"INFINITY IN SIGHT"

In our highly materialistic culture, time, money and the gathering of possessions has taken precedence over the flux of our spirit. Our collective consciousness is cramped or closed because we are living our lives dominated by egos and the hollow pursuit of human earthly success. We cling to this vacuous lifestyle believing that we are in full control of every aspect of our brief existence.

And yet underlying this paper thin veneer of our imagined achievement is a powerful and creative life force that animates everyone and everything in a generative cycle of becoming. My own deep awareness of this vital energy grows and matures daily. I often have little glimpses of it, especially when I'm concentrating on an image working outdoors in a field. It is as if the veil between this present dimension and the next is drawn back, for just a split second, and then it just as quickly closes up again. I sense something very powerful that's waiting just beyond our finite cosmic understanding. An underlying concealed and parturient duality in universal creation that is resting there, ever watchful at the core of all cosmic existence.

But just exactly what is this unfathomable and expansive cosmos in which we are presently alive, and precisely how do we as the short lived aware but mortal sentient creatures that we are, actually fit into the overall grand scheme of things? It's estimated that there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in this entire cosmos. Bare in mind that I am not referring to the estimated 100 billion galaxies, but just to stars that are like our own sun is. To attempt to comprehend the magnitude and scale of that number if you were to take all of the grains of sand on all of the beaches here on Earth and count up each and every grain, it still would not add up to the number of stars that are presently existing in our Cosmos, and bare in mind that our own Sun would be just one of those tiny insignificant grains of sand.

Our planet, this Earth, a little whirling living oasis of life, has progressed on each and every day eventually coming to the point of magically producing cosmically aware organic offshoots, what we today think of as human sentient life. While working away on its cosmic spells it passed millions of years totally and completely oblivious, in fact not even caring in the slightest about the potential of our and your imminent earthly conception, birthing, and arrival.

If you consider and reflect on it, we ourselves are awakened from a state of eternal blissfulness, one of pure genuine honest ecstasy, snug and safe carefully protected within the ageless endless universal soul, awakened to face a very limited organic awareness. We are tenuously conceived in an awkward flailing and grunting seminal squirt of driven uncontrolled human desire, then are matured and nurtured within an oven warm living breathing organic womb.

Then organically in a gush of lukewarm living fluid of life and quite dramatically as all mammalian birthing is, you are forced out of your sweet unknowing bliss, literally pushed out head first and quite rudely from uncaring solitude, into a chaotic hostile fretful human life on this tiny and cosmically insignificant living whirling space orb, but one that's also teeming and brimming full of other organic life forms. This happenstance occurring only by sheer cosmic fate and the careless quirkiness of utter random spurting seminal milky chance. Literally the blind and frenetic flailing meeting of an egg with sperm.

When your short stress filled organic human life here is all but spent, you prepare yourself to dissolve back into endless safe eternity. That more normal place and in fact the true natural state of cosmic existence. A place of genuine unknowing bliss where you will remain ensconced there for literally trillions of years on into the never ending future, always perfectly safe in fact hugged and nestled tightly in the lap of the much greater infinite wholeness of the universal soul.

The Cosmos metaphysically comes forward to meet you at that moment of your earthly human demise and more or less regain, recapture and quietly welcome and enfold you back into its own being. You return to the complete final ultimate truth of Cosmic reality, that of unity and a total oneness at the basic level of reality. You are returning home, because you and this actuality of the Cosmos are ultimately and in fact always have been nothing less than one and the same thing, whether you know or even care about this or not.

In a desperate but failing incompetent attempt to explain our Earth bound life, its place in this cosmic domain and the perceived but unanswerable questions of, why are we here, what is our purpose, and is anyone in control, we have resorted to contriving and concocting various forms of intellectually justified but unfortunately very misleading and erroneous belief systems. Essentially creating roles for ourselves, tales and fabrications of life and its imagined creation that we consider to be our spiritual philosophies. We collectively think of this type of spiritual inklings as harbouring and sheltering our faiths and beliefs and call them "religion".

This dogma of faith has over time been adopted as humanities core ideology and has become our moral and ethical code. In fact they now represent what are considered to be our underlying foundation stones of being.

Although many of these "religions" originated countless of centuries ago, coming from the best of human intentions and in reality do generally mean well, they are in the end simply hijacked by an inbred flawed human gene. One of a thinking imperfection coming from an intellectually distorted rationalization, caused by a mind altering blight. As a result our faith systems are thoroughly derailed and derisive or are simply misinterpreted or agonizingly twisted by those who are introduced too or simply adopt them.

Religions which are meant to bring comfort and attempt to provide an impetus for explaining our frail human drama and existence, in the end fail miserably at correctly informing us of the truth regarding the cosmic and earthly situation. Thus inevitably adversely affecting human life here on this Earth in a multitude of ways never ever conceived or even dreamt of by the original spiritual thinkers and their hard working faithful scribes.

