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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