24k Life
This year, I celebrated my born day with the release of my first art project, and what a year it has been. This year, death has given me a new perspective on life and what it means to be human.
This gold bracelet was a wedding gift for my mother to celebrate my parents' union, but she locked it away decades ago when my father passed away.
The charm that appears to look like a swastika (svastika is Sanskrit for good fortune and well-being) is actually an ancient Buddhist symbol representing eternally cycling through the Dharma wheel. The Nazis appropriated this peaceful sign of auspiciousness by reversing it to rotate the other way, twisting it into an emblem of hate, violent oppression, and genocide.
Nirvana in Buddhist philosophy means “blowing out” the candle to extinguish the fire of greed, hatred, and delusion, a liberation from the cycles of rebirth into non-existence and nothingness; spiritual enlightenment. Nirvana is based on the perfect realization of the truth and loving awareness.
As humans, we may carry this unconscious desire to die because life can be a painfully exhausting process, and death promises us release from the sufferings of this reality. The notion of death cannot be applied to our reality because it is a continuation of our soul’s transformation. Death cannot kill what never dies.
The interlinking chains represent our cosmic entanglement, the interconnectedness of our lives. Some parts of the journey are smooth, or at least that is the path intended, but there will always be bumps, twists, and turns in the road. Every scratch on here was a moment in time. It carries the weight of 24 hours in a day, 24 karats in gold. Every day is golden, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Some days are bigger and shinier than others, but never a dull moment.
This bracelet wraps around my left wrist of arteries, a direct lineage to my heart. The angel number 8 represents infinity, connection, completeness, giving and receiving, karma… the universal spiritual law of cause and effect.
Wishing you a 24k life of infinite love and abundance.
Peace & blessings.
