GET OPEN :: it all starts to make sense....

<div style="text-align: center;">I've been often asked how does my art connect now to what I was up back in my teens. For a long time, I wasn't really ready to show my past life as a young artist going through some dark places while seeking the light. The art that I did when I was 15, I'm definitely not ready to share yet, but I'm fine with sharing the part of the journey that was in the light. I made these sketches and painting below during my high school years when I was spending all my time with doing art and exploring the life of painters, ancient alchemist, kabbalists and seekers. This one below was the first of its kind, a meditational sygil i made for myself, based on alchemical illustrations I was studying carefully back then. I must say that having artist friends who are also seekers give me a lot of inspiration to keep on expressing the quest. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook7.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This is my note/sketch book back when I was 16. This was way before the birth of Lichiban, the little symbol on the bottom right corner of the book was my logo I designed for myself using my three initials A T SZ of my actual name. It connected the symbol of fire and air, the Eye, and the knot of life that had special significance for me back then. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook6.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Tree of Sephiroth (most of the notes there in Hungarian, sorry). Sephiroths are the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;font-family:sans-serif;" ><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">10 attributes/emanations</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> in </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(6, 69, 173); background-image: none;" title="Kabbalah"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Kabbalah</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, through which </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(6, 69, 173); background-image: none;" title="Names of God in Judaism"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">God</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (who is referred to as </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Sof" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(6, 69, 173); background-image: none;" title="Ein Sof"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ein Sof</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> - The Infinite) reveals him/herself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the chain of higher </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(6, 69, 173); background-image: none;" title="Metaphysics"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">metaphysical</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> realms. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook4.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Cosmic diagrams are a way of mapping the connection between the microcosmos, the human body, and the macrocosmos, our galaxy. When we unlock the maps of galaxies beyond ours, simultaneously we unlock the doors to the hyperdimensions within ourselves and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">vice versa</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. "As above, so below" as Thoth through the words of Hermes Trismegistos would say. That is what I believe is the shift that is being heralded with the whole consciousness shift people are talking about these days. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook5.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook8.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook2.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook3.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This is the LOVE ∆eon as I've try to translate the experience/vision of it once back then. It reemerged again as </span><a href="http://lichiban.net/portfolios/11901-feline-fantasy#num=3721531&id=11901"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">LOTUSHEART </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">two years ago. I created it as a collaboration with fellow artist comrade and seeker, Quan Luv, who introduced Lotusheart to Harakiti, his cosmic lover ninja.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-ALCHEMYnotebook9.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">While I was going through some self-healing and soul searching, I discovered all these mystical traditions that to my understanding were talking about the same ultimate realization that at the core of our being we are divinity. That divinity is an awareness, or a special kind of vibration that our consciousness harmonizes with, or attunes to. It is the oneness-awareness, a state of non-duality. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-SUFIMysticalBuddhist1.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">You can call it a changing of frequency, as we are made of various combinations of vibration types that corresponds to the degree of our being connected to matter. It is not something humans that are bound to the four elements, i.e. matter, can realize completely, but we can achieve experiences of the state of absolute freedom from limitations, a state of buddhahood or heaven, if we embrace the vibration of that way of awareness, which is a mental state, or form of awareness on a particular frequency. Most traditions say that it is never fully achieved as a permanent state while our lifeseed is in the body. It is a shift that happens to our consciousness, a state of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">bliss</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, and it takes a life of spiritual practice to achieve it, if only for periods of time. It takes letting go of notions of the past, memories of pain, and then the ultimate letting go of the idea of the self, the thing that calls itself 'I'. It's the state that many mystical traditions describe as being one with God, or uniting with God, realizing the inner divinity. Sufis, the practitioners of Islamic mysticism describe it through the metaphor of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 204, 204);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">heart as a mirror</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, which has to be polished through spiritual practice of cleansing of the self from false notions of identifications with negative energies and orientations (such as greed, hunger for power, envy, hate, etc) in order to reflect the Beloved, God, fully.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-SUFIMysticalBuddhist3.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The first person who I experienced as someone who you might call an '</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">enlightened human</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">' was this old Sufi healer in Srinagar, Kashmir. He would sit there for 12 hrs a day and people would come to him for his healing energy all day. Something about him & his presence was different from any other spiritual guides and healers I've encountered before. He is one of those </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetings_with_Remarkable_Men"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Remarkable Men</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Gurdjieff inspired me back then to seek. He changed my life in some unspoken way with very few words. If he were a Buddhist, he would be called a </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">b</span></a><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">oddhisattva</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I don't have time to introduce these books, but I took a few snapshots of my library of books on spirituality, most of which are books on, or about Sufis, alchemy & magic (though I've been also sharing some of my Tibetan Buddhist references) that I'd recommend to anyone who would want to explore or continue to explore the forgotten part of our makeup. One of most accessible and yet one of the most powerful entry I had to these was Kahlil Gibran's THE PROPHET. I read it when I was 14 and it was the most important inspiration and light bearer I had encountered until then, which changed my life and the way I was seeing the world then in some deep way. In a way, it was through his work that I was first exposed to Sufi teachings, which was a major source of inspiration for Gibran.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires."</span></i><br />Kahlil Gibran</div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-SUFIMysticalBuddhist2.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Yes, I am a book junky, and the cosmos made sure that I got the right openings to support it. I used to spend all my money on books, though I stopped buying new ones a few years ago (art costs a LOT of $$) and rather slowly reopening the ones I have (but they still keep coming through, like last time on the ones I found on the street or from friends). Ultimately all books are just there to lend a language to something we have to seek to realize as an experience ourselves, at which point they become disposable. Beyond them a whole infinite ocean, as one of my favorites, Jalaladdin Mevlana Rumi would say. Rumi is a portal of love energy. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:14;" ><i>"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." </i><br />— <a class="authorNameRegular" href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/875661.Mawlana_Jalal_al_Din_Rumi" style="color: rgb(102, 51, 0); text-decoration: none;">Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi</a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(here are </span><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/875661.Mawlana_Jalal_al_Din_Rumi"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">some quotes</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> for inspiration)</span></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-SUFIMysticalBuddhist4.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Some of these might be too technical to be the first read, but we are always attracted to the things that are ready for at all time, so it's all good. Let me know if you have any recommendations.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/licsi777/Lichiban-SUFIMysticalBuddhist6.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;">thank you for reading. please share.</div></div>

GET OPEN :: it all starts to make sense....

I've been often asked how does my art connect now to what I was up back in my teens. For a long time, I wasn't really ready to show ...

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