Intentional Creativity
Teacher Hat - As you listen to this expansive introduction to creativity with intention, amplifying love and dispersing trauma, continue to consider how you might introduce Intentional Creativity in your own workshops. What stories could you include?

Invocation

[0:00] Reading and coherence lineage meditation to reconnect to your mother tongue. Write and then integrate for 20 minutes. Invocation

[35:57] Movement Practice. Integrating with gentle movement arising from the vulva. Arising

Teacher Hat - How might you use readings, meditation, movement in your workshops?

Story

[0:00] What does it mean to wrestle with the divine?  Reading about the concept of vigil and walking with a limp from Wolf Milk.  Come As You Are

Teacher Hat - This is the section on intention but Shiloh also speaks passionately on big themes of trauma and resiliency. What do you truly care about? What topic is worth you showing up passionate "hot and sweaty" and...vulnerable?

[15:14] Pick a color that represents your journey. Paint the in between spaces and listen.  Listening for the Name

Teacher Hat - What intentions and themes are you able to pursue without losing your ability to hold space? Note that Shiloh's choice and her willingness to share it sets a strong example.

[18:30]  Write the name of your voyage on the side of your canvas. Make a declaration page with your intention. Intention creates a framework to see your life. Choosing Perspective

[24:09] Intuitively choose four colors to represent the four directions. Then center, above, below. Paint with each and spray heavily, honoring and orienting to each direction. Choose a color to represent the interior and make a stroke that represents you at the center of your own compass. Then write a "I am the One Who" five lines poem.  Feeling the Directions

Teacher Hat - "You can't get this right, you can't get this wrong" "What if it didn't have to be pretty?" What other phrases did Shiloh speak here that helped you stay loose? What could you offer to your students?  

[46:44] Invitation to stop for the journaling so you can claim your transformation. Integration

[48:23] Use your canvas as a visionary screen. You are enough. Tapping heart, throat, mind.  Meditation

[0:00] Invitation to include resting and resiliency in your "toolkit" Resting into resiliency

Teacher Hat - where might you put rest in your workshops?

[1:54] Use movement to reconnect. Then with a smaller brush and your favorite color paint reverb pattern to add soul to the portal, inviting your soul to take up space.  Claiming Your Space, Inhabiting Soul

[8:11]  Active visioning session: embodying, energy of remothering, relaxing while being upheld, receiving rest. Journeying for Support

[16:48] Mixing up a color for the moment and make dots, affirming that this is a tool for resting in resiliency. Prayer Dots

[21:41] Invitation to begin a map in your journal! Name, your yes, preparation, stepping out, stepping in, resting. What symbols and highlight revelations are connected to each step? Mapping Revelations

Teacher Hat - The existence of the "map "is how the student knows  they are okay even in unknown territory.  In a 13 step workshop the map is the 13 steps. Consider creating a map for your upcoming workshop. What are the revelations you hope they experience at each landmark? How might you include a map in a workshop so they visually can see the journey?

[29:19] Invitation to work with Nature as a practice of deepening. (1) Write five things in nature that come to mind with three words each and then add I am...(2)  Pick one of the colors and make associated patterns on the canvas while reflecting on the poem Writing Inspired By Nature, Bringing Patterns to Life

[35:15] Invitation to let your life happen inside the context of quest, including everything. Reading on the Liminal from Wolf Milk. Reading from Hard Times Require Furious Dancing : New Poems by Alice Walker. You are on a Journey! New Context

Teacher Hat - How and where might you add space and time for your students to document (and thereby claim) their revelations and also where and how do you provide space to witness them?

[0:00] Movement to feel grounded and lifted. Resting. Being supported. Do a metacognitive drawing connecting to the feeling of being supported and lifted.  Grounded and Lifted

[5:14] Choose a small brush plus a color that represents ancestor energy. Make intuitive marks, without dominating, tuning into the support of the Ancestors. Consider adding representative symbols. Developing ritual for staying present. Ancestor Energy

[20:46]  Shiloh shares Sue's Guardian painting. Guardian

Teacher Hat - Note the degree to which Shiloh is inclusive of all the  possible variations of Ancestor energy. This is an ongoing practice to catch default frameworks and invite in alternatives!

