you & me

The Labyrinth: A Series of Art. {Part Seven: Bottomless Sky}

{Photo credit: Kristi Stout}

Did you ever daydream of falling up into the sky?

I did, and still do.

We continue the journey into my labyrinth. I last left you in the Lush Desert. The lush, soft, and dusky desert who always sensually yields to its partner — the rich, blue, azure sky — in blissful perfection. Talk about eye candy! Dusty-orange and turquoise make a hot, sexy couple. Now we come into the next terrain of the labyrinth, taking flight into the Bottomless Sky.

The sky is limitless, bottomless, freedom-bliss. The one terrain without bounds. I think it’s fairly safe to say that the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the sky is freedom. There is literally no end to it, that we have as of yet ascertained.

In the Bottomless Sky, there is a field of infinite possibilities as you climb through the layers of the atmosphere into the far-out frontiers of light years, fusion, Magellanic Clouds, stardust, and dark matter. When looking at the Universe from way outside it, it’s like everything is having a mad love affair, intermeshing with everything else, constantly creating more of itself.

Whether it’s the ionization of ultraviolet radiation creating nebulae, massive stars collapsing to form black holes, or gases merging to make planets, it is all one big supernatural attraction, both violent and beautiful, like any good love affair tends to be.

In this regard, the expansion of the universe is one of the most beautiful disasters of all time. The sky is alluring and intriguing. How many times as a kid did you dream of sprouting wings and flying? How often did you find yourself in a field looking up, envious of the birds, pretending you could lie in the clouds or attach a swing to one and soar up?

Did you ever pretend that if you fell upward or if the world suddenly turned upside down, you would fall forever? The prospect was both mystifying and terrifying — to fall forever. But oh the wonders you’d see!

What I love most about being up in the sky is that when you look down upon the world from up there, you see nothing but peace. Your line of sight expands and the curvature of the earth comes to eye level. You suddenly see how absolutely small you are in comparison to everything else, and it’s humbling.

It quite literally has the effect of putting everything in perspective. Clouds become larger than mountains, or as vast and rolling as the ocean. You are pulled far away from the noise of society and placed whimsically into the soft pastel hues of wisp and fluff, and you dare to think, “What was I ever worried about down there?”

I’m actually writing this right now from the sky, 36999 feet up (according to my in-flight monitor) and the idea comes to mind for me that when you’re on the ground, there’s no way to go but up. The earth is, in a sense, an anchor point for us. A point to hold on to, while we play and dance in our innocent essence.

If only we didn’t forget by getting so pulled into the People Programming. How easily we as adults forget! How much we take for granted what it actually means to fly!

I find that when I fly, it’s miraculous. I am in a tube of aluminum hurtling through the air. I share comedian Louis C.K.’s perspective: There is nothing ordinary about that. I find it to be extraordinary, just like the fact that the sky is endless. Nobody knows where it ends. So when I fly, it reminds me of the miraculous. It also reminds me of things unseen.

The air, though invisible, can also be formidable, flirtatious, flighty, fleeing, fun, fickle, and frivolous. So many great F-words, also including flight, freedom, and… fabulous.

In the sky, I find that I take myself lightly. The sky, therefore reminds me of a lightness of being and that life perhaps is not as dense or solid as we think it is.

In the sky, we begin to break down the constructs of that which contains us, opening to the possibility that what we are is only what we subjectively believe and say we are, that perhaps we are in fact much more than what we have always believed our limitations to be. I mean, I’m flying through the sky in an aluminum tube!

“Our normal waking consciousness… is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different… No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.” ~ William James

{Photo credit: Kristi Stout}

Speaking of lightness, for lighthearted fun, let’s entertain an idea: What if our being-ness is like an iceberg? That is to say: What if most of us are actually out there in the Bottomless Sky lightly reaching towards the infinite?

What if, what we experience in day-to-day life here on earth (solid) is like what we see of the iceberg on the surface of the ocean? That perhaps in reality most of our essence is up there, plugged into the Bottomless Sky? And our bodies are simply the avatars that are expressed as the form (tip of the iceberg) of our actual self?

Imagine a giant mirror placed on top of an iceberg. Pretend for a moment you can also see what’s under the water reflected there in that mirror — it would tower so high into the sky!

The cosmos is just that: A reflection of what we are within, within all that is. As beings, we have been tuned into the heavens for eons. Reading stars, studying matter, how the moon pulls on the earth.

It is my theory that our truest (invisible) essence is in actuality plugged into the Bottomless Sky, and like tides pull on the oceans of earth, our essence is affected as well in a great cosmological chord harmonizing with the rest of the symphony that is existence.

What we are on earth is merely a small part of our very big (unseen) truth so well-hidden, we don’t even realize how vast we actually are and how deep we actually reach out and into the Bottomless Sky. The idea that it holds that part of us that is without bounds. That all of that funnels into the part of us that is in fact bound to the earth, until death to we part.

Returning to rust and stardust?

Therefore, it is my belief that our truest essence harmonizes with the cosmos and plays out in a tune here upon the earth in dimensions that we understand in a structure.

The idea of ascending to heaven after we die may hold merit still. It’s an idea or an archetype that collectively (more or less) resonates with us, and for millennia. But maybe we don’t really ascend per se? Maybe we just return to a lightness of being in an energetic, harmonic, symphony playing through time and space and cosmic matter, casting aside our earthly body?

Something about this idea makes me feel less heavy here on earth. Less confined to the constructs of materialism and matter.

The very fact that all these things exist — matter, energy, frequency, harmony, resonance — why would we not operate in some measure with all of it, as part of it? That we are in fact a part of this whole being-ness which is what I like to call The God Body made as the mirror image of Source?

Where violet becomes ultraviolet, and dark matter holds the universe together in one massive supernatural chemical attraction. Chemical bonds making matter matter. This could just keep going and going, in boundless form like the sky. So I will return to earth now in a great deep plunge into the next terrain of the labyrinth.

“The Guide and I into that hidden road
Now entered, to return to the bright world;
And without care of having any rest
We mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;
Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.” ~ Dante, The Divine Comedy

{Photo credit: Kristi Stout}

This is an ongoing series by Kristi Stout.
Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Labyrinth’.

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Kristi Stout

Kristi Stout

Kristi L. Stout is an artist, mother, and lover. She considers herself a Renaissance woman, in service of Love in its many forms. It is her belief that inside each of us is our own sacred, Wild nature -- a hidden instinct that is not forgotten as much as it is dormant, like leafless trees in winter. It is the part of us that is connected to all things. A knowing without knowing. The part deep inside that understands darkness is necessary for the moon to simmer silver, and recognizes that even if you’re lost in the middle of nowhere you can always find a sacred somewhere -- like an internal compass pointing true north to your heart center. Her passion project, work in progress, is She Is Wild. You can find more of Kristi’s work here or connect with her on Facebook.
Kristi Stout