I have made it as far as day six at Burning Man without crying, and now here I am, alone in my RV, sobbing my heart out. There’s a fuck-off dust storm happening outside, which I rode into on my sparkly pink bike half an hour ago with the rest of my campmates, before realizing this was possibly the worst idea in the history of the Universe and returning to camp on my own. The superficial reason for my tears is the dust, which has been engaged in an active takeover bid all week and that, by flinging this storm up in our face, appears to have finally won. Every surface inside the RV is dredged in it. I am dredged in it. I can feel it sandpapering my skin and lining my throat and lungs, a sensation that is beginning to feel like dry drowning.
So there are those tears, tears of discomfort and self-pity. But the longer they persist, the more they are feeling like tears of frustration. What I really want is to scream and rage and tear my hair out, stamp my feet and wail: “It’s not faaaaaair!” I am less clear about what, exactly, isn’t fair, but the overwhelming emotion in that RV is one of pent-up anger. I realize that I’ve been putting a brave (or rather rave) face on this feeling all week, drinking and drugging and pretending I’ve been loving every minute of my virgin Burn. When in fact, the experience has been equal parts uncomfortable and alienating.
Something I am ashamed to admit, even to myself. What does this say about my supposedly open-minded embrace of the Mystical World? For the seventy thousand freewheeling, peace-and-love denizens of Black Rock City, the temporary city that springs up to host the Burn each August, this week of “radical self-expression” represents the ultimate opportunity to experience life from a more numinous perspective. To get back to the wilderness of being human and to connect with Mother Earth, and with each other, mind, body, and spirit. Am I so unenlightened that I haven’t been able to see beyond the lack of privacy and the stinking porta-potties? You’re supposed to lose all attachment to luxuries like toilet paper at Burning Man, and in the process find yourself. To set your ego free, and in doing so gain an understanding of true community. How come it’s been so hard to transcend my own selfish needs?
Outside, the storm has created a total whiteout, a bleak and eerie backdrop to my freak-out. Clashing repetitive beats from the two sound-stages neighboring our camp continue what has felt like an incessant, 24-7 assault on my nervous system. The dust is still swirling as dusk is beginning to fall, a few LEDs appearing like neon constellations in the otherwise forlorn landscape. My tears have subsided by now, leaving itchy streaks of kohl in the dust on my face, and I feel a pang of anxiety. How will my campmates have weathered the storm?
In my first magazine job, as style editor on a celebrity gossip magazine for teens, I was given the nickname Ruby Slippers—and, with twenty-four hours to go until The Man burns (the festival ends with the burning of a forty-foot wooden effigy), I wish I had a pair right now. Screw the rest of my crew, and screw my sorry unenlightened soul. I would like nothing better than to be able to click my heels together, chanting There’s no place like home, and be transported back to Brooklyn, back to breathable air, and back to my own reality.
For the uninitiated, Burning Man is a weeklong arts festival that takes place annually in the middle of the Nevada desert. A sort of rave meets social experiment, the Burn is famous for its “gifting economy”—meaning nothing on-site is for sale (beside coffee and ice, it transpires—y’know, the basics). As such, attendees bring their own bars and music and art installations to be shared freely with fellow festivalgoers, while also agreeing to abide by the nine other “principles” of the Burner community, as defined by founder Larry Harvey in 2004.
THE TEN PRINCIPLES OF THE BURNER COMMUNITY:
1. Radical Inclusion
2. Gifting
3. Decommodification
4. Radical Self-Reliance
5. Radical Self-Expression
6. Communal Effort
7. Civic Responsibility
8. Leaving No Trace
9. Participation
10. Immediacy
As a Brit who came of age in the 1990s rave heyday, I figured I knew festivals. After all, nobody has embraced the concept of getting spangled in a field in the name of communing with our higher selves through music as vigorously as the British—to the point there are now several opportunities to do so on any given weekend in the UK between the months of May and September (come rain or shine—usually rain). Perhaps it’s because we’re descended from a bunch of pagans.
And so the Burn had been on my radar for years. I was excited by the renegade vibe, but separated by an ocean, a whole continent, and requiring what sounded like an advanced degree in extreme camping, from London it had always seemed like the mother of all schleps. If getting to the middle of the Nevada desert was one thing, then getting yourself equipped to survive the week on-site was a whole other trip. It’s recommended that you bring two gallons of water, per person, per day, for example. And that’s before the conundrum of how, exactly, to create a week’s worth of meals that “leave no trace” (let alone deal with food scraps going stinky in the desert sun) has even entered the equation.