The unvarnished raw reality is this; almost all of our egregious aggression towards our birth place, this little planet of ours, and its multitude of totally innocent creatures, including most of our human conflagrations conflicts and fundamental human disagreements have been ignited, fanned, and stoked by the notions and concept coming from a warped and distorted insanely ridiculous adherence to flawed religious dogma, continually egged on by its contorted twisted insufferable feeble human interpretations of regilious doctrine.

Sadly our history lays littered with the scattered gnarled corpses once infected by this human mind based blight. Numerous examples where arrogant powerful controlling humans infected with a mind withering, I call it "intellectualitis", have strayed ever further away from their core cosmic based roots. They infect others and at times entire societies who follow along in their corrupted and tainted paths. It is the age old, well known battle fought between good and evil, plain human decency versus tangible moral and ethical putrefaction.

When I seek out an explanation of life and of cosmic existence I do not think of looking towards or even remotely consider human concocted and contrived spiritual and religious attempts. I totally forsake and discard those untruthful organized fabrications that have insidiously invaded human faith. I completely abandon and will not swallow nor tolerate the cerebral lies and spiritually manufactured deceit that is being perpetrated on a very naive unknowing humanity, by its own insane inbred mind twisted dementia.

What I do believe is this, organized earthly religions are nothing more than a blight of faith and a form of intellectual mind cancer that's constantly nibbling away at the human core and its weary soul. When you really look at the magnitude and sheer numbers of stars and galaxies in this cosmos, what silly fool would believe that any God figure would be paying the slightest mind to us ? The searing truth is this, we are on our own and are responsible for making the best of this tenuous situation we find ourselves in. The threat to life is not necessarily anything that's coming from the Cosmos, but instead comes more from the greed, arrogance, ignorance and sheer blatant stupidity that's being demonstrated on a daily basis by our fellow human beings.

Religions unfortunately have always tended to make human beings the central and leading focal point of all universal existence. Humankind actually has the incredible gall and conceited nerve to think everything revolves entirely around them. This arrogant patriarchal Lilliputian style and petty level of thinking has licensed and authorized humans to usurp total but in effect unearned control over this frail delicate planet. And to continually use and abuse it with extreme malice and prejudice accompanied by a complete disregard and cruel cavalier arrogant carelessness.

Many religious convictions indulge intellectually blighted and patriarchal arrogant attitudes and thus cloak ulterior motives pertaining to the darker side of human existence. These tainted dispositions are literally dragging much of the human race down to the bottom of the spiritual ocean of thought into the mud of the unlit slimy netherworld, far away and carefully concealed from any genuine core cosmic awareness.

There is no all powerful deity actually peering in and even remotely interested in us. The bare naked truth is this, we are living on an oasis, a beacon containing intelligent life in the cosmos and just one among many. One that is whirling around an ordinary yellow star called our "sun" which is located at the very outer extremities of a small sized many million stared galaxy which we call the "milky way". All this contained in an ever expanding cosmos that's made up of literally billions of such continually growing and expanding galaxies.

Our present day scientific thought now is even beginning to suspect that there are possibly many such cosmos, all floating like little cosmic bubbles in a pseudo foamy like mixture that's strangely in an analogy being likened to something like bubbling over beer foam. My own intuition and understanding of our Cosmic creation is that its probably more likely two intertwined Cosmic bubbles each of them joined in an intimate creative embrace with the other. Imagine our own Cosmos as it was thirteen odd billion years ago, a relatively compact ball or could it have been a Cosmic egg containing everything that's ever going to be in our present realm.

That big bang our scientists talk about was actually the beginning of a new Universe in the form of a Cosmic egg simply being impregnated. This explosion or "big bang" of creative fertilization resulted in the formation and growth of a new Cosmos. Repeating the exact reality that we see played out in creating organic life here on this Earth. The Cosmos truly provides us with clues and hidden messages that come directly from the core of existence, if only we human beings would stop thinking exactly like the Lilliputians, smarten up pay attention and begin tapping into the central core's main highway. As it is now we are just moseying down back country lanes trying only half heartily to look for answers to our purpose.

The clues to understanding the relation between the Cosmos and our psyche are all there if we humans would just untie our blinkered minds and seek out our true Cosmic destiny. There are no doubt many such Cosmic offspring's like Earth each of them with differing developmental time frames and containing a multitude of varying aspects stemming from core primal Cosmic creation.

This creation is truly so incredibly vast and immense and infinite that we as humans amount to literally a mere wisp of complete but aware nothingness in its midst. A outpost of life located in the firmament. It is not truly benign and completely indifferent to us. It affects us in ways yet still not fully understood. We probably would not even rate a line or notation in the vast book of mentions if there was one, except that is, among ourselves where we are the leading and star attraction and yes wouldn't you know it, the centre of everything there is anywhere.

The fact is we humans are more than a mere minor byproduct of sheer happenstance and the fortunate off shoots of never ending on going immeasurable cosmic creation. We are the eyes and ears and mind of the Cosmos itself. The sooner we come to realize this and the fact that we are just another organic species, only one among many and are of no more real consequence other than being aware of that fact, than any of the other organically based creatures are, the better off we and our home planet will be.

That being said I do sense inwardly intuitively and instinctively, a passion and hunger for some level of human emotional intimacy or possibly its wanting a closer tie and kinship with the true central cosmic core. This need in me has gradually transformed itself into a passionate yearning into trying to comprehend our role and place within the infinite cosmos. It does seem to be slowly inevitably revealing itself through my visually based interpretative creative inner translations. I believe that my recent photographic art has opened a cosmic doorway and has granted me permission to journey into an area of some as of yet limited cosmic cognition, and no doubt that's accompanied by an imperfect finite human level of comprehension.

At times though I must confess that I feel exactly like the lone individual, the one stranded and living out their merger frustrated life in the distant middle ages, who knew for certain that our planet was a round celestial globe and that it did indeed circle once a year around a yellow star our sun. But at that time they were living, trying just to survive amongst an ignorant population where the scientific learning of the time thought that the world was actually flat and everything in the universe actually revolved around us.

I do believe that this cosmologically centred universe is actually us and we are it. The duality of good and bad found in human beings is echoed and mirrored endlessly throughout the cosmos. It too contains commendable aspects like planets and warmth bringing solar furnaces but it also is made up of endless inhospitable blood curdling cold vacuous space.

In the world at large on an intimate level human beings by themselves seem approachable and reasonably decent. However its when they are formed into many layered assemblies and the individuals become impotently anonymous, at this point the dark side of our nature rises out of that veiled and cloaked anonymity. Its a corrupt and morally depraved side of us, selfishly bent on greedy profits, careless disregard, societal control and domination.

We on this planet face an ongoing mind numbing invasion of privacy and a constant bashing, belittling, and disregard of decent moral and ethical standards. These anonymous human founded entities, our religions, governments or the numerous mega corporations become no different than an uncontrollable runaway train, one of depraved constantly competitive hostile patriarchal thinking. A train of life which we are travelling on, fully embracing and all participating in, and of course mentally swallowing and accepting as being completely sane and rational behaviour, when in fact and in truth it's not.

As frail humans alive and surviving on this planet it's not hard to see the innumerable problems we face, but for the most part we feel somehow helpless to change them. After all how much can one lone individual do? However if we all played just a little part and allowed humanities strengths and goodness, our imagination and thinking to rise above the carnal pursuits of a mud bound world we would see our future potential role in the wider cosmos.

Those of us on this planet who care, and what is care but a mixture of kindness infused with inner strength, must harbour and lend shelter to wholesome universal values. The cosmos after all has generously allowed us to exist by sharing its breath of life and soul awareness with each of us. We should not forget nor simply dismiss the significance that flows directly from a well spring of a cosmically centred foundation.

I believe eventually these foundations, the very fabric that is cosmic time and space might itself eventually be enfolded to create new dimensions for us. We are able to do it with mathematics as fractals prove, and with imagery as seen in image factual work. In the distant and far off future perhaps if we could ever surmount the current Lilliputian magnitude of our imaginations, we will learn how this time bending and spatial enfolding works. Then new realms of cosmic and universal being, including untold multidimensional realities will open up for us just like a flower in full bloom revealing itself to us. I am hopeful that one day we will come to know and learn how to intertwine our tangible reality with the intangible one.

For now in my own quiet life, like everyone else who cannot accept that the cosmos is completely and utterly indifferent to us, I attempt to coax from within a core based artistic love, a form of what I believe is tangible visual proof that the cosmos benignly acknowledges and knows full well that we do actually exist. It is a benevolent message that comes to us affirming a universal cosmic awareness of our trivial insignificent arrival in the Cosmic neighborhood.

By enfolding and reversing images back upon themselves like I do, new and previously unseen worlds are being revealed and brought forward out into the light of human consciousness. It's in essence the magic visual key to a previously closed and tightly locked door of trans dimensional existence, one that opens up and permits further passage out to broader cosmic understanding and enlightenment. And a way, perhaps a sign for us and one which we can actually see, just to let us know that there are indeed many other sentient species out there exactly like we are, searching desperately to know the truth and reason of and for existence.

Human beings on this tiny living oasis of life must begin to attune their minds and lift their greedy eyes away from the oozy mud of carnal delights and begin to look up, outward bound realizing there is a much greater destiny in store for us. One that is waiting there for human kind to simply wake up from its constant demeaning avaricious state and eventually clue in, firmly grasping onto that patiently waiting cosmic potentiality, the very aspect that will truly push humankind ahead on its momentous developmental journey.

Stephen Livick, 2005