Galaxies of the Heart: When Creation Speaks Within Us

Galaxies of the Heart: When Creation Speaks Within Us 

By Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar

There was a moment before anything before breath, before time, before even the idea of "before." Then came the soundless thunder of the beginning, what scientists now call the Big Bang. But the Dagara of Burkina Faso might call it the moment the ancestors cracked the calabash of eternity. The Dogon elders of Mali would say Amma stirred the cosmic clay, flinging stars like sacred seeds across a divine field. It was not chaos. It was melody. It was drumming the Creator’s hand striking the skin of the void, calling existence into ecstatic dance.

Chaos, in truth, is not the enemy. Chaos is sacred disorder. Chaos is the womb. Chaos is the garden before it is tilled. It is not to be feared for from it we are born. Chaos gave birth to stars, to breath, to being. In African cosmology, chaos is not destruction but the dark soup from which light drinks. The Yoruba say the Orisha Olokun holds the deep secrets of the ocean’s bottom wild, untamed, powerful, yet deeply nourishing. Chaos was the whispering breath before the Creator shaped light into song.

This divine breath, not of randomness but of intelligent intention, exhaled a universe from what we perceive as nothing. But in African cosmology, there is no "nothing." There is only the waiting place, the womb of potential. The sacred silence before the griot begins to speak. In the hands of the Creator, nothingness becomes fertile ground. Expectant stillness. A blackness not of absence, but of infinite promise like the kente-clothed night sky before the first constellation is named.

In that sacred instant, the cosmos expanded. Matter twirled into form like dancers possessed. Light flooded the silence like a choir of ancestral tongues. Order began to sculpt itself from formless mystery. Galaxies spun into sacred spirals of thought. Stars ignited with divine flame, much like the sacred fire kept alive in the shrines of Yoruba temples. Solar systems bowed into alignment, each planet entering its orbit like an initiate entering the sacred circle ready, humble, radiant.

This was not science alone. This was spiritual artistry. It was cosmological drumming. It was ancestral alchemy. It was the great Ekpe mask of the heavens unveiling itself.

Now pause. Because something just as divine, just as vivid, just as cosmic, happens within us.

Just as galaxies were birthed by unimaginable pressure and radiant expansion, so too are our hearts shaped by the sacred intensity of life. Through heartbreak, triumph, illness, wonder, despair, and clarity, we stretch and spin toward our own center. Our spiritual expansion mirrors the cosmic unfolding. Just as the Dogon people mapped the Sirius star system before telescopes ever confirmed it, so too does your soul hold ancient wisdom that predates your understanding.

Your own "Big Bang" may come as a loss, a breakdown, a breakthroughan eruption of tears, a soul cry, an ancestral wail calling from your bones. But know this: you are not unraveling. You are becoming. You are returning to the light from which you came. Your pain is not destruction. It is creation in motion. Your chaos is sacred it is your rebirth.

You, beloved, are a walking galaxy.

You are not just flesh and memory. You are a cosmos wrapped in melanin, dreams, and rhythm. Your blood carries stardust. Your breath is borrowed from the original wind. Your heartbeat is a djembe echo of divine rhythm. You are a soul orbiting around an inner sun that never stops burning the light of the Creator within.

Your physical body, too, is aligned with the architecture of the universe. Your spine is your Milky Way each vertebrae a planet in balance, holding the axis of your existence. Your brain is your sun radiating thoughts, energy, and divine intelligence. Your heart, a pulsing neutron star, powerful and magnetic, drawing people toward you through love and empathy. Your lungs are twin nebulae drawing in the breath of God, exhaling life back into the atmosphere.

Your bones? They are the mountain ranges of your inner Earth. Your muscles? The gravitational pull that lets you move through space. Your skin? A constellation of experiences, freckles and scars marking the stories of lifetimes. You carry galaxies in your fingerprints. Your eyes are twin telescopes, capturing starlight and shadow, ever scanning for the Creator’s reflection in everything.

Spiritually, your soul mimics the great systems above. Just as planets revolve around the sun, your values, dreams, and divine calling revolve around the Creator’s purpose in your life. Your chakras or energy centers are stars along your internal universe, each one glowing with potential, each one connected to the rhythm of creation. You are not isolated. You are intricately tethered to the cosmos by divine design.

When you pray, your spirit sends waves through the fabric of the unseen like ripples through space-time. When you forgive, you recalibrate the gravitational pull of your inner solar system. When you love, truly love, you become a supernova radiating the heat and light that births new life around you.

And do you know what happens when you worship in spirit and in truth? Your being begins to align like constellations falling into perfect order. The Creator dwells not only in the heavens but inhabits your inner tabernacle. Heaven bends to meet Earth within the sanctuary of your chest.

The Dogon taught that each soul is a star born to fulfill a purpose. So just as every star belongs to a constellation, you too are designed to connect to community, to legacy, to divine mission. You do not exist in isolation. You are part of a spiritual ecosystem, orbiting in unity with others under the Creator's watchful gaze.

You were made to shine. To orbit. To become. Inside you are nebulae of dreams, meteor showers of ancestral grace, rings of Saturn-like wisdom wrapped around the throne of your heart. The Divine is not far it is the starlight inside your struggle, the orbit behind your tears, the sacred geometry humming in your soul.

And yes, sometimes we are broken. Sometimes we are fire. Sometimes we are floating debris. But even the stars go supernova and even in that, there is beauty. There is power. There is rebirth.

Let your spiritual development reflect the cosmic patience of the Creator. The universe wasn’t made in a day. Neither is your transformation. You are still unfolding. Still becoming. Still lighting up your inner sky.

So when life feels too much, when you forget who you are, go outside. Look up. Speak to the Creator. Open your palms to the sky. Remember the breath that began it all. The same sacred intelligence that carved the Nile and spun the Pleiades also crafted you.

You are not random.

You are not alone.

You are a divine galaxy in motion.

Let there be light again and again within you.

Let there be stars in your prayers.

Let there be constellations in your courage.

Let the universe echo through your becoming.

Because you, beloved, are creation in full color.

And when your spirit gets weary, remember He who created the heavens by His breath still breathes into you.