Burning Man and Transformation
After the Possibility Management trainings in Poland and Portugal, I started the US Transformation Tour with the crazy adventure of Burning Man.
Leaving Europe with many ideas and plans of cool offers, workshops and collaborations at the Black Rock City, I was consistently met with bigger forces than these plans of mine. The main learning and theme of the Burning Man chapter of the Tour has been to listen, sense, and collaborate with nature.
Many veteran Burners (the citizens of Burning Man) have told me that this was a particularly challenging Burn, physically, psychologically, and emotionally. “If you survive this, you can survive anything”, a weathered kitchen chef told me as I brought food to a small marquee with a cooling fan, because the refrigerated truck did not arrive at the camp for the first time.
At the high desert in Black Rock City the weather is intense on many accounts. Temperatures were constantly on the high 30's reaching mid 40's easily during the day. Everyone needs to drink 5.5l per day to stay somewhat human. And the white powder I saw being passed around was one inside jars in large quantities, the ubiquitous powdered electrolytes.
I was prepared to expect abundant and unpredictable storms. There was a wild thunder and dust storm that rolled in fast one night, and I’ve never seen a city stop on its tracks so fast and immediately turn off all its electrical current. Oh and the long dust storms. The one on the day of the burning of the Man, lasted over 8h. With zero visibility, goggles and layered dust masks on, the only thing to do is wait wherever you are, may it be inside a tent, or in an art installation.
Being sick at Burning Man
It was physically challenging for me particularly as I left Europe with a stomach bug, which carried on days into the burn. I was releasing water at a dangerously fast rate, and could not eat more than toast and baby food for a few days. I spare you the details, it was not fun.
Besides the physical inconvenience of that sort of trouble, I also lacked energy to collaborate in the camp, and lacked emotional energy to engage with people at large. I was sad that I could not do the cool activities I had planned to offer to the BM world. On day 4 I was decided to leave and get help when I found that there was a kind of Burning Man hospital, with quite a lot of fancy equipment. What a thing, a hospital in the desert! With some simple emergency pill, some air conditioning and litters of IV for the dehydration, I slept there for the morning. After that I slowly started eating and feeling like a human being again!
Dancing with Synchronicity & Coincidence
Since my early 20s I had wanted to go to Burning Man because of the art, the creativity, and the adventure. Later in my life I researched more about the 10 Principles and got excited about the possibilities of a new culture that was more self-reliant and adult. What I did not know until I started packing and preparing was that Burning Man creates a vortex of synchronicity. The amount of coincidences and synchronicities that happen are so vast, that is a solid part of the culture.
From what I could tell, coincidences seemed to happen there more often because:
- People were paying extra attention to the coincidences and,
- People’s attention was much more free and clear and open for coincidence.
Daily life in modern culture is largely about following a certain path or agenda, or fulfilling some sort of plan or concept, like making money, or go to university to get a degree, but even just the plan of getting out to go buy groceries. At burning man, most people seem to have an extreme availability for the possibility of Possibility, or the possibility of Coincidence. They could be heading out to see an art installation or a camp at a certain time and would very easily begin walking towards a neighbouring camp offering some other completely different activity. There was a high reliance on the field of coincidence, and the field would often provide.
I learned to dance with coincidence. Whenever I had a plan to achieve, it would rarely happen. From repeatedly going to friends camps and not meeting them or to heading off to deliver a pre-planned workshop in a large workshop camp and find that the camp is no longer there as they all decided to leave earlier. When I was doing a focussed wanting, a kind of ‘I can make this happen’ kind of wanting, it simply did not work.
But when I was more open and more playful in the sense of less rigid, and less focussed on what I wanted to make happen, but still keeping an energetic space open for something, that something could come in less than 5minutes. From a free art-car ride back to camp (it can take hours walking), to cycling around shouting ‘bacon’ at 7am in a sleepy neighbourhood and in less than 5 minutes a man comes outside and directs us the bacon they’ve been cooking, to piloting a propeller plane, after running into the actual pilot in the right time to get the most awe-inspiring scenic view of the nevada desert. Guys, I flew a plane!!
Flying a plane
From when I found out that I had the opportunity of actually go on a plane ride until a few hours after we landed, I only had the words “wow” coming out of my mouth. The sensation of being in such a small metal container and feeling the plane move with the movements of the wheel was exhilarating. The pilot told me it was like steering a bike. I dared to make one edgy turn, I slightly nosedived for a few seconds, and pulled up again. I wanted more! Even as I was piloting I could not believe it, it was the best experience of the whole burn for me, and the one I have the least words for still.
The Temple
There was a space called the Empyrean Temple – which gets designed, built, and burnt every year on the last day. The Temple, is where Burners go to mourn, to let go, to release, and sometimes to celebrate.
The walls of that wooden building are full of mementos, writings, offers, photos of dead loved ones – humans and non humans – forgiveness pleas, and love letters. Because the Burning Man community had not met for three years, and in the meantime many people lost friends and family to the viral global disease, the space felt dense, heavy, and saturated.
I did not sense a need to practice letting go at the Temple myself, but still I wrote a few rewords for a dear friend and colleague Dan who left this Earth last month. Walking around and reading what people wrote was very moving, the writings were raw, honest, and direct. I remember reading about a battle with cancer, another about letting go of a toxic pattern, others saying farewell to a time of their lives. I contributed by serving the temple holding space alongside with other Possibilitators and other Temple Guardians, on a 3am-7am shift that took us to see the sun rise and ground us.
The Burns
The day of the burning of the Man happened during a whiteout that only cleared at night, just before the fire. The whole city comes to the centre of the playa and plays every sound system they have, every light show, every fire cannon, every LED light. It is a real chaotic explosion upon explosion, climax upon climax of shouting and dancing, and more fire. I watched the fireworks and the burning from afar, at the top of a dome, and was happy to leave the Bacchian feast behind me.
In contrast the Temple burns in silence. That seemed to have more power than the loud folly of the night before. 80,000 people sitting or standing in silence watching a whole building burn, and burning with it the thing they want to let go of. Some times a person would break the silence and shout a name out loud, and we would all hold that person too with us, and let go. It was enriching to be with so many ‘strangers’ mourning other ‘strangers’, and experience how much closeness was happening in that moment.
The Dust
I was told that the dust was sacred. I mean the dust is everywhere, especially where you don’t want the dust to be. I tolerated the dust, but it wasn’t until I left that I understood at least part of that sacredness.
The dust as well as the heat, they melt your Box. They break apart every single habit, expectation, and plan you have. The incredible 8h dust storm reminded us that no matter how many caravans, air conditioning, or satellite dishes, refrigerators and generators, or whatever fancy equipment you have, the desert will force you to yield to it. And yield you must if you are to be transformed.
Endings
During day 2 I was offered a tarot card for my Burning Man experience. When I pulled I could feel my Box reacting. It said: “your time will come”. Its message was to let go of trying to do something, to be something, to achieve anything. I thought it was be about my health and letting go of the burn and go back to civilisation, but it turned out to have many more insights for me. Instead of delivering a Rage Club and going out with my fancy stand and deliver possibility, I received a lot more. I got to experience dancing with the desert and the field of coincidence, cooking in a kitchen in a dust storm, pilot a plane, pick locks, wait my turn, sink into what other wanting can come from the now and from the here, and many more that I don’t know when I will be able to share.
