This piece is an excerpt from my book Bridges of Golden Light. It illustrates clearly how my spiritual journey has been supported by the art that I create and vice versa.

Read more: Divine Dragon of the Light

 

Lifetimes

I am aware that my soul is eternal. Now, I am further opening up to my development of the soul as a layered experience towards the Divine to bring more of my divinity into my daily life. My past and lifetimes and identities intertwine, creating and nourishing what I am today.
My Buddhas, my Divine Dragon of the Light and my ceramic pots remind me of other lifetimes.
I was a Tibetan Zen monk in the “cellars,” with access to thousands of sacred books written in Sanskrit and chanting with mesmerizing Tibetan bowls that with heavenly sounds brought us all in a collective dream of expanded consciousness, where we could telepathically communicate in the multiple hours of silent practice we held together, sitting in meditation.
I have found bits and pieces of that lifetime in this one. I found myself doing lots of “sesshins” in the Rochester Zen Center with Roshi Philippe Kapleau, who brought the Zen tradition of Soto-Rinzai Zen from Japan to America. I communicated with a stone Buddha sculpture in the patio of the Center and also with Kanzeon in an intimate room. He was the same one that was a deity in India, later in China Kuan Yin and Avalokiteshvara in India. I even did the chants and the flower arrangements, ikebana style, at Casa Zen in Mexico City, where I did my practice and even became a leader for some years named by Sensei, Roshi’s Dharma heir.
Many lifetimes to recall, indeed! In another, I was a ceramist in Japan. There I was also a monk, the elegance and sobriety of the Japanese style crossed dimensions and was brought over in the beautiful ceramic pots I produced years ago and have now in my living room.
The dragon—my two-headed dragon sculpture on a table in the middle of my living room—reminds me of a lifetime in China during which I was also a warrior, then a samurai in Japan… an imperial dragon that represents “wisdom” for the Chinese and whose main characteristic is having 5-fingered paws, with 5 fingers as a main characteristic as mine does.
It is on this same dragon that I emerged after I hit the bottom of the deep ocean: I mounted it and flew away.
This event transcended a repeating nightmare that I had when I was a child: I woke up repeatedly with a sense of drowning, being swallowed by a huge wave as the mouth of the dragon… over and over…
The event consisted of a one-hour meditation, after which I went to sleep and dreamed of the dive into the deep ocean; the darkness was illumined by the light of small fish as I hit the bottom. Then came the impulse upwards, emerging with a force that brought me out on the back of my forever Divine Dragon of the Light.
For years in my dreams I was told to make a sculpture, which I did: a two-headed dragon with a yin-yang center, the masculine and feminine forces of the Universe intertwined. When he saw it, Sensei sanctioned it as an exquisite Chinese sculpture and was very surprised when I told him the story of how I made it.
So… bits and pieces of my lifetimes in China and Japan—and more, I believe, in the eastern cultures—I have found in this one, where for years I have been related to Zen now revisiting.
As a ceramist discovering the mysteries of the four elements combined, earth, air, water and fire allowed me to create and make these beautiful ceramic pieces that bring with them the story of the ages, the elegance of Spirit, the presence of the forces of nature expressed in delicate sophisticated ways to elevate our human spirit and to remind us that there is much more soul in them that meets the eye.
I am cradled in the warmth of the infinite lifetimes that show up the minute I take the entryway and sit and let the Universe meditate me.
Then affirmations and prayers stay with me for cycles of time to serve my growth and spiritual development:
Divine Dragon of the Light
Please protect me from negativity
Inspire and help me know what I want,
Accept what I know
Do what I can
With Joy, Love, Ecstasy, Abundance, Enthusiasm,
Peace, Harmony and Lightness
For Myself and all sentient beings,
So be it!
Or the following:
My existence has a purpose
I live, I love
I work, I die
I feel refreshed and
I begin my life anew
These became daily mantras mapping my orientation in life:
Divine Love Source
Cosmic energy
Universal Love
Help me have no self-pity
No self-delusion
Utter severance with the little ego
Time effort, patience, perseverance and courage
Honesty, will power, love, understanding, truth
Walk the path of my spiritual growth.
So be it!