When I stop trying to be more…poetry happens…

BE HER NOW The sun is setting over the soft magenta anemones with golden centers where the bees drink. And I can’t stop wondering about where all of this began, this narrative to be more, do more, become more, achieve more, more, more than you are. More. More than you need to be. More. By someone else’s standards. More. To the degree that you lose whoever you already were. For a time, of course — whoever you already were can never be lost, because that’s all within you anyway. But the narrative of strive and drive and carry the burdens of the ancestors’ crimes is too much to ask. The band-tailed pigeons are fluttering in the valley oak, both of them on the watch list right here. I listen to the sound of their wings. And when the ravens come and the squirrels run, how they all communicate together. I can’t help but wonder where that whole narrative started. Whose grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother first had to step out of the matriarchal framework into the dominant framework in order to survive, and how this errant thought that there was something better over there to become. Something better over there to have. Something better than what she had. Something better to achieve, to receive, to compete for. To even ask for, but worst of all, to want for. To want for something other than what there is in one’s own self and life and being. Something better stirring us to look outside of ourselves. And I just can’t help but wonder about those moments in each of our lineages when we are striving towards something better, which really makes whatever we have seem somehow less, and us seem somehow less as a result of it. The hummingbird is pausing at the rose, red-trimmed white petals blooming beside the golden sun-kissed tomatoes and the mint, the basil. Everything wants to be enjoyed. It doesn’t want to be compared. It wants to be appreciated for what it is. The tomato and the rose and the mint do not have a story of needing more or being better. They become the fullest versions of themselves in this sun, in this full moon energy. And I’ve been writing for days, decades, to articulate the unarticulatable. To share that which I cannot find the words to share. There’s a sacred urgency humming in my stardust bones. And it’s about this: how everything we really need is already here and innate. It’s with us. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t need more. It doesn’t need to be better. But the riddle is that isn’t how we experience it, and it’s not what we’ve been taught, and it’s not how it feels in the daily struggles of our lives. And yet there’s this sacred unhooking that happens when we realize, or just to come from, for a cycle or an afternoon or an hour or the length of a poem walking through your heart, that everything that is needed is innate. That there’s no place else to get to, nothing more to add, and nothing better to become. And that doesn’t mean we don’t wish for a small patch of grass to lay on our back and look at the moon. That doesn’t mean we don’t wish for sturdy, solid boots that will last for more than one wet winter. That doesn’t mean we don’t wish for everything to be organic and sustainable, and the salmon to not be farmed, and the strawberries to not be GMO’d. We do wish for these things, but it’s how we internalize them, how we make it mean somehow that we’re something less. Everything I’ve been moving toward is toward this idea of revealing ourselves to ourselves as the ultimate act of sacred sovereignty: to not need more, not be better, not need to be seen and acknowledged. Not need to have a title or a designation or an affirmation by others, but to simply acknowledge the innate majesty of who we are. And the journey, really, of recovery, of making new promises to ourselves. Not promises about more and better, but promises about being. Not promises about needing to belong somewhere else. Not promises about needing to heal some ancient wound that happened before we were ever born that we’re trying to heal this lifetime. And not just to simply be here now either. More like be her now. Like even for a couple of seconds. Right now. Right now. As the butterfly bush dies with the purple rain-colored flowers, beckons for a kiss from the passing flutterby, just looking for that connection through the sun and the air. A place to be met within one’s self. A space and a place where identity just rests in itself through this expression of soul that has always been here. That is so easily forgotten, not because we forget, but because it is hidden from us. Some gorgeous way to access the truest voice which is held within us and set it free from the constraints of silence. Some way to curate this gorgeous consciousness that we are so we can design our own minds and liberate that self-expression which is begging for form, for matter, for energy equals matter at the speed of light to become matter at the speed of light. Plus love. Approximately equals the stardust bones that you already are in this cooling sack of stars. Where you can source your own presence enough to embody your sensuality with more pleasure than you could ever have imagined belong to you. To manifest the prosperity which is in alignment with the generosity of all of creation. Because everything we need has been provided, and it’s so hard to remember that when scarcity is enforced. When the morning light came on the pink lady apples and there were enough apples to eat throughout the day. What generosity, what generosity. Prosperity manifested, to see it as such and love it, to be in love with the apple. To be so in love with the apple that you could spend an afternoon or an hour or five minutes catalyzing your calling, not to have or be more or better than, but because it’s just innate and natural for you to want to create beauty. Not to save the world, but just to create beauty because your hands want to, because your heart sees some potential. Not to rescue, but just because it’s f***ing beautiful to make beauty. And it’s enough. And you are enough, and you know this. You know this deep down in your cells. That you are a sovereign initiate of this cosmic unfolding. That you, like me, are part of an ancient futuristic Stardust Lineage. That we don’t need to do anything to become it. We just say yes to it. And then the practice is the lifestyle. A lifestyle of pleasure and beauty and self-expression with intention of continually arriving in the now. Be her now. No permission, no apology, no need to become. Just being for the sake of being is the beauty unfolding right now, as this poem runs through my body like a wild horse looking for a view of the harvest moon. Shiloh Sophia Get full access to Tea with the Muse at teawiththemuse.substack.com/subscribe