2. is there all there is?

3. who is god?

4. what am I supposed to be doing?

5. what is my voice/art?

Blessed Solstice to you. This is a meditation practice I am working on in my upcoming book and I wanted to share it with you for Solstice,

Many blessings,

Shiloh Sophia

Heart of Gold: Meditation Practice

This is a 3-5 minute meditation to do first thing in the morning or at sunset. It only takes a couple of minutes, and it makes a world of difference and you can do it as many times as you want adding new things are you are inspired.

Say hello to the Divine:
The first thing is to connect with your own source, God, light. Just make a connection. Could just be saying, Hello. And as you do this become present to your breath, allowing your breath to just breath you.

One: Waking up your heart
First in your imagination – Hello Heart

Start from your feet at an anchor point below the ground, making the bottom point of the heart.

Then imagine the heart to arcs up on both sides and as it does it is activating both sides of your body and brain.

The heart is reaching up to heaven and then coming down to your crown the top of your head making the middle point of your heart.

See yourself and imagine you are surrounded by a golden heart.

Draw the light down from the heart middle to your own heart and up from the ground so that they meet in the middle of your own heart.

When they meet, allow light to come out in all directions from your heart, waking your heart up.

Two:  Waking up your body
Second in the physical – Hello Body

Gently Squat or bend down touching the earth.
Start from your feet at an anchor point below the ground making the bottom point of the heart.

Raise your arms up and out in tandem as if you are drawing the heart from the tips of your fingers, reaching up and up as if in praise and stretch! Allow the heart to arc up on both sides and as it does it is activating both sides of your body and brain.

As the heart is reaching up to heaven and then coming down to your crown the top of your head making the middle point of your heart your hands are making the same motion coming into prayer pose at your forehead.

See yourself, your body and whole being surrounded the golden heart of the Divine.

Move your hands still in prayer pose to your heart. Draw the light down from the heart middle to your own heart. Then open your palms, drawing the light and strength up from the ground so that they meet in the middle of your own heart where your hands are still in prayer pose, but now open as if holding light between them. Allow light to come out in all directions from your heart to your whole body, waking your body up.

Three: Waking up your Spirit – Hello Spirit
Repeat steps one and two with presence, allowing yourself

to feel connected to the Divine. This time when your hands come to hover in in front of your heart, put your hands in the middle on your spiritual heart in the center on your own body or cross your arms over your chest. First feel for your hearbeat. And then outloud  say Shhhhhhhhh…..Shhhhhh……Shhhhhhhh or Ahhhhhhhhhh Ahhhhhhhh Ahhhhhh.

Listen in sweetness and quiet and invite your heart to speak to you.

22 Questions for Moving On by Shiloh Sophia

1. What is it I am committed to starting?

2. What is it I am committed to finishing?

3. Who is it I am excited about being?

4. Who is it in me I am excited about letting go?

5. Where is it I will spend my time?

6. Where is it I will spend less of my time?

7. Who will I reach out to and connect with?

8. Who will I surrender and let go?

9. What is it I feel really good about?

10. What is it I need to forgive myself for?

11. What abundance am I going to bring forth?

12. What excess am I going to release?

13. How will I shine my light in the world?

14. How will I stop hiding my light?

15. How will I strengthen my relationship with Spirit?

16. What excuses will I no longer use?

17. What is it my soul longs to express?

18. What is no longer serving my soul?

19. How will I care for my body?

20. How will I no longer treat myself?

21. What was the theme for my 2010?

22. What will the theme be for my 2011?
Let yourself be silently drawn

By the stronger pull of what

You truly love

Rumi

22 Questions

Ten Ideas for a Creating A Meaningful Holiday Celebration

Dear Ones,

Bright Holiday Greetings to YOU! This is a repost of the Thanksgiving ideas but thought I would share it with you again. The biggest thing I want to say this HOLIDAY is that each of us can choose to bring the sacred into our lives. AND it is a choice, to not just let it go by in busy-ness, but to really make it our own.

Our home is a sacred place that we blessed to share with others. Setting the energy of the home, and the day, and your mood will do wonders for the festive environment, and the experience folks have when they share this day with you. I am speaking from experience, and my family knows when they are coming to my house for a holiday/holy day, they are going to experience something unusual, and now they are used to it and I think secretly welcome it. The biggest gift I think we can give on our Holidays is gratitude, and bringing the spirit of gratitude to the day.

In my family we have everyone from rednecks to witches to Christians to Yogis so while I cannot please everyone, most agree that gratitude is a supreme experience!!

Here are some simple ideas to bring in the sacred, which may seem challenging at first because we think folks won’t want to do them. Well not everyone will, but some will, and that will be enough. And it is a part of making this day, and all your holy days, your own. Hopefully one of these ideas will inspire you – or inspire you to make up your own ritual for your Holiday feast. I am not suggesting doing all of them, maybe just one…

1. Prayer Bowl:

After folks have arrived and have drinks and are settled in, enroll one of the younger guests to pass around pens and paper and a prayer bowl and ask folks to write down what that they are grateful for. Later in the evening – invite folks outside and burn/offer the prayers together, or do it in the fireplace, and either read one anothers or just put them in one by one.

By having one of the younger generation do it, they feel really important and good to participate and make adults do this, and also adults are less likely to say no to a younger person asking such a sweet thing of them.

