Letter from their Red Thread Cafe #920: The Most Gorgeous Word
Dear Ones, it's Shiloh Sophia and instead of writing the letter today, I'm going to just speak to you and see what comes out. Today I wanted to bring our awareness to one of the most gorgeous words we can possibly imagine, as a human being participating in this life, where it occurs for us like we don't have this much of the time, but the word is CHOICE. Remembering that we have CHOICE can sometimes be challenging, because truly, there are so many things that are going on that make us feel like we don't have choice.
When I've worked with women who have had a really hard lives, one of the things they say is: I didn't choose to come here and I have to keep choosing to stay. When people have experienced trauma, most of the time they don't experience that trauma as a choice. Although choices that they made may have led up to that, maybe, maybe not.
Do we choose our parents?
Do we fall in love with someone who seems lovely for years and then suddenly turns violent?
Can we be at choice for all of that?
We look at these really hard things and our desire is to believe we're at choice every step of the way, but because we don't actually have control over others, and even sometimes ourselves, choice is this really delicious and challenging word.
What we do have is relationship to choice, but what we don't always have is getting to choose the circumstances that we find ourselves in. Even with the best laid plans we can possibly imagine. Even in the most informed choices, stuff's still gonna happen that we didn't choose. But at what point do we ultimately make a decision that we can choose our relationship to the stuff that just happens that we don't seem to have any control over, and especially choose our relationship with the areas of our life that we do have. Some say there are lots of areas where we have some say, but, it's not everywhere, and it's not all the time, but I believe it is more than we think it is.
I speculate this is because so much feels like we're not choosing it. And whether that's taxes, health insurance, familial DNA line, where we got brought up, the spirituality that we got brought up with, affiliations that our family has or our partners and decisions that we've made in the past that are impacting us many, many, many years later. For people with children, your whole lifetime, a choice to create a child or to make love (or not choose to make love, yet conceive) could result in a relationship for the rest of your life. So there's so many things that we don't almost have enough consciousness around, like we not really trained in awareness enough to make truly conscious choices from the time we're younger.
And so what do we do, when we are at a certain point in our journey where we've been kind of hanging out on this planet for a while,
We definitely feel under the influence of so many factors in the culture that we're in
We feel often victimized by the stuff we just have to do to not be an outlaw and meet the basic requirements of being a human being participating in life.
We can lose our pathway to understanding we have choice.
The way I see this operating the most in the women that we work with is basically not feeling like they are self-expressed. Self-Expression, I feel is the way that the soul communicates with us, it is one of the ways. But it's a big way because it's a way that information from inside gets moved forward through flow to the felt sensual, somatic world out here.
Self-expression to me is a huge part of getting to know ourselves
Getting to know where we do have choice
We can shift our relationship with choice
We can get to know ourselves
We can keep expressing information when it gets trapped inside of ourselves.
And yet, self-expression is a choice. Now, it's not a choice that we have it. Everybody has a capacity to be self-expressed.
What we have is a choice of how we express it
Where we express it
What mediums we express it through
Who we are with as we express
Where is it safe to express what the form will be
Will it be consistent practice?
Here at Musea, The Center for Intentional Creativity® we call creativity and self-expression a Path of Practice because it's not some random thing that happens. It's actually absolutely necessary for our wellbeing to have a path of practice to say, you know what? No matter what else is going on in my life,
I choose me.
So I created this really simple affirmation just to remind you that you do have choice. And that self-expression is one of the most potent choices that you have. And you have it every day all the time, even for one minute at a time.
You could choose to move your body
You could choose to draw a picture in the air
You could choose to play air guitar
You could choose to sing out loud
You could choose to stretch and let it be self-expression
Or you could choose to find two hours or half an hour once a week.
It really is a choice. And this brings us to time - choosing that this is your time.
So here's the affirmation I created for us.
I choose me
I have everything I need
I design the path forward
This is my time for me
I am enough as I am
Just watch me!
And in saying this and sharing this with you, I'm not assuming that you literally have everything you need in your life, but in relationship to self-expression, do you…
Do you have your body?
Do you have a pen and paper?
Do you have a device you can play music on?
Do you have a canvas?
Do you have time for a walk, or time for a shower?
All of these are places where you actually have everything you need in that moment to be self-expressed.
That you get to choose yourself. It's a choice you may not want to all the time, but if you don't, who will you design the path forward? That doesn't mean you're not gonna have pattern interrupts by yourself and by others, but you do design it. If you choose, you design your relationship to it. You make decisions all the time. Will you be at cause for them? Will you say I design? You are the curator of how you navigate what you create, and all the things you don't create that you're just dealing with. You still design your relationship to them. You don't design if they happen, you don't create everything in your whole world. But you do design how you move forward in relationship to those things because you, you have a choice. It's your choice. If you decide that this is my time for me in mylife, and I'm not saying it's easy because it hasn't been easy for me and I know all this intellectually, somatically and spiritually. I've been on the same path of practice for over 27 years.
I know that when I don't claim this is my time for me, that my time gets taken up with other things that are not for me. I have to keep choosing. Last year I worked seven days a week. I thought I could get at least up to dates with that are behind. It didn't work. And this year I'm trying to back down from that by declaring this is my time for me. Exercising every single day, making food choices every single day, taking creative time every single day, choosing to speak to you right now. This is my time. I have a million things I need to be doing, but this is my time for me. But in my case, my time for me is often sharing my time with you. I have to choose this every single day. Especially look at when I look at schedules like my Wednesdays and Thursdays where there's like 10 minutes in between meetings and most of 'em are virtual. I wanna be with the people I'm gathering with.
I have to keep saying, this is my time for me. And sometimes it's three minutes and I savor three whole minutes. And so it feels like there's not enough time and not enough of me. But I have to just keep saying I am enough as I am. Even if it doesn't, as if there's enough time and enough of me to go around. I have to keep telling myself I'm enough as I am because I'm choosing my relationship - and then just watch me. That's the attitude part. That's the savvy, saucy, prowess part. That's even if I'm on a zoom, putting on a crazy hat and some sunglasses that's being in circles and deciding to not just be quiet, but actually speak up. That's me showing up in the best way that I can and shining and not dimming. Just watch me, is the muse part is the playful part. Just watch me watch what I will do with my three minutes or my five minutes. Watch me also is sometimes - I need a witness. Did you see what I did? Did you see what I said? Do you see what I'm capable of? Watch what I did. Witness me is the beautiful way of saying it. Watch me, is the attitude, the little bit of saucy part that I love.
And I love watching women who are having some attitudes. So lemme’ just get that clear. The playfulness, is the Muse. So I'm coming into your inbox today with a little time for tea with the muse, which e centralizes everything I just said - Tea with the Muse. I choose me and time with the muse. In this moment of having this tea or this coffee, I definitely have everything. I need tea with the muse, I sit down, I create, I'm designing that time. This is time, this is my time for me, yeah, time with the muse choosing I am enough as I am. If I'm not enough as I am, I'm gonna keep seeking outward. To you what the muse is seeking inward for self-expression? Just watch me. Well, sometimes that means I take a photo of my coffee or my kitties and I share it with you and I ask you to do the same.
So dear ones, today, I'm inviting you to choice. The invitation for self-expression today is to take time for you. What way will you take time for you? Whether it's five minutes or five hours, what self-expression will you choose? Let them Muse Choose right now after listening or reading this, if you let the Muse, choose, what self-expression you want for today…
What is it? What do you need?
I'm sending you all so much love.
I look forward to seeing you in the next circle.
Share with me, what did the Muse choose?
Much Love,
Shiloh Sophia
The Most Gorgeous Word I Can Imagine