The Galactic Star and the Shadow

The galactic star is gone.

Beautiful blue man, with his beautiful blue eyes.

The warlock.
The mystic.
The peaceful man.

With a hot molten river of anger brewing somewhere deep inside.

A shadow yearning to come alive.

A shadow whispering—

Look at me.

I still exist.

Quit denying me.

I will become what you resist.

There are shadows within us that do not belong only to us.

They have traveled.

From father to son.
Mother to daughter.
Generation to generation.

Pain unspoken.
Anger swallowed.
Grief buried.
Fear disguised as strength.

Until all of it collects somewhere deep inside us—that black, dark goo we would rather pretend isn’t there.

But don’t judge it.

Don’t banish it.

Don’t turn away from it simply because it is ugly or frightening or inconvenient.

Invite it in.

Sit beside it.

And ask:

What is it that you have come to tell me?

What do you have to offer me?

What are you inviting me to understand?

What is it, dear friend, that you need from me?

Because perhaps the shadow is not our enemy.

Perhaps it is the part of us that has been standing outside the door for years, knocking harder and harder because we refuse to answer.

And perhaps one day we finally open the door and say:

I see you.

I know there is a part of me I have been denying.

You may come in now.

Not so that the darkness can consume us, but so that we can finally bring light to the places within ourselves we have been afraid to see.

Because light does not need us to pretend the darkness isn’t there.

Light illuminates it.

Light allows us to see what has been hidden.

To understand it.

To love what can be loved.

To grieve what needs grieving.

To release what was never ours to carry.

And perhaps this is how we become free.

Not by becoming beings without shadows, but by becoming people who are no longer ruled by them.

People willing to live in trueness.

In wholeness.

In oneness with the light.

And so I wonder about you, dear man.

You beautiful blue man.

You warlock.
You mystic.
You peaceful man with the fire buried underneath.

You galactic being who just walked away.

Are you willing to meet your own shadow?

Are you willing to turn toward the thing inside you that says:

Look at me.

I still exist.

Are you willing to sit beside it instead of running from it?

To ask what it has carried for you?

To ask whose pain it was before it became yours?

To ask what might happen if you finally stopped resisting it?

I cannot answer those questions for you.

I cannot walk into that darkness carrying a lantern and illuminate it on your behalf.

That journey belongs to you.

Just as mine belongs to me.

And perhaps loving another person sometimes means accepting this.

We can recognize their light.

We can recognize their darkness.

We can love the beautiful contradictions that make them who they are.

But we cannot awaken someone on their behalf.

So go, galactic star.

Go wherever it is that you need to go.

But wherever your journey takes you, I hope someday you turn around and look at the shadow walking faithfully behind you.

Not with judgment.

Not with shame.

Not with fear.

But with curiosity.

With tenderness.

Perhaps even with love.

And ask:

Dear friend, what have you been trying to tell me all this time?

Because beneath the mystic, beneath the warlock, beneath the beautiful blue eyes and all that celestial light—

you are human too.

And maybe that is where the real magic begins.