2. Gratitude Circle:

Call a circle right before dinner to give thanks. Then once you are seated, take gentle control. and invite each person to share what they are grateful for as you all eat dinner. You start, and have one person next to you who is ready to share and is not surprised about this. (ignore any grumbling and forge ahead, it is so much more interesting than sports, or the weather or little Sally’s gymnastic class)

You may experience resistance at first, but they will get over it, and the table will be filled with love.

3. All My Relations Altar:

Set up an altar in a central place and put up photos of living family and well as family gone before. If you don’t have a photo you can write a list. And most especially write a list of who is coming, with the words, I Am Thankful For: Put out pens and paper and invite folks to participate. Whether they do or don’t they will see it and the spirit of blessing is there in physical form.

If it is not too late for you – you can also send a quick e-mail or phone call inviting folks to bring photos or momentos for the altar – or call it a family table if the word altar is too challenging.

4. Four Directions Sacred Environment

Create your environment with a sense of sacred space. Put candles everywhere, even if it is the daytime. Right by the candles float little tiny flowers from the yard or from a store bouquet on bowls of water or in little vases. Then put a feather, or something representing air if you want to. Then you have all the elements on your altar. No one else needs to know that this is – but they will see it and it will bless them. Do this if you can right before guests arrive and say a blessing around your home and a prayer to make yourself a wonderful host.

This can also in it’s own way, bring awareness to this holiday which for many has a mixed meaning-and while this is not the topic of my post – it bears researching and in my family we often talk about the “real” meaning for us and what really may have happened.

5. I Am Grateful Creative Space

Light candles and bring the spirit of beauty everywhere. Set up a table for creative expression. Get out pens, paper, glitter glue, crayons, scissors, hole punch, yarm and construction paper. Make time to start your own before guests arrive – if possible find a wall to hang up the art made that day and make a sign: Gratitude  GALLERY and the date, or your family name or something to make it special. Folks will naturally go on over, kids will be happy and it will create a playful thankful experience in your home.

If you don’t have a basket or drawer yet for theses supplies – now is the time. Do not go a week longer without having simple art supplies at your fingertips! Some families have written me that they also photocopy out of my journals and put those out for kids and adults to color!

6. Chocolate’ or Like Water For Chocolate – Contemplative Cooking

Sit down prior to cooking and write out your menu, then choose a theme or love topic for each menu item. Then when you are cooking it, say that prayer or a sentence regarding that essence which you are imparting to the food. Keep a notebook while you are cooking so you can come up with alternate new name and descriptions for the food. Then when you present the food you can tell the story of cooking it. Don’t forget to add chocolate to the gravy – just a little. And roses to some dish as well.

If you have not watched either of the two movies listed above – for a while – do that soon, and they are also good late night movies after dinner and guests are settling down or leaving.

7. Giving Thanks to Source, Our Creator and to your family.

If you have a chance, prior to guests arriving or even the day before, get out your journal or computer and write a prayer of gratitude. Make a list of 30 things you are thankful for.

8. Gratitude Walk

Taking a walk as a family is a wonderful experience. The leaves crunching beneath your feet and the smell of fire in the hearth or pumpkin pie in the oven wafting through the air. Walk through the streets of your town or neighborhood….notice all the beauty and greet everyone with cheer! In this case folks will fall into easy conversation with each other and it will still be a group experience while giving individual the chance to check in even sometimes more privately than in the house.

9. Giving Thanks to your Guests

During dinner, and afterward, or during the walk, make a point to not be too busy “doing” to not take time to tell each guest how important they are to you – and why and in what way. It only has to take a few minutes per person and it is usually such a blessing for that person – and for you.

1o.Listen to Your Own Heart

Remember to be present – to continue to bring your awareness to you own heart and life while everyone is doing whatever it is they are doing. In all of these it is easy to be too busy or lose your nerve. Choose one today and begin to get yourself ready by imagining yourself being brave and telling your family how much it would mean to you for you all to do: fill in the blank with ritual of your choice.This day is for everyone, but it is ALSO for you. Remember you this Holy Day of thanks…

Perhaps most important of all for a truly blessed holiday is CHOOSING WHO YOU ARE GOING TO BE as a HOST – HOW and WHO you want to show up as. Consider your guests arriving, how will you greet them? Consider the folks you usually have tension with, how will you, from the start create that as something different this year?

How can you radiate peace, and not do too much? How will you ask for help and not show that you are stressed? How do you want to be perceived? Often we feel framed in advance by friends and family – as if they already have us figured out. Who cares? You can continue to transform and be who you want to be. A great trick is to choose powerfully, non-reactivity all day long.

Blessings to you this Holy Day, the Return of the Light, and the Birth of Christ.

With love,

Shiloh Sophia

Ten Ideas for a Truly Thankful Thanksgiving
for the one throwing the Party!

Our home is a sacred place that we blessed to share with others. Setting the energy of the home, and the day, and your mood will do “thankful wonders” to the environment, and the experience folks have when they share this day with you. I am speaking from experience, and my family knows when they are coming to my house for a holiday/holy day, they are going to experience something unusual, and now they are used to it and I think secretly welcome it.

In my family we have everyone from rednecks to witches to Christians to Yogis so while I cannot please everyone, most agree that gratitude is a supreme experience!!

Here are some simple ideas to bring in the sacred, which may seem challenging at first because we think folks won’t want to do them. Well not everyone will, but some will, and that will be enough. And it is a part of making this day, and all your holy days, your own. Hopefully one of these ideas will inspire you – or inspire you to make up your own ritual for your Thanksgiving Gratitude feast. I am not suggesting doing all of them, maybe just one…

1. Prayer Bowl:

After folks have arrived and have drinks and are settled in, enroll one of the younger guests to pass around pens and paper and a prayer bowl and ask folks to write down what that they are grateful for. Later in the evening – invite folks outside and burn/offer the prayers together, or do it in the fireplace, and either read one anothers or just put them in one by one.

By having one of the younger generation do it, they feel really important and good to participate and make adults do this, and also adults are less likely to say no to a younger person asking such a sweet thing of them.

2. Gratitude Circle:

Call a circle right before dinner to give thanks. Then once you are seated, take gentle control. and invite each person to share what they are grateful for as you all eat dinner. You start, and have one person next to you who is ready to share and is not surprised about this. (ignore any grumbling and forge ahead, it is so much more interesting than sports, or the weather or little Sally’s gymnastic class)

You may experience resistance at first, but they will get over it, and the table will be filled with love.

3. All My Relations Altar:

Set up an altar in a central place and put up photos of living family and well as family gone before. If you don’t have a photo you can write a list. And most especially write a list of who is coming, with the words, I Am Thankful For: Put out pens and paper and invite folks to participate. Whether they do or don’t they will see it and the spirit of blessing is there in physical form.

If it is not too late for you – you can also send a quick e-mail or phone call inviting folks to bring photos or momentos for the altar – or call it a family table if the word altar is too challenging.

4. Four Directions Sacred Environment

Create your environment with a sense of sacred space. Put candles everywhere, even if it is the daytime. Right by the candles float little tiny flowers from the yard or from a store bouquet on bowls of water or in little vases. Then put a feather, or something representing air if you want to. Then you have all the elements on your altar. No one else needs to know that this is – but they will see it and it will bless them. Do this if you can right before guests arrive and say a blessing around your home and a prayer to make yourself a wonderful host.

This can also in it’s own way, bring awareness to this holiday which for many has a mixed meaning-and while this is not the topic of my post – it bears researching and in my family we often talk about the “real” meaning for us and what really may have happened.

Family feast table from last year

5. I Am Thankful Creative Space

Light candles and bring the spirit of beauty everywhere. Set up a table for creative expression. Get out pens, paper, glitter glue, crayons, scissors, hole punch, yarm and construction paper. Make time to start your own before guests arrive – if possible find a wall to hang up the art made that day and make a sign: THANKFUL GALLERY and the date, or your family name or something to make it special. Folks will naturally go on over, kids will be happy and it will create a playful thankful experience in your home.

If you don’t have a basket or drawer yet for theses supplies – now is the time. Do not go a week longer without having simple art supplies at your fingertips! Some families have written me that they also photocopy out of my journals and put those out for kids and adults to color!

6. Chocolate’ or Like Water For Chocolate – Contemplative Cooking

Sit down prior to cooking and write out your menu, then choose a theme or love topic for each menu item. Then when you are cooking it, say that prayer or a sentence regarding that essence which you are imparting to the food. Keep a notebook while you are cooking so you can come up with alternate new name and descriptions for the food. Then when you present the food you can tell the story of cooking it. Don’t forget to add chocolate to the gravy – just a little. And roses to some dish as well.

If you have not watched either of the two movies listed above – for a while – do that soon, and they are also good late night movies after dinner and guests are settling down or leaving.

7. Giving Thanks to Source, Our Creator and to your family.

If you have a chance, prior to guests arriving or even the day before, get out your journal or computer and write a prayer of thanksgiving. Make a list of 30 things you are thankful for.

8. Gratitude Walk

Taking a walk as a family is a wonderful experience. The leaves crunching beneath your feet and the smell of fire in the hearth or pumpkin pie in the oven wafting through the air. Walk through the streets of your town or neighborhood….notice all the beauty and greet everyone with cheer! In this case folks will fall into easy conversation with each other and it will still be a group experience while giving individual the chance to check in even sometimes more privately than in the house.

9. Giving Thanks to your Guests

During dinner, and afterward, or during the walk, make a point to not be too busy “doing” to not take time to tell each guest how important they are to you – and why and in what way. It only has to take a few minutes per person and it is usually such a blessing for that person – and for you.

1o.Listen to Your Own Heart

Remember to be present – to continue to bring your awareness to you own heart and life while everyone is doing whatever it is they are doing. In all of these it is easy to be too busy or lose your nerve. Choose one today and begin to get yourself ready by imagining yourself being brave and telling your family how much it would mean to you for you all to do: fill in the blank with ritual of your choice.This day is for everyone, but it is ALSO for you. Remember you this Holy Day of thanks…

Perhaps most important of all for a truly thankful thanksgiving is CHOOSING WHO YOU ARE GOING TO BE as a HOST – HOW and WHO you want to show up as. Consider your guests arriving, how will you greet them? Consider the folks you usually have tension with, how will you, from the start create that as something different this year?

