you & me

The Labyrinth: A Series of Art. {Part Fourteen: Renaissance}

{Photo credit: Kristi Stout}

When you look at a very simple geometrical pattern and see it repeated over and over again (science), then start to add shadow and tone (spirit), it creates an effect that makes you start to wonder: is the design coming towards me or moving away from me?

Put quite simply, it’s doing both. In this case, it’s in constant motion, and therefore active.

This is the essence of constant perceptive motion that defines a type of paradox, and through this energy, creativity has an avenue to become something. Now, apply this same idea to the Self, and you enter a kind of Renaissance of the Self. A rebirth.

This is what it means to be born again: that moment when we take full creative responsibility for our life, which is in constant motion, and sometimes at terrible odds with what we might define as peaceful or stable. Stable, but unstable, is the idea. And you begin to realize, this generates the power you need to create your life ful-filled and right-full.

By active engagement with this creative phenomenon, one learns to live a meditative life.

The Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries was a period of time which was a transition out of the Middle Ages into a more awakened way of being and thinking. In the Middle Ages (also known as the Dark Ages), the 5th-15th centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire, no real advances were made in cultural evolution or science.

Is it possible to look at your own life and see where your own personal Dark Ages existed/exists? As individuals in this present reality, microcosmic versions of a very gargantuan macrocosm are no coincidence. There are most likely times in all of our individual lives when we can say, “That part of my life was like the Dark Ages.”

I personally, distinctly remember being asleep in my life, before suddenly becoming awake. I’m sure many of you might be able to trace your own human evolution and/or period of transition or a great leap of self-awareness (from a personal sense) to a time period or epoch in your own life. Perhaps some of us have been through several of these.

We could definitely entertain the idea that it’s not a coincidence, and that ages and epochs have a time and place under the heavens, held in cycle and count by a great Universal timekeeper, or rather a terrestrial-centric, cosmically-tuned one that plays time frequencies like a great harmonic chord-keeper in the symphony of the cosmos.

In our human history, the Renaissance marked an age of discovery. And that is what happens once you have awakened to your own divinity — the Kingdom of Heaven that is within you. You first have the tearing apart and the facing off with the demons in the apocalypse of your asleep life, the equalizing of a paradox: your old self with your new one, where you haven’t really changed, but at the same time you have.

And then you begin to discover your power, day by day, through your own personal Renaissance. Suddenly you feel your own magic begin to take effect, you see how that magic was all along responsible for things in your life, and played into your ability to make things happen for yourself, or not.

Your ability to heal (trauma and emotional states, that in turn heal the body) comes into play as well. It’s not like Abracadabra! Heal! but with some authentic hard work and genuine, loving, co-creation from Mother Earth, who gives us everything we need to thrive here, which brings to mind why women were often burned at the stake.

Women were among some of the worlds first doctors, deemed witches because they knew how to heal things with tonics and tinctures and brews found in nature.

It was all of the devil, right? No, they just had a relationship with the earth that we’ve lost touch with today and are trying to find a way back to, and the powers that be called it devil’s work, and all the ignorant people, which made up the general populace, believed it for centuries.

Knowledge is everything. Applying that knowledge and making it wisdom is true power.

{Photo credit: Kristi Stout}

Kathleen McGowan, in The Poet Prince, a work of fiction based in non-fiction about the Renaissance era painters, like Botticelli, Donatello, and the lovely ladies who inspired their artwork, talks about how they used a method in their art that could break through our ego barriers and touch the spiritual centers of the heart, appealing to that raw emotional place within us that is very vulnerable and genuine — changing us, reminding us of our truths, and inviting us to live by them.

A process that would transfer the intention of the artist into the viewer, which would make the art go beyond the visual, and relay a very emotional and complex esoteric message that could be transformative in that removing the veil sort of way. There is also a saying, Art will save the world because of its transformative properties, for those with eyes to see.

It’s the one place where everything can be said in a language that transcends speech and words, which, in a sense, talks to our truest essences as individuals, as we all see art subjectively. So really, art reveals ourselves to us. I would even take the above saying a step further, and be more specific, by saying, Creativity will save society, when society has gone astray (and I feel it has).

From a historical or philosophical standpoint, we are no longer living in the Dark Ages anymore, and why? Because of the capacity and unveiling of our collective inner creativity which revolutionized the modern world, but I think in this day and age we have arrived in a space where we are needing to seek equilibrium — the introspection that needs to follow mass creative output.

Creative output needs its antithesis, introspective input, merely so that it does not collapse in calamity or a panic attack, or a bout of depression, or a dis-ease manifesting in the body sending us into another personal Dark Age, but rather maintaining a kinetic and perpetual feeding that is sustainable. And this only comes from balanced homeostasis.

All creatives will tell you what it is to have creative burnout, and it can feel like a deep, dark depression. Van Gogh cut his ear off, Hemingway shot himself.

Energy is very real, and finding that balance of energy movement is essential. Mother Earth has been alerting us to this for a while. Sending out warning signs of burnout, and we need to heed her call.

I believe in our creative power as collective consciousness to heed this. We banded together upon finding out there was a hole in the ozone layer, and made a global ban on certain things that were harming it, and there is now evidence that it is healing and regenerating.

I believe in us, changing the world for the better with our creative power, as individuals operating in service together, if only we’d stop getting so hung up on how different we all are, our castes and cliques, our needs to be right, and step off our high horses.

I feel, the more self-realized we are, the more self-aware, the more compassionate we become towards others, because we know how hard it can all be sometimes, and we see that we share the same kinds of struggles, but in a different story. Do unto others as you would do unto yourself. Always.

There is something truly fulfilling and nurturing about being seen, and also recognizing that I am another you. This can spread like a ripple to the world around you at large, and exponentially we can raise this vibration together as individuals, so long as we allow the uncertainty of constant creative motion.

It is too easy for us to get complacent with what comes easily, and go static, (judgmental, closed-off, afraid), creatively dead and operating on autopilot or asleep. Creativity is uncertain. It involves great risk and vulnerability, and that is the crux here. But what are we hiding anymore? Why are we afraid to be vulnerable?

Look up the definition of art, it says creative expression. Look up the definition of create, it says to bring something into existence. There’s no rule book or established method here. Nothing safe about it. Bringing it back to the saying Art will save the world, ultimately saying Creativity will save the world. Creation (create: to bring something into being, into the light, out of darkness and in existence) will save the world.

We all have this creative power, do not let it stagnate. We are remarkable creatures, and our future depends on our remarkable abilities. Live your life in creative action. We have come to a stage where the way we have been doing it is dying. So many methods are stagnant, burnt out, and slowly becoming obsolete. Many of us are feeling this at a deep level, a feeling of stagnation and wanting more out of life.

I for one am so tired of this struggle. Let’s put our minds together and re-birth something beautiful.

{Photo credit: Kristi Stout}

This is an ongoing series by Kristi Stout. Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Labyrinth’.
If her art resonates with you, and you’d like prints, contact her through her website or Facebook.

***

{Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest}

Comments

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