Tea with the Muse

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

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!

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.

Here’s the beautiful tree I’m looking at in France 💗

It’s my birthday and I’m sharing three gratitudes and three of regrets

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.

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.

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!