How can you radiate peace, and not do too much? How will you ask for help and not show that you are stressed? How do you want to be perceived? Often we feel framed in advance by friends and family – as if they already have us figured out. Who cares? You can continue to transform and be who you want to be. A great trick is to choose powerfully, non-reactivity all day long.

Blessings to you this Holy Day of Thankfulness!

Many of us feel compelled to share something about the history/origins of Thanksgiving to put it in context. We can do this through mindfulness, and care, and compassion without serving guilt sandwiches. Folks are usually eager to learn about it, when it is done with a spirit of caring and education This is part of reclaiming the Holiday or Holy Days for ourselves, by understanding the origins and traditions, while at the same time making up new ones to make them our OWN.

Thus you will be enriched in all things and in every way, so that you can be generous…

2 Corinthians

Dear Ones,

I woke up with this list morning thinking of all of you. Just like the other day when I was the beach and touched the water and prayed for you. (See Holy Grail of Healing).

I am thinking of ten million people I do not know, and the ones I do, and feeling unreasonable love and hope. I know this year has been something else, but I cannot help but feel hopeful. I am endlessly and overly optimistic – despite the statistics I continue to believe in absolute possibility. I cannot help myself.

I am a Walking Praise for all that is…

Yummie

A praise for all that is sweet

Kind

Gentle and beautiful

For how my kitties sit on my feet when I write

For how my mother organizes dishes on a shelf

Grateful too for the hard times that have made me grateful

and made me rely on God and the Holy Spirit instead of myself

Grateful for my family – and for the Cosmic Cowgirls, sisterhood of my soul

Grateful for the earth and her fruit – and for this crisp fall day

I am Walking Praise for all my relations and my Ancestors

Thankful for roses in the winter and for a backyard bathed in Fall

Thankful for the cup of coffee I am making with cream and cinnamon

Being thankful for what I have is good. And it is not that I do not know, like all of you know, that there are many who cannot eat well this Thanksgiving and do not have what they need. And I am mindful of the situation in the world, while at the same time beyond grateful for what I have. Celebrating our good fortune and blessings is an important part of the journey on earth – and I believe it adds to the collective field of happiness that helps knit the world together. So, if we are able, let us celebrate.

And for anyone who is reading this right now and you have no one, and you are sad and alone, I send my prayers this moment. And I encourage you to get a journal or some paper and be creative. Light a candle if you have one and clear off a space to sit. Creativity is medicine for a sorrowing soul. Let the sadness speak. Let the tragedy have her voice. And then, when you have said all there is to say – still, write what there is to be grateful for.

I know folks are saying, don’t shop on the day after Thanksgiving – and that all makes sense. I got it. And, I am a shop keeper and I will be OPEN at Electric Rose, being mindful, and celebrating!

Bless all of you from my home to yours!

Love,

Shiloh

p.s. if you have been with me a while you know I repost some of this yearly…but there are always new ideas woven in.

At all times and for everything giving thanks… Ephesians

Me, Sue Hoya and long time dear Friend Susan last Holiday time...

There is something about the attention of a cat that makes you feel loved. You know how when they lay on you and you don’t get up to go pee or answer the phone because you don’t want to move them. They make you feel special. Good friends are like that too, if their knee or arm is just so, against yours, or their head is on your shoulder, it is just so precious you don’t want to move to disturb the sweetness.

Well all of my kitties before now, if I moved my body. They moved, and quicker than I would have liked. Come on kitties, learn ‘transition from cuddle’ techniques which are no sudden movements (this is also true with lovers). Now I have Santiago who rides my shoulders. And, when I move he doesn’t move or he just adjusts like liquid kitty, even to the point of rolling off and not even opening his eyes. What pleasure I get from him being not alarmed at my movements. I work from my home office studio/see clients/paint/do coaching calls and he is just with me all day keeping me company and purring me through. And, riding my shoulders again. Even if I get mad at him, and yes sometimes yell at him a little when he is scratching my blue jeans like a post or trying to chew up my cowgirl boots while on my feet – he gets back on my shoulders in a minute as if we never had a fight at all. He is, by the way, worthy of the title bad kitty because he is such a rascal I am baffled by it, like digging in the garbage and the toilet paper roll and then eating my food almost right out of my mouth. He doesn’t mind the spray bottle, loves to get into water and well. I have to lock him up when I have company like the other night I had 8 women for my new cream of mushroom soup recipe and he was out of control.

A kitty blessing

He keeps my studio days full of life. He also paw paints, of course. And he teaches me things about not being alarmed by sudden movements in my world, moving with the flow of things, and, in essence getting back on the bucking bronco of life. I am his bronco.

He makes me feel loved and keeps the air fluffed. Funny thing, his affection makes me feel – worth. Like I am worth his time. We all know pets are medicine and that they are healers – for example in this one a while back where he is giving his big sister Chiquita a healing. So what does this have to do with questions of worth – artists are like this, we ride a thought to its essence.

Here are five questions of worth to consider. Really it is a little journal assignment to remind you how wonderful you are – do you have the time? Perhaps you can make the time…get out your journal or open a doc and jot down some notes, it will take 20 minutes if you don’t try to think too hard, just write what comes up. Or meditate on it in your heart…

5 Questions of Self Worth and 5 Creative Practices – write five things per question

What do I value about myself?

What do others I love value about me?

What stories about me am I willing to give up about not being worthy?

When do I feel the “BEST” about me?

What is my affirmation of self worth?

I hope you take the time to do this – it is GOOD to check as the critic and what my friend’s Christine Arylo and Amy Ahlers call the inner mean girl, can sometimes take up too much space. Tell those negative ones to STEP BACK – a woman of worth coming through, a hips swinging and truth flinging woman of power.

I won’t be posting much more this week as one of my dreams is coming true – goodie goodie – to teach one of my books as a Train-the-Trainer, Her Evolution. Keep me in your prayers as I step into a higher level of my own leadership by calling women together who are also ready to teach…This is what I feel is needed, us to realize our own worth, call our own circles and collaborate with kittens on self love.

But first, a trip to the ocean today with one of my best friends, he is bringing coffee and bagels and I am bringing the poetry….I will blow you all a kiss and feel the water with my hands for you…

Blessings to you,

Shiloh and Santiago

A Word from the Art Doctor…
sharing a practice for clearing old perceptions and claiming some new ones.

A remedy from the Art Doctor, in the event you have not yet REALLY taken a day or two to examine your thoughts and beliefs lately, is to take one whole day for Visionary Shifting.

Make sure your phone and computer are off, and that your friends/family/work knows you are not available. Write, paint, draw, sing, pray, rant and rave all in the request of your soul “yielding up” your existing beliefs and perceptions.

Ask for 20 or 50 existing thoughts about money, family, health, God/Goddess, government, body image and write it down and whatever else you need to confront, clear or handle. Start with writing them or drawing them down.

Try to schedule a sun up to sun down time.

Once you get your list – take a break.

Do a prayer for releasing them, knowing that what is true and useful will come back – nothing valuable will be lost. Then sit in the release – clear space. Sit in the blissful emptiness of no perception. Then one by one, take a look at them. Ask, is this me? Is it useful? If it really serves you – you can ask where you got it, but I have come to feel the where is less important in this process – but the where you are going is much more important. For each one, evaluate and examine it. Then one by one, make a declaration of the perceptions you are going to hold in your life. We cannot change the past, but we can change the perception of the past – and how it lives in our body and spirit.

We can. Believe that you don’t have to live with the old stories the same way – believe that there new ways, that are healing that are available right now. Possibilities. Write them out. Paint it out . Or dance it in. Or do a creative practice of your own around it.

Give thanks. And commit, here is the practice part – commit to your new of declarations that you are claiming.

Commit to remembering this list and to being the person who holds truths that
you choose and not ones chosen for you – by anyone. Even thoughts about Creator, hand fed by someone else can be dangerous – what do YOU believe aboutit?

You can TRULY affect your life – by how you think, AND HOW YOU PRACTICE
your thoughts in real time. We are all doing it anyone – so when we take conscious control – the changes of a more fulfilling life are that much more available. Rituals like this can be life changing in ways we cannot even imagine. Do you have time for this – do you have time NOT to take days like this? We clear the way for the new…and this prepares us for what we need to manifest as we move forward.

A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist. Bucky Fuller

Click here to learn more about my work, paintings and vision.

It is a habit we have, to begin thinking with the mind first thing in the morning. But…

What if we started from the heart, first. When we woke up we said,
I shall approach all I encounter from the space of love. How would things turn out differently in our days? Would the days change or would just our perspectives be different?

I know when I think from the heart, worry lessens. Stress is relieved and new perspectives are formed. I am not speaking about some kind of overly positive fake it till we make it kind of optimism right now. Our heart is the most intelligent organ in the body – why don’t we think from there more often?

You know how, when in yoga or other modalities, the teacher asks us to redirect the breath? And we do, simply by the suggestion, we are able to notice a perceptible shift in the LOCATION from which we TAKE a breath? Is that not phenomenal? What if it was as easy as that? Redirecting our attention to another location in the body?

What choices would be different from the heart?
How would we change the unfolding of our days?

What is important to us, might change. That could be scary.
And necessary. It is no revelation to any thinking person that our world situation, has gone mad.

Let’s try a little somethin’:

Consider our situation on spaceship earth. Not blaming or pointing any fingers at man, government or corporation – just think of all of it. Observe: earth status. This inquiry is not intended to be depressing, but provoking. Then, think of it from the heart. I mean to let the origin of the thought, come from the location, spiritually and physically of the heart. Does it look different?

For me it does. For me anger goes away. Compassion rises. A sense of strange understanding, or acceptance comes into my heart. Not a complacent acceptance of things which are indeed horrible. Afterall I am after all a revolutionary at heart, and revolutionaries are often driven to act from seeing the injustices on earth and working to right them one way or an other. From my acceptance and seeing what is, I am inspired then, to act from love, instead of from anger, even if I am angry about a situation.

I am interested in how change happens in the world when we love first. And how change happens in our lives when we invite LOVE to be the primary motivation.

These are my thoughts this morning.
Have a blessed day, filled with thoughts from the heart…

May Love Be At The Center of All Choices.

Click here to learn more about my work, paintings and vision.

Journey To Love by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

Tending The Sacred Flame:

15½ Love Practices To Stay In Love
1. Love – Be verbal with your emotions. Choose to share what is in your heart for the other person. Tell them, often, how grateful you are. Create opportunities to share.