Plus, the embarrassing truth is I only ever really enjoyed myself at a festival when I went to Glastonbury as the guest of a PR and got put up in a fancy B&B with a bunch of other journalists. We slept in proper beds and got to shower, and the couple who ran the hotel gave us a glass of chilled chablis before we got in our taxi to the festival site. Other times, I’d just about managed a night or two under canvas, so long as I’d had enough to drink—but by day three my skin was crawling with a full-body craving for clean bedsheets.
At what point I decided these experiences qualified me as Burner material will forever remain a mystery, but fast-forward to early summer 2014, and I am in the throes of organizing my very first visit to Black Rock City. For one thing, since moving to New York the distance to get there has shrunk by roughly half. But having recently launched The Numinous, my curiosity about the spiritual side of the event had also been piqued. Every which way I turned, I found myself in conversation with yet another yogi, techpreneur, or boho raver, waxing lyrical about the utopian founding principles of the event. In fact, something had become increasingly clear: among the Now Age set, the annual pilgrimage to Burning Man was a nonnegotiable. It had begun to feel like a case of be there, or be the ultimate spiritual square.
But that pre-Burn prep, though. By the time we set off on the mammoth forty-hour journey from NYC to Black Rock City (top tip: do not attempt to fly to Vegas and then drive to Reno in the same day, on a hangover, unless you wish to inflict a complete personality fail on anybody who has the misfortune to cross your path), I was also lugging a whopping eighty-pound case stuffed with the wigs, wearable LED lights, and industrial-strength wet wipes I’d spent the past two months feverishly ordering on Amazon.
I’d also got my numinous agenda set. I was going to kick off the week guiding my campmates in a meditation to meet our spirit animals, attend daily sunrise yoga sessions at a camp called the Mellow Mountain, and find myself engaged in constant deep and meaningful conversations about possible solutions to climate change with the leading thinkers in radical consciousness, having bumped into them on the dance floor at Robot Heart. I was also superexcited about getting really thin and tanned, from the biking everywhere and the forgetting to eat due to having my mind blown every five minutes.
But of course, Burning Man is also a celebration of pure, unadulterated hedonism—and a couple of days in, all my high-vibe intentions had been washed away by a pretty much steady stream of Coronas. We didn’t even get to do the spirit animal meditation I’d so carefully prepared, as (a) it was impossible to get everybody sober in the same place at the same time, and (b) my campmates seemed way more interested in munching the sustainable, vegan, ridiculously strong magic mushroom truffles somebody had brought along from Portland, and meeting creatures from the fifth dimension that way.
But this was cool, I told myself, since I had always been pretty good at the hedonistic part of festivals. And since when did hedonism get such a bad name anyway? In the dictionary, it’s defined as “the belief that pleasure, or happiness, is the most important goal in life.”
For me, this echoes the concept of “kama,” something I learned about in my yogic studies. Speaking to the fact that desire for pleasure is actually what drives all human behavior, kama is identified in the Rig Veda, the most ancient and revered of Hindu scriptures, as one of the four purusharthas, or aims of life—along with dharma (duty, ethics), artha (material prosperity), and moksha (the pursuit of liberation). The theory is that working to balance these four pillars (using the practices described by the eight limbs of yoga) is the key to creating a deeply and holistically satisfying existence.
And on paper at least, Burning Man is a technicolor metaphor for this philosophy. There’s the dharma of being an active participant in bringing the event to life; the artha of assembling the necessary supplies to partake; the moksha of escaping the rules of the “default” world (Burner speak for life outside the festival); and, of course, the sheer kama of the sensory pleasures on offer—from an abundance of free massages and hugs, to a spin in the Human Carwash. Or all-day Coronas.
And for the first couple of days, I was more than happy to go about busily addressing the kama imbalance that can result when you work for yourself (#nodaysoff). But as the week wore on, life got generally dustier, weirder, and more uncomfortable. Something was out of whack. I also, thanks to Black Rock City being a total Wi-Fi black spot, began to experience a sense of restless unease I can now identify as extreme iPhone withdrawal. By day four, even through the tequila haze, I was aware that I’d long given up on hedonism and had charged headlong into all-out self-medication mode.
Because there’s a fine line, isn’t there, between the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. From hedonism to escapism. If the tenth and final guiding principle of Burning Man was immediacy, or living in the moment, then more often than not, another moment spent hungover with no access to clean toilets, a shower, or a blessed moment of peace and quiet was NOT where I wanted to be. Cut to me wailing in the back of the RV. With hindsight it’s so obvious—I was experiencing the mother of all comedowns.
But it also felt like more than that. What had really gone so wrong? Part of it lay in the fact I kept comparing life in Black Rock City to my experiences a decade and a half ago in Ibiza. This is the thought that kept resurfacing like a sand dune at low tide in my mind—as I applied fresh makeup over yesterday’s glitter, downed another shot at an all-day dance party called Distrikt, and (finally) felt my being merge with the cosmos out in the deep playa (the empty desert right out by the edge of the fence) on a mind-and-body-bending cocktail of mushrooms and Molly.
What I got from “the Ibiza years” was a sense of unbridled freedom (moksha) in the pursuit of the pleasure principle (kama). No judgment, no limits, no rules. Want to head to the club straight off the beach, still wearing your bikini? Just had some MDMA and feel like having sex in the sea? ENJOY. Being a small and relatively unspoiled island in the middle of the Mediterranean, I also think a lot of Ibiza’s rep as a “spiritual” party place is because a lot of the partying, and therefore a lot of the drinking and drugging, happens in very close proximity to nature. And like any shaman worth her stick of palo santo will tell you: you should only ever peek around the doors of perception with Mother Nature as your guide. The static electricity in cities is the biggest buzzkill.
I recently read an article titled “The Birth of Rave,” in which the four British DJs who “discovered” Ecstasy in Ibiza in 1987—credited with kicking off the 1990s rave phenomenon when they brought it back to the UK—discuss that fateful summer. “(We were) all chilled out and loved up, thinking it was going to change the world, thinking that if everyone did (ecstasy) there would be no more wars,” says Nicky Holloway.
“I found everything I was looking for,” remembers Danny Rampling, adding a mystical side note: “I felt there was something deeper, spiritually, running through the whole experience. And I discovered something recently, through my own research. In August 1987, there was an event called the Harmonic Convergence, a global shift in unity consciousness through dance rituals, which is part of the Mayan calendar teachings.” (An event I’ve heard mention of in various spiritual circles. And, interestingly, after the first “official” Burning Man was held on a beach in San Francisco in 1986—the event doubled in size and became cemented as an annual happening the following year, also the summer of 1987.)
It’s an incredibly romantic story, but with not such a happy-ever-after. The problem is that, YES, humans have access to all sorts of substances that offer a window seat over paradise, BUT that drink and drugs are hedonism for beginners. As Ram Dass concludes in his 1971 classic, Be Here Now, following years of spiritual adventures with LSD: “No matter how . . . high I got, I came down. And it was a terribly frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was and you felt these new states of awareness, and then you got cast out again.”
Which speaks to another very important factor in my own disillusionment with the Burning Man experience—which I’ve actually come to view as a pivotal moment on my path from Material Girl into a deeper connection to our magnificently Mystical World. If, somewhere along the line, drink and drugs had become my “default” route to bliss, then numinous experiences connecting to my higher self (Source, the Universe, Goddess energy, etc.), where doing my dharma had also come into the equation, had shown me a glimpse of true nirvana.
The sense of “alienation” I’d been experiencing? I can see now it was twofold. As much as I was unsure how the new me was even supposed to behave at an event like Burning Man, I was feeling equally alienated from what was rapidly becoming an outdated version of myself.
It took roughly two weeks of blissful post-Burn recovery (mainly spent marveling at the miracles of modern plumbing) to begin to process what had really happened out there in the desert, and the full download continues even as I write this, eighteen months after the event. In the moment, the experience was such a full-on assault on all six senses (including my sense of self, that is), it had been impossible for me to see beyond what was occurring in real time.
But this is also exactly what the last—and perhaps most relevant to life in the Now Age—of Larry Harvey’s Ten Principles is all about.
Immediacy is defined thus in the Burner handbook: “Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.” Or no words—making this sound also like the very definition of numinous.
“Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.”
—BURNER HANDBOOK
We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves. And isn’t this what my whole Material-Mystical journey into the Now Age has been about? A return to an authentic sense of self, beyond the glamorous and seductive trappings of the material world?
I’ve heard people talk about how life on the playa makes you really face yourself. Uh, tell me about it. In my case, it also brought me face-to-face with so many of the different barriers there are to experiencing immediacy—to being content in the moment, connected to my higher Self, to my community, and to the natural world. In relation to my Burning Man experience in particular, these included:
EXPECTATIONS. Even if you haven’t been to Burning Man, you know what Burning Man looks like, right? I actually kind of hated myself for not being “in awe” of what I saw out on the playa my first day. Was I that jaded? But I basically saw exactly what I saw in the images and YouTube clips I’d GORGED on before the event. In fact, and this may be too late, if you haven’t been to Burning Man and you think you might go at some point in the future, I would advise a total BM hashtag ban starting now. The joy of discovery is a beautiful thing—and key when it comes to experiencing immediacy.
STUFF. Witness hundreds of Burners buying up literally the entire contents of Walmart in Reno in preparation for a week of “radical self-reliance” in the desert. Not to mention the aforementioned daily Amazon orders I placed in the months running up to the event. My thinking was you can never have too many pairs of vintage ski goggles. Turns out you definitely can. Not only that, out in the desert, the metaphorical weight of all that “baggage” felt like a ball and chain, anchoring me firmly to my preconceived notions about what my Burning Man experience would, and should, look like (and you know how I feel about the word should )—versus being open to whatever magic each day might hold, and allowing this to unfold moment by moment. In the words of Yogi Bhajan: “Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.”
SUBSTANCES. See above comments about the fine line between hedonism and escapism. And the problem with using substances, alcohol in particular, as a route to hedonism is that essentially all you’re doing is shutting down the “bad” feelings for a while, in order to experience more of the “good” ones—thus creating a barrier to the full and immediate experience of your true (whole) Self. Plus, to quote Brené Brown on this one: “Numbing vulnerability [for example, and, man, was I feeling vulnerable out there on the playa] also dulls our experience of love, joy, belonging, creativity, and empathy. We can’t selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light.”
CONSUMPTION. Versus participation, that is. There’s a huge difference between showing up and “taking” part (consumption) in Burning Man/life, and contributing in a meaningful way (participation)—and only as an active participant is it possible to experience the festival/life as it is happening. Otherwise you’re forever an observer, on the outside looking in (an easy role, as a journalist, for me to slip into). I love the description of participation (Principle #9) in the Burner handbook: “We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. . . . We make the world real through actions that open the heart” (my italics). What had I participated in? Not even my spirit animal meditation. And what did I consume? Too many expectations, way too much stuff, and a shitload of substances.
SOCIAL MEDIA. Or rather, lack of it. Without the rabbit hole of Instagram to scuttle down as soon as, say, boredom, discomfort, frustration, [insert “negative” emotion here] set in, I became acutely aware of what an effective and all-pervasive tool this has also become for removing ourselves from the present moment—or “numbing,” as Brené Brown would put it. Also, for enforcing yet more expectations about the way life “should” look and feel. My iPhone withdrawal? Being forced to confront all the things that didn’t look and feel so great in that moment.
FEAR. A big one, THE big one, and hugely important since I ultimately think it was fear that blindsided my whole BM experience. Fear of life in the desert itself, fear of not fitting in, fear of falling off my bike, fear of dust storms, fear of weirdos, fear of my drink being spiked . . . you name it, I was afraid of it! Enter . . . overconsumption of expectations, stuff, and substances, to keep a lid on the fear.
If anything, these realizations make Burning Man one of my most numinous experiences to date—since cultivating awareness around the myriad ways I (we) have designed to numb out from the immediate experience of simply being with our true (sometimes ugly, uncomfortable, angry) selves is one of the cornerstones of thriving as a fully actualized human in the Now Age.
EMBRACE THE BURNING MAN PRINCIPLES IN YOUR LIFE
RADICAL INCLUSION. Drop the Mean Girls act. This means accepting any and everybody as your brother or sister, since we all share a box marked HUMAN. (Yes . . . even the Mean Girls.)
GIFTING. Give freely of yourself and your stuff. And give because it feels good, NOT because you’re expecting something in return.
DECOMMODIFICATION. Seek out experiences that are free, turn your back on brands, and embrace the idea of the “exchange economy.” Need some new clothes? Arrange a swap party with friends.
RADICAL SELF-RELIANCE. Develop your inner resources. Strengthen your sense of self with yoga, meditation, and healing practices, as well as activities that expand your comfort zone.
RADICAL SELF-EXPRESSION. Celebrate your unique gifