Sheba Remy Kharbanda

Creatrix | Visionary | Alchemist

Metaphysics Practice

13 Moons Project

Director

Installation - Five Rivers: A Portrait of Partition

Oral History - Vilayati Tarti/Foreign Land Project

Video

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Words

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Forthcoming

Of all the compliments I receive, by far the ones I value the most involve my mama who is 69 today. I am often told I look just like her or that I’m lucky to have a mother like her. My mother always worried that she would pass at the age of 50, like her mother. Of course, I knew differently and would tease her about it. As we were on our way to lunch today, my mother spoke her thoughts out loud, “I never thought I’d reach this age!” I told her that my grandmother had been laughing for the past hour but I wasn’t sure about what. In that moment, I knew then and conveyed as much to mom who also laughed. We are planning birthday #70. Somewhere off the beaten track, and warm. Though she’s lived in England for 57 years, she can’t stand the cold. Nor can I!

Meditations on Power XXIII
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Moon phase: Waxing crescent
Illumination: 1%
Constellation: Pisces
Rulership: Neptune
Posted at 1:11 local time
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We are kinda sorta still in dark Moon, the stage before renewal. Until we see Luna again in the night sky, it is the energy of inferiority and of surrender to the divine that dominates, echoed by the archetypes involved. There’s that feeling of being pulled, but not the sight to see where to.
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I have met Guanyin/Quan Yin many times in recent months. Kuan-shi Yin or Guanshiyin meaning "Observing the Sounds (or Cries) of the (human) World is a Bhodisattva, thought to be imbued with miraculous powers to assist all those who pray to her.
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When I first arrived in London, on my way to the Punjab residency that served as a catalyst for an intense clearing, my mother presented me with a beautiful glass pendant engraved with Guanyin’s image. I rather ungratefully told my mother I had too much stuff and that she should keep it. When I returned from India, I noticed the bronze Guanyin statue occupying pride of place on Pisces Mama #1’s beautiful carved wood sideboard. I asked about it and she said she found it at a charity shop and had kept it for me. I don’t think it’s an accident that I’ve no room left in my luggage. She belongs here with my mother. But the pendant is definitely coming to Brooklyn.
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In the intervening period, I went to Taiwan and met Guanyin on the daily. I did not know this would happen. Indeed, it was only in chatting with a soul friend, one of a handful of those for whom I clearly needed to become a New Yorker in order to be reunited with, that I appreciated the synchronicity of all of this. For sure it was the omnipotence of this divine entity that allowed me to feel so at home in Taiwan, indeed to be drawn to that island in the first place.
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This is the Guanyin I met on the beach where the sweet old taxi driver picked me up and took me back to my guest house for the equivalent of a few dollars - a huge discount over the metered fare. The same one who kissed my hand. I shared the encounter with my (very) Pisces mother who said it was a visitation from the divine.
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©2018 Sheba Remy Kharbanda