[22:54] Transforming the voice of the Critic (overculture and innerculture) through activating the Observer. This mechanism as a neural structure that can only be re-patterned through creativity. "I heard that, I'm choosing something else!" Transforming the internal abuse pattern into fierce discernment. Choose a small brush plus a color that represents the internal observer. Spend 20 minutes making marks (eyes) to activate the Observer. Internal Narrator

[35:13] Mark your Revelation Map (as introduced in part three) and use active visioning to connect with where you are. Add the information to the canvas in symbol form and explore it in your journal. Where are You?

[42:30] Receive the embrace of community. Make marks while you listen to yourself tell your story. Notice any intersections with the symbols on the canvas. Then rest!  Witness

"Receive the embrace of community. Here we are. We're holding you. Allow yourself to feel this energetic embrace as real. This is quantum, it can't not be happening. It's happening right now. Feeling yourself supported. Feeling yourself accepted and loved as you are no matter what condition you're in. Instead of feeling not included,  give yourself a new narrative of 'I'm already included.' When you come in with the energy of already included, when you need to take up more space you do, and when you need to take up less space you do because you're connected. When you don't allow yourself to be connected, when you isolate, the energy is off. The regenerative energy happens when we choose to include ourself. I know it's a big ask. We've spent a lot of time feeling on the outside. Now you're on the inside."

[0:00] Connection with life force. Calling in Mother Mater Matter. Opening Invocation

[10:10] Finger paint, focusing on senses.  Reclaiming your hands

[13:38] Revisiting your intention. Use small brush and mixed color of your choice to add cellular structure around your finger print marks while peacefully  asking 'What am I really here to heal?'  Healing Cells

Teacher Hat - Notice how it is to hear Shiloh being real about her low energy. How will you show up authentically, and share what's true for you while still holding solid space for your students?

[24:19] Silent demo of more Cells...

[27:14]  Meditation in reclaiming consciousness. Populating your entire being with consciousness. Using a small brush with a new color to come around the shapes. Consciousness

[30:40] Meditation in reclaiming the heart space and populating with love Using a small brush with a new color to bring love dots all over the canvas, feeling love as you're creating. Heart

[36:04] Mothertongue writing from the voice of hands, consciousness, heart and healing.  Then rest for 20 minutes. Healing Writing

[39:03]  Add  the Healing Focus in sharpie along the side of your canvas  Claim a Healing Focus

Come share in the group #healingfocus

[40:07] Develop an organic intuitive symbol for healing and then add it into the painting. Claimed by a Symbol

[44:57] Using a liner brush, add your symbol to the canvas. Mark your Symbol

 [47:25] Active Visualization Ritual of Request. Design a Ritual. Land of Reclamation

[0:00]  Create a ritual with water, sacred bowl, item from nature. Bringing the sacredness of water onto the canvas. Then write, rest. Blessing

[15:21] What Native land do you occupy? One resource is https://native-land.ca/ Honoring Land

Teacher Hat - How could you include this in your workshops?

[29:57] Demo of creating holy water for the spray bottle for the year. Stepping onto the path of self initiation. Ritual

[0:00] What are the ramifications of having no support for the internalization of imagination? Exploring Frameworks

[21:46] As I stand here in this moment  I am aware that my past is behind me and moving beneath me as a foundation of experience that I value. And from this moment forward I am inviting my entire self into presence. Here I am. My senses are awakening. I include my body, field. I have everything I need in this moment.  I am as present as I can be and I am healed enough. I am held in my work. I step across the threshold. Threshold Ceremony

[26:03] Shiloh shares her questioning of what is shared as Truth. What do you carry in your space? What is inherent?  Identifying Patterns

Examples of Non Ordinary Reality Head Shapes

Note in the examples from Sue and Shiloh above the face or head edge becomes an illustration of consciousness expanding. As you move into Part Eight be mindful not to get confined too soon with the face shape. Let the field inform the form!