2. Peacefulness – Practice being peaceful. Guard against irritation, bitchiness and nagging. Be a space of non-reactivity. Don’t be quick to anger. Be safe space.

3. Enthusiasm – Be happy to see them, every time you see them. Stop what you are doing before they come in the room. Be present – while excited. Choose to do this!

4. Patience – Take a long view. Don’t rush decisions or force things to a crisis. Keep in mind the years ahead and the scope of your lives. Be patient with their progress.

5. Trust – Practice trusting your love. Even if they have broken your trust before, continue to practice a “feeling” of trust. Try not to keep “framing” them in the past.

6. Encouragement – Encourage your lover. Support them in their dreams and what is important to them. Acknowledge them. Be ready with compliments.

7. Mystery – Keep some mystery. Don’t get too comfortable. Don’t reveal everything. Be selective. Keep their interest, and intrigue. Choose to be compelling.

8. Prayer – Have sacred time together. A time when the two of you put your heads together and give thanks and make requests, and share your care for others.

9. Affection – Just be sweet. Be cuddly. Pet. Hug. Snuggle. Squeeze their feet in the morning. Take the time to admire. Develop pet names, and sounds.

10. Vision – Develop yourselves. Continuing to grow into someone amazing and wonderful. Have your own vision, and a common vision, and talk about it.

11. Creativity – Create together. Find some common, fun, pleasurable things you can do together, in the same room, even if you are doing different things.

12. Conversation – Cultivate meaningful conversations. Prepare in advance with interesting things to share. Learn about what they care about, be interested. Listen.

13. Humility – Just do it. Humility takes practice. Acknowledge your own faults before you judge theirs. Don’t let your ego rule the roost. Honor your love.

14. Forgiveness – Be quick to forgive. Be willing to take back hurtful statements or mistakes instantly. Do not hold grudges, they are infections. And forgive yourself.

15. Choose – Choose every day how you are going to show up in your life, and how you will be with your Love. Keep choosing all day long. Choose them again.

½. Really look, and really see, their beauty.

Shiloh and Isaiah McCloud

Dear Ones,

Always in February I am grateful that Valentine’s Day punctuates the gray days with red and pink and expectations of spending time loving each other. I live in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County and all along our lovely valley the dark landscape is speckled with hopeful color foretelling of Spring. The mustard in the vineyards shouts its annual arrival, we are here! The frail pink blossoms wake up and yawn, here we are! The orange trees, persimmon and pomegranate offer Winter’s final fruit into the altar of our hands. And the red, oh the red.  All the shades of red flowers make me feel a sense of relief. There are even three yellow and purple pansies that lived through the Winter smiling up at me on my porch.  The landscape and the city streets shout: It must be Valentines Day!

But what I want to write about this Twenty-Ten Valentines, Year of the Tiger, is not romantic love, or a once a year show of affection, but about lasting love.

Once you get the love of your life, how do you stay – “In Love.” Staying In Love is a cultivation, a plan of action, and sometimes a sacrifice. By “in love” I am not referring to being romantic, or even “hot” in the classical sense. I mean a general overall true affection and appreciation, a feeling of excitement when you see each other, a continued interest in the development of that person, and yes, the sparkle still sparks at least from time to time.

When my husband and I were first together, the sparkle between us was so alive, so palpable, so incredible, and though we were in our early twenties, we talked about what to do when it “shifted”…when the sparkle wore off and became something else.

We all know what that feels like, “the thrill is gone-ness” and we are all right to fear it, and prepare for it. It might sound silly, but we “got ready”. Sometimes I wonder if that was really a stroke of genius, that has made the difference because we tried at least to prepare, and therefore did not wake up one day, not sparkley and wonder,

oh where oh where has my little spark gone? oh where oh where can it be? And so we have committed to tending the flame of our love, diligently. We are alert, present, watchful and committed to growing in love. And, praise GOD, we are still IN LOVE.

Many, many couples experience that thrill, morph into something more than the thrill, something lasting and true.  I only know about five couples at the most where they themselves would say they are still in love even after 3 years. This concerns me, plagues me really, I think about it too much, because of four of my most beloved, and closest women friends, who have gotten a divorce recently! When we are in our twenties, the whole world seems still possible, but on into 30 and 40, and we begin to know more and more people who are unhappy in relationship, and who are getting divorced! All of these, were once very in love.

Now I tell you true, that my marriage has been turbulent and wild. We are passionate in every way, firey spirited, opinionated and prideful in fights and the list goes on. But it has been 15 years, and through all of the turbulence, I will also tell you true: We are still in love. We are still excited to see each other every single day.

This is very rare. I know that. And because it is rare I don’t share much about our marriage because it makes people feel sad for what they don’t have in their lives.

When I started to write more about us, my single community began to complain…and my married community said things like: we aren’t like you. So I listened and I stopped.  I don’t want to write about LOVE and make people feel badly about their lives! (I admit, I was slightly traumatized) But this is Valentine’s week and so I will write about Love, the love practices from my own marriage. With all of our trials, if we did not do these love practice we would most likely not have latest this long. The love practices are the space between the stars, that atmosphere which holds the whole union in concert with everything else, like the solar system, keeping things in order, while expanding…

This morning when I woke up I asked myself, just two days before Valentine’s day, if I had to pick 15 things that have made the difference for our marriage, our own love practices – what would they be? I am not suggesting this is the be all end all, it is just, my own list, which I am inspired to share with you that resulted from that inquiry.  And since we have been married 15½ years, I thought that the perfect number. My husband is still sleeping, it is super early, and my key clicks sounds very loud! Shhh….I’m going to get a cup of coffee, light a candle and be right back…

Now it would be great if you could share this list with your partner – but most of you may not have that “kind” of partner. You don’t need them to practice it with you in order to do it – you just do it yourself and see what happens.

This Valentine’s Day, on the actual day, Isaiah and I will be beginning Lenton Season, and bowing to hundreds of people. At our church it is the beginning of the Lenten Season and Forgiveness Sunday. Where you ask everyone, even those you have not wronged directly, for Forgiveness. This is an uncommon kind of love celebration, but after 15.5 years of marriage, practicing asking for forgiveness over and over, including bowing to your own spouse and asking them, is really a very good idea.

We had our Valentine’s Celebration this week, well, we had a few of them, actually.

We just keep having them. We choose to. He even put my wedding ring on my finger again while we ate pizza and drank wine at Scopa. That was our last pizza and wine for over forty days…

EAT. LOVE. PRAY and PLAN:  10 Creative VALENTINE’S DAY IDEAS

The day of love. Or rather, the advertised day of love. The day when, we are are supposed to be about love whether we feel like it or not. I know I know. Many of us creatives and dissidents complain about the commercialism of our holidays. And I don’t know if Valentines really qualifies for my Holy-Day Ideas listings, but LOVE certainly does. And you know what, any time the colors pink and red get celebrated, chocolate is encouraged, glittering things are considered as a decorating option, hearts are everywhere, angels are flying about and champagne is drunk mid-day – What could be wrong with that? I feel like being ‘called’ to act on behalf of LOVE, specifically, once a year, is not really such a bad idea.  I for one, Love LOVE. And I love to have an occasion where it is expected of us to DO SOMETHING to show that. Ok, coerced. Don’t let your resistance of commercialism or the double price of roses discourage you from creating a love day – your way. And if you want some ideas, I wrote some of mine down. Most of which, my husband and I have practiced in one way or another over our 15 years.

My girlfriend and I went to see Elizabeth Gilbert, her new long anticipated book came out, the one following the oober-sensation: Eat Love Pray. Committed, is a book about her marriage and engagement journey to Felipe, the man she met at the end of Eat Love Pray.  I love it that they stayed together, don’t you?  But based on the subtitle, A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, I kept expecting her to make a joke about the double meaning of the word committed. But she never did.  We left the evening kind of depressed. We love her and her work and her wit, and appreciated her in ten million ways, but somehow the evening just left us feeling, sad. We each thought we were the odd-ball only one, so were relieved when we discovered we both felt that way.

We are both hopeful romantics, and perhaps we didn’t sympathise with her allergic-ness to marriage. Mid-lecture I began to think – wow – what pressure she has just put on herself to stay married, now that she has gone through all this work to be married, because she was forced to for immigration purposes, and now shared it with the whole world! Clearly she really loves her man, but we all know how fame’s light puts bizarre pressure on the ones it shines on. I haven’t read the full book yet – and I do appreciate her research on the institution of marriage, and was happy to learn about this one character she found who said that all marriages are automatic acts of subversion against authority. Sir William Ferdinand Mount.

Sir Mount wrote a book called The Subversive Family. Here is what he has to say:

“The family is a subversive organization. In fact it is the only consistently subversive organization.  Only the family has continued throughout history and still continued to undermine the state. The family is the enduring permanent enemy of all hierarchies, churches and ideologies. Not only dictators, bishops and commissars, but also the humble parish priests and café intellectuals find themselves repeatedly coming up against the stony hostility of the family and it’s determination to resist interference to the last.” Wow. What a way to think about it.

I like the sound of that. Being a rebel and a patriotic sort, (I am a Gemini) I find myself wanting to honor our institutions, while smash out of the way they bind us as well.  As we left the crowds behind clamoring to get their books signed we tried to dissect why the evening had left us slightly bereft. We couldn’t put our finger on it.

My girlfriend and I met at this college, Dominican, where the evening happened, so perhaps it was the walk down memory lane 21 years later. She, having taken the traditional route of marriage, myself, haven taken a non-traditional route of marriage, both have a profound respect for romantic soul LOVE itself – and not just love as in ‘I love you’. But the soul mate kind of love, the deep love that has you be able to say, as in the Avatar movie, ‘I see you’ and mean it.  Any observation we made about why we didn’t feel right about the night, lead nowhere.

Making peace with things is good, but it makes marriage seem like a life sentence. Whether it is the institutionalism that has marriage be referred to as ball and chain – or the way we are in marriage of our own choosing, we may never know. Chicken or egg. There is that word again, Institution. Where we go get COMMITTED. I will read on in the book and see if she addresses this unsettling double meaning.

Thank you February, a month which comes after so much rain and dark skies, for bringing glittering PINKNESS into our gray days.  So this morning, I woke up with LOVE on the mind. I lit a candle, made some tea, and sat down to write up these creative love ideas down. Today, I will wear red!

And a word to the Ladies: please don’t leave this day to the guys and then blame them if it is not what you wanted. This list is for you – be generative, and invite him into what is important for you – instead of telling him what you want and then being disappointed because it is not as sparkly as you would like. Take responsibility, don’t expect him to surprise you, handle your own Valentines experience. And most of all, let LOVE be the inspiration, not obligation – but participated in some way, in a weekend where our country celebrates, LOVE. Thank you for the title of your last book, Elizabeth Gilbert, as it is the perfect prescription for Valentines Day.

Eat, Pray, Love   …and I will add: PLAN. Sure spontaneity is awesome, but it may be best in a container that is already defined, by you, as a LOVE experience. If you give yourself an extra four hours prior to the day of, and plan for yourself or your beloved, you will be able to really show that you care. Because caring takes time. And even glitter, needs something to apply itself too. Whether it is a naked body with sparkle lotion, sprinkles on a cake, or a hand made valentines with glitter and lace, there is something upon which the glitter is applied. A foundation. So let planning be the foundation of showing your love. It just turns out better that way.

For many of us, back in kindergarten, Valentines were our first form of correspondence with others besides love notes to mom and dad. How fun were all those little greetings of friendship and love?! Will you be my Valentine? is something we asked many people, not just one. So, remember your friends, too, on this day, especially those having a hard time in their lives. This is a day of love, so, let’s love.

Click here to learn more about my work, paintings and vision.

“Let’s love, oh yes, let’s love, let’s give the town a whirl, let’s kiss and tell and not get caught and I will be your girl.” Caron McCloud (a line from a poem my mom wrote.)

Love Opens Us By Shiloh Sophia McCloud

10 Creative Ideas for Valentine’s Day 2010 by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

(Warning: Each of these suggestions takes pre-day-of planning. And, these suggestions are only for the committed – not for the commitment-phobes.)

1. LOVE NOTES: Go shopping, get love journals, begin the love year with writing letters to each other in the journals. This is the place for pasting cards, love notes, ticket stubs and even grocery lists into the record a year of love. And, it works great if you pre-prepare a love letter.
2. DATE NIGHT: Create a date night ritual, starting with Valentines, and put the date nights into your calendar for the year. Make a list of possible plans for how to spend those date nights that are playful, and inspiring. You can even alternate planning it for each other.
3. LOVE BOOK: If you have been together for a while, there is a trail of love documents and photos.  Get a really nice album, and together spend the day drinking red wine, eating cake and gluing, glittering and pasting a record of your love into your love book. Tip: shop together for the love book “bling”
4. LOVE STORIES: Interview each other about great memories. Record it in audio or video. This will be priceless as you grow old together. Tip: Most computers have a video thingie now, learn it before the day of.
5. LOVE NEST: Create your home or bedroom as a lovenest, together. Get flowers, and light candles, decorate it together, go shopping for new pillows, or other little loving things, together. Then make eachother dinner, naked.
6. LOVE ALTAR: Create a love altar. Clear a dresser or shelf and together, listen to your favorite music, and make an altar honoring your love. What kinds of things remind you of that person? What do you want to bring to your love life this year? What do you want to show gratitude for?
7. LOVE SONGS: Spend an afternoon pre-the-day and download your favorite love songs and just songs, go all the way back to childhood, and share your music with them.  Plan a concert some time during the day, at night with candles is good – and give it to them, narrating in between about why you put that one on there for them. This is SURE to be a hit.
8. FEAST of LOVE: Give your love an invitation to a special occasion that you are planning. Make dinner at home, or at a suite you have rented. Choose to have it be a finger feast, and lay it out on boards and plates across the whole table, cheeses and meats and nuts and breads and sauces for dipping and jars of honey and on and on. It is important that it is a “spread” and that there is enough. Feed it to them with your fingers. This is one best, naked or scantily draped. Don’t hid bulges, be proud. But do shave.
9. VISIONS of LOVE: Create a Vision Board together for your year. Start with what you want to create individually, and together. If you share a spiritual journey together, write a prayer for your life together.
10. LOVE CEREMONY: Renew whatever vow you have. Let your partner KNOW how you feel. Don’t hold back. And bring something, an object of some kind to commemorate that – seal the deal. Share you full heart. First, open it.

Eat, Pray, Love, Plan, and Celebrate Each Other.

Shiloh Sophia McCloud
Later this week I hope to post my thoughts on the easy ways to write a love poem…

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An important part of true love, of course, is loving oneself. And so for those of us who want more of that self love, realizing that if we do not honor ourselves, it is way more challenging for others to honor us, there is something you can do!  Rumor has it that February 13 is the new day of Self Love, and so you can choose to spend a day honoring you, right before you honor the other person with your love. OR if you are single, call a weekend of Self LOVE for you and your girls. Don’t let this love day opportunity pass you by, which is filled with more conscious love energy than many other days of the year, for that reason alone, get in on the juice. AND if you are in the BAY AREA, you can join Self Love expert, Christine Arylo for the Madly in Love with ME happening, I will be there too! Christine is responsible for much of the awareness of the self love movement! Ya Christine! Christine and I teamed up together this weekend at The PAUSE Retreat, and had a great time working with women on planning vibrant and courageous twenty-ten. Each of us chose a power mantra, or power prayer, which sums up our hopes for our year. Have you done one yet?