Yes, invite your muse to join you for 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. Slow down, show up, sit down. What questions pop into your mind? Is
there something you have been grappling with that could use a hot pink epiphany? Note – you don’t need to choose answerable questions. Consider an inquiry with no known or reachable answer. Why, you could ask your Muse – ‘How do I gain intuitive access to my own thoughts?’ Lay out a piece of paper and begin to doodle, while repeating the question and moving the pen. Imagine she is informing your hand as you move it across the page. Be a space where fresh ideas begin to emerge…
Whether or not you actually do the tea ceremony or pull out the art supplies, while simply reading the paragraph above your brain exited the default setting status for a little bit. That is the power of imagination!
The practice of inquiry combined with intentional creativity and focused on accessing the hidden worlds within us is hot, hot, hot terrain! Who doesn’t want to experience what they REALLY think, feel, and know? As you continue to read, just notice if images emerge in your consciousness. Most of this is about just being open to what arises, and showing up for the journey.
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.
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 escape us.
Inquiry is the intentional action that engages this happening and activates the brain to move into a potential ‘not known’ space, instead of into the default of that which is already known. By being open to that which is not known, new knowing arises along pathways not available 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 the evidence which is “safer” – ie known, or connected to a past story. In this specialized muse inquiry we are intentionally looking for ideas that are not based on past experience. Therefore we are ‘reaching’ into the future space that hasn’t happened yet. POW!
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 have the answer to.
The sacredness of “I wonder” can take you on a journey that you have never had. 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.
Imagination is more important than knowledge – Albert Einstein
Add chocolate as needed. – Shiloh Sophia
What a great Cover! Certainly got my attention! Well, of course it would, because this beautiful and wise creature, Shiloh Sophia, is my daughter. As the mother reading her article, once again, my jaw drops as it has been doing since she arrived on Planet Earth, as I stare at her and say, “Who are you really?! Come on…you can tell me, I’m your Mama… ” Now she has introduced me to this incredible magazine! Blessings on all you are providing to nurture our aspirations!
Such a breath of fresh air <3 Thank you for this reminder on the power and potential of ritual and deep listening. It is often that my dance with ritual is spent reciting mantra or praying. I am reminded that LISTENING is just as important if not more! And YAS! I am going to buy Tea with the Midnight Muse right meow. It is time I step up my heart work <3 Thank you for your visionary work!
It has been absolutely amazing, and so rewarding, to observe the results produced in and by those who have shown up for the journey and the Inquiries, and the Tea with the Midnight Muse, over the year’s of Shiloh Sophia’s teachings and courses!