we were doing,

we tried to hold on to the relics of

tradition, childhood, enforced sentimentality

being good in the way we were taught

and grasping for nostalgic notions of things that

don’t really exist, not really.

The fox out behind the chicken house

cackles her crackling question:

What really exists?

(Our first thought is for the chickens

because we were trained to be good).

If we are courageous,

we will admit that we

have no idea what really exists.

We know this:

It hasn’t happened yet.

We are on the way there now.

Admitting that we have no idea

garnishes us favor with the poets.

They only show up if something

becomes really interesting, they

cannot be bothered with half attempts

at human being. (They get bored.)

The poets arrive without flourish but

stun your eyeballs with their presence.

They give an assignment:

Dedicate your life to soul!

(Yet do your best never to use the word

soul directly in a poem.)

The poets, a motley crew of misfits

promise you a lexicon of language to use,

and instructions to get your butt to the painters’ hut!

Because you will need more colors than you think

to paint and write the soul

without using the world soul.

(Evidently it takes a lot of color)

To get there you have to go

through the mist at the foot of

the great green mountain.

That great green black mountain

on the other side of reason.

On the other side, rumor has it,

there is a ride waiting for you.

The painter will pick you up in her

spaceship-like chariot drawn by white horses.

The white horses are the ones from the

end times stories, trained for otherworldly transport.

But time is not up yet, for the world or for you,

and you know it,

yet vertical time is readying itself as we speak.

To truly respond you have to wake up.

(We live in a world of sleeping responders,

but not you, not anymore.)

Something uncontrollable in you sparks a flint

you quiver in the incandescent space

of your bone house,

your star shack shimmies.

You say yes to the unknown passageway,

knowing you can never go back.

The first thing you notice,

is how good it feels to say yes,

and how right it feels

to be woken up by

forested Muses, the riddles of foxes,

dragon’s breath singing your eyebrows,

horse’s hooves on the roof of your old house,

and the promise of poets and the prowess

of painting a new possibility.

It is all so very exciting.

Let’s get our tickets and set off!

The great adventure has begun!

~ Shiloh Sophia

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The painting, a portrait of inter-consciousness isn’t quite finished yet but I could not wait to share it with you. The poem was written first at Terra Sophia The painting started out with an inquiry about “What is inter-consciousness”?

Letter #767 Includes

The Great Mountain of Inter-Consciousnes painting and poem
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A Letter from the Red Thread Cafe #767

Dear One,

Today I invite you to just pause with me. To sit in the spaciousness of not knowing or having answers. To just be right where you are. To honor you human beingness, your frail and fabulous. Thank you, for being alive at this time, for being who you are. We are all on a journey going somewhere….to where…we aren’t certain.

Along the way – art shows us where to look, and has always been the record of our peoples. I hope sharing this poem and painting with you is a blessings on your path.

The color of the light the past few days shows fall is here in Marin – the air speaks of ending and beginnings and all is sacred that I treat as sacred.

Love from my home to yours,