[0:00] Active Visualization to encounter the essence of your archetypal presence. Practice four rounds of illustrating the veils ...field, aura, form, body, stardust. Journey to Emergence

[15:32] Consider if you need to glaze to create space and integrate. Preparation

[20:44] Medium brush, contrasting colored paint adding the outer field and aura veils. Shiloh demos blending the lines out and in. Field

[30:45] Continuing on to the form, not dominating the brush. Shiloh demos using lots of spray to create drips. Form/Outer Shape

[38:09] Indicate the outer edge of the face without needing to fill it in.  Skin/Face/Body

[41:26] Shiloh demos using a patch of a different color to soften existing shapes. Changing a line

[43:07] Shiloh demos loading a dry brush and using her finger to cluster and build. Marking the inside. Continuing to notice the subtleties.  Stardust Inside

[51:52] Active Visualizations moving out and in through the veils. Exploring local and non local. Journey through the Veils

[0:00] A minute of silence together

[1:19] Connecting with the currency of love. Embrace

[10:04] With a liner brush and a color that represents the path to the house of love, marking a path of dots while connecting with the eternal soulful presence of love. Journey

[15:14] Marking arriving onto the canvas. House of Love

[0:00] Active visualization working with ripples of love, repairing your field. What would keep you from love? Inhabit Love

[8:51] Intuitively make the shape of the barrier in dark. Bring in light color, interrupting the lines. Inviting love in Dissolving the Barrier

[13:00] Use tinted white and  filbert/flat brush to populate the outer layer with love. Stroking in and out,  leaving glow. Like dappled light. Repeat with form layer. And again with the body layer. Bring attention to the edge of the face Weaving a Field of Light

[30:03] Can you remain in a state of loving yourself? Begin a declaration and agreement to honor your own voice. Love Letter

[32:45] A dare to take seven days taking black and white selfies of yourself to become familiar with your own face and the lights and darks.  B/W Selfie Challenge

[36:34] Use dark paint to make the basic shadow shapes from one of your self portrait photos. Before we "make it pretty", sit with the essence how it emerged. Mapping Darks

[46:16] Does anything need adjusting now that the shadows are added? Bringing in a little bit of light from your photo. A challenge of not bringing in too much!  Bring same light to the neck and shoulders. Lights

'There's this thing with faces. As soon as you do something, you know if you like it or not."

Take a series of selfies then use the technology on your phone to make them black-and-white, exaggerating the lights and dark and experimenting. The black-and-white allows you to study lights and darks without worrying about skin color. Try out your different persona personalities and styles. This is where you make yourself as eccentric and strange and beautiful and wacky as you choose to be! This image will form the foundation for the face that you create.

[0:00] What archetype can be revealed? Who are you already? Active imagination journey to the place of intuition.  Inviting Knowing

[10:26] Paint the flow of energy connecting with your place of intuition. Add a primary symbol to represent your way of knowing. Receiving

[24:45] Add in arcs of light referencing your source photo including whites of eyes. Returning with a second highlighting round. Exploring how lights are reflected in the eye. Continuing by balancing out darks, making corrections. Consider adding glaze to integrate. Practicing risking. Illuminating

[0:00] Journey inside the body! Where do your hips want to take you? Claiming embodied pleasure. Invitation into the Body

[15:27] Meta-cognitive one line drawing to ignite energy flow and re-member wholeness. Drawing to Remember Wholeness

Teacher Hat - How might you add meta-cognitive drawing in transition points in your workshops?

[30:29] Mark the crossing of the threshold. Turning on the entire painting! Sparkles of Pleasure

[38:07] Tend the painting with the technique of adding lights along edges, leaving the glow, leaving about 15%.  Demo of adding lights into the eyes. Dappling. Considering bold strokes. Reciprocity of Light

[0:00] Balancing the lights with darks. Demo of adding darks to the openings of the face, where it needs grounding, into intersections. Correcting (when correcting, bring same color to 2 other places on the painting). Diving into Darks

[18:44] Feeling happiness as you bring in your color. Amplifying. Happy Color!

Teacher Hat - How can you include songs to evoke specific feelings in your workshops?

[27:40] Active Imagination connecting with the body. Mother Tongue Threshold of Pleasure

[31:22] Close up of Shiloh's painting and speed demo of her continuing her process and sharing

[0:00] Active Visualization. What is the wisdom that I carry? Take a walk to a tree and listen for wisdom to come through. Called to the Council

[8:30] Bring back a color from the tree. Making small marks while acknowledging what transpired.  Bring an element from the earth onto the Canvas while connecting with your wisdom. Shiloh demos and shares her process with the Orchid. Reminder to make the lines your own even when referencing an illustration. Acknowledgement and Inclusion

"My unique purpose and piece of red thread to the community is to be a stand for you to access your own content and therefore your own consciousness. Turns out it's pretty easy and not so easy at the same time because we're re-patterning ourselves and when you're working on a painting of this magnitude your entire body/consciousness/field are reorganizing themselves to your core intention. I'm over here guiding the inquiries that will spark you and give you greater access...and ultimately you have to find it for yourself."

[43:04] What is your content? What is the container into which that content can flow? Develop your Model and  related Mothertongue writing  Model for Information

[0:00] Active Visualization preparation for presenting your material. Pause to create space to go deeper. Soul Voice

"To matter you have to matter to yourself. And to matter to yourself, especially for women, you need to make things...When you make art, you make yourself matter." 

[5:16] Your story, your image matters. How is your myth transpersonal? In what way to you wish to be heard? Hold you ground and your field will change. Claiming mattering as you tend the color palette. Shiloh demos some color tending. Mattering

[25:30] Shiloh shares about mapping the content of Mystic offering using the orchid as the template. (See images from the resulting epic Legend course below👇)  Tending Wisdom

[0:00] Final highlighting step, tending with a tiny brush. Shiloh demos adding the title and signing. Shiloh shares how her title is connected to her calling. Rest and then ask how you can bring the wisdom into your life. Prayer and Outline

[6:51] Completing Active Visualization. Feel seen, heard. You have arrived.  Title and Action

[10:10] A Deep Look at Shiloh's painting 

[11:43] Holding a sacred moment of completion. Healed Enough. Finale

Dear Ones,

Greetings on your day! This is my new painting, Constellation of Wisdom.

Today I am sharing a story I wrote called the Cosmic Bowl. This one is quite special, for a Native American Elder in our community. This came through for her on a spontaneous video - shared with almost no editing from the transcription. Get a cup of tea and enjoy!

If you are part of our circle of Intentional Creativity - then this is for you...I am connected to you as you are connected to me. I am called to this circle as you are called to this circle. I am responsible for my piece of the red thread as you are for yours. I witness you as you witness me. ~ Shiloh Sophia

COSMIC BOWL - GRANDMOTHER’S MESSAGE

The little girl asked Grandmother, "Do we all come in with a special cosmic bowl?"

And Grandmother said, "All the children come in with a special cosmic bowl given to them. It's shaped from the breast of their mother to represent where they nursed off of the Milky Way. Not all children's bowls are the same or the same size or do the same thing," said Grandmother.

And the little girl said, "Grandmother, can you tell me about my bowl?"

And she said, "Let me see, child, let's listen together. Ah, your bowl has been shaped to carry much. You'll be given this bowl of wisdom and energy earlier than most and you'll know about it in a way that others don't. Because of this, there may be times of feeling isolated or as if it's too much to bear, but don't worry, grandmothers, your grandmothers will be with you and you will be able to hold it. Every prayer, every ceremony will be imprinted into the bowl, and will be coded into reality through how you carry your bowl of stars and light and shadows throughout your life. This bowl is very sacred and must be treated with tenderness. The bowl can break. The bowl can only carry so much and the bowl isn't designed for certain kinds of energies."

"What kinds of energies, Grandmother, won't fit in the bowl?"

"Dear one, there is a time coming in the future where there are energies that will come that will threaten to break the bowl of many girl children of wisdom. And you will try and you will try to make this bowl anew so that it can be a filter of sorts, for the energy that's coming through, but it is too much toxicity. The bowl that you have been given is not designed to be a filtration system, is not designed to carry or transmute the toxicity of others. Is not intended to be a place to carry or store pain. This bowl is porous. It does have a capacity for energies to come and to go and to move and to be healed. But at any point, if it becomes stuck or stopped, you must release what is held in the bowl. And if you forget, I will remind you, I will remind you what is yours to carry. There will also be a time when the bowl that you are carrying is complete with the way it has been carrying.

In the old, old times, your grandmother's grandmothers carried their bowls differently, for it was a different time.There were different levels of things to work with. We knew a time, a great and terrible time was coming where the old magic and the old medicine wouldn't work in the same way. And those who carry the lineage would do everything they could to bring the wisdom forward and everything they did was more than enough, even if you didn't see all of the results of all of the prayers and ceremony. Every single thing was imprinted in your bowl and was translated to the cosmos. And every single thing has helped you, so many more than you can imagine, of your kind and of all the kinds of creatures and beings.

You have done your work. When it is time to set down this bowl, your challenge will be to know when that is. It will come at a time when it feels unbearable. You may even be tempted to believe that what you have imprinted upon this bowl of creation didn't work. But let me assure you, child, what you did to help worked. For without what you have done we wouldn't have even made it this far. But I'm warning you. I'm telling you, when it is time to set down this bowl, you must indeed not only empty it of all the things that you have carried that do not belong to you and your lineage uniquely, you will have to literally empty it. This can be hard on the body. Then you will set your bowl down and no longer pick up that vessel for transmutation. For now, your body has become the bowl and is not intended for certain kinds of work, which the body is not designed for."

"How, Grandma," says the little girl, "How do I set down the bowl?"

"Well, it's a ceremony just like everything else I've taught you. First you must agree not to carry and transmute the way that you have been. Even if you were capable of doing that in the past. Do you agree?"

"Yes, Grandma, I agree."

"You must first agree to set down the way you've been carrying it. This will seem counterintuitive and yet everything has a cycle and a season and the season for the way that you've been carrying and holding is now complete. So you agree for us to set down the bowl? And from here, there is prayer. We call upon the Spirit of the Ancestors and the Creators of this land and all good people. We call upon the spirit of the energy of the feminine and of those who serve earth in her truest form. We request as this bowl of holding and carrying the pain and toxicity of others is set down that this girl, this child, this woman, this elder is set free. That this would be removed, extracted from her physical body cell by cell by cell, removing toxicity and replacing it with the goodness of star and soil. Removing the toxicity and extraction from the physical body and the cellular structure. Now we request that the mind, the consciousness of this child, this woman, this elder be cleared of the carrying of anything that is not specifically and directly related to the wisdom she carries and that of her Ancestors. We ask that her mind be cleared of needing to hold anything that does not specifically belong to her as a unique identity. The mind must also agree to no longer carry, hold or transmute the toxicity of an environment which does not have compatibility with the mind of the woman. We ask that the field, that the energy, all of the information that is coded around the physical body and the mind be cleared, absolutely cleared."

And the Grandmother picked up her giant smudge stick in her owl feather and she cleared and she cleared and she cleared and she cleared. She said, "Child, Your field must match your body. Your field must match your mind and be clear, be pure, no longer needing to hold on to the stories that do not serve who you are and earth and your people. You hold the truest story as the pure resonance and absolute coherence."

And the little girl, now an elder, agrees to let go of the way that she's been working in a sacred manner, as a spirit warrior, laying down the shield and the sword and the way that it has been used and stepping fully into the sacredness of the vessel designed only for her and for her close beloveds and for those that she trusts.

"And now, child," says Grandmother, "it is time for us to clear your heart. To clear your heart of the past and of the shadows and anything it's carrying about that old patriarchy, no longer needed. The work that you were here to do is cycling into a new phase of evolution, a new and stronger vessel is being created but you must agree not to use it the way that you have used it before. This is something new. It is something that is needed. It is something that many do not ever arrive at, but you, you have arrived here. You have the capacity to hold the grace and the love and the wisdom without the fight. Not many make it to this place, but you must agree from the wisdom of the grandmothers to let go of the way the warrior has worked within your system and inviting the grace and peace, which is the truth of the mothers of this land and the mothers of the soil and the mothers of the creatures and the mothers of the cosmos.

We are here to support you. It is essential for you to believe that you have done a good work, that life would be different without you and that the next work is in front of you and a strengthening of your vessel for the work at hand. You are much needed and we have called you and this ceremony is here now to guide you to the next place here on earth, with your kin who love you.”

And the little girl who became the woman, who became the elder, remembered. And with that remembering the great clearing of her entire system, including ancestral wounds, was cleared. She inhabited fully her own space as a free woman, representing freedom for all women and for all her people. A symbol, an energy, a woman, a teacher, a guide who shows us the way to not overflow our bowls with pain and toxicity, to not transmute the suffering of others and our physical vessel. And to know that the love and the light that we actually carry is now what is being embodied.

The old cycle is complete today and the new cycle, the new threshold on earth is before you. With your feet on the earth and your head in the cosmos and your heart surrounded by the hearts of women. This ceremony has taken place throughout the cosmos, throughout the earth, has been witnessed, has been completed and the next evolution of healing is beginning right now.

Aho, aho.

All our Relations, hear our prayer. Mitakuye Oyasin Amen.

~ Shiloh Sophia