all creation is also destruction

and how I'm learning to negotiate with my shadow

Look at this lil guy! Isn’t he adorable, trying to be all menacing and such despite his confusion? He doesn’t know what he’s doing either and just wants some help

Once again I find myself not publishing and therefore not creating. I can’t say this is unexpected. Of course hopes were high after publishing my first post this year and the intention to publish never fell but I also knew not to expect too much. It’s the sputter of the eninge. Once it runs, it runs smoothly and with power but it always takes some time to get going.
I am a creature of care and caution after all. Combustion is great if the engine is well tuned, aimed at the right target and steered by a capable driver. But it can be just as much a danger to everyone in- and outside the vehicle. I know that in many ways I have been too careful all my life. That I’ve deprived myself of a nourishing adolescence. The mistakes I did allow myself, tame and with little consequence. You can’t regret if you don’t live right?
Perhaps I could blame my upbringing, how my environment didn’t give me enough safety and thus turned me into a cautious creature of shadow. But I know that’s not true. It’s finally time to come to terms with who I am. All my constraints, eccentricities and limitations, but also my unique gifts. Which could themselves be seen as a limitation. I mean why do I have these gifts and not others? Annoying right?

All creation is inextricably a process of destruction. By writing these words, I am not writing others. By becoming who I am, I destroy all alternative timelines. It is in this that maybe I understand the Jane monks, fruitlessly sweeping the ground before every step they take, because they’re so comitted to not taking another life. But it’s hopeless. Because in this pursuit they create nothing except that which puts the restraint of destruction above everything else. Their entire life revolves around this precept. (Or at least in the caricature of them I have in my mind)
I’ve known this conceptually for a long time but to come to terms with it in an embodied sense feels like the work of a lifetime. Because I know that deep in my heart and soul I am a destroyer. I don’t know to which degree this is a natural part of being male or human more generally, but I know that it is there. I want to destroy, burn and kill. Dismantle or control everything and ascend to the throne. The archetypes of the emperor and the destroyer.
This is not my essence or even remotely everything I am but it is there. Furthermore, I know it to be an inextricable part of the divine. What do I do with this knowledge? I know that giving it free reign would be wildly irresponsible but firmly locking it away, as I have so far, isn’t workable either. It tries to deny an important part of myself and the cosmos as a whole. The answer of course is balance but as an instruction that contains very little information. Balance is an embodied skill, it requires movement and adjustment. Above all it requires the possibility of falling, as you can’t balance lying down.
There is a poem that’s been developing in me over the past couple of months. It is written in the perspective of my shadow. At first it was violently demanding. Screeching at me menacingly to look at it. Over time it moved to a more conciliatory voice.

I am the king of demons
I am darkness
I am your shadow
You need me
And I need you
I too serve love
So look at me
And I will look at you

What it contains is a trade offer. We need each other and ultimately we serve the same “end”. This means we have a common currency and negotiation is possible. It may want things from me that I can’t allow because they would be immoral, illegal, bad for my soul or ultimately not for the benefit of all beings. But I can recognize that I do need its expression. That I can drop my shame and judgement and understand what it really wants and why. Find ways I can allow it to express itself. This may sound intense, and partially it is, but it can also express in very simple and mundane ways. Such as writing and publishing this piece. It may not be obvious on the outside how this is me negotiating with my shadow but internally I can tell the leash is getting longer.
What I’m learning through all of this is that, as a creature of caution, I love and cherish fear. It is one of my most loyal, if often difficult allies. One of my biggest and most annoying ambitions is to truly come to terms with and integrate the unsavory aspects of reality into a coherent picture. I want to help rehabilitate the damaged and damaging archetypes. Let them flow through me in sane and healthy ways that unapologetically serve love. What I’ve proven to myself beyond a shadow of a doubt is that I can restrain my shadow if I have to. That I am deeply comitted to failing safe and will reliably choose self-destruction over lashing out or meeting my needs in soul-destroying ways. But naturally I’ve also gone too deep. Restraining myself so severly that nothing comes out is just another kind of harm. It denies the light and love in me that want to bubble forth into the world.
In this, fear and caution will continue to be a blessing. My love of them a symbiosis of limitation and gift. But it’s my limitation and my gift. I came here to live them and live them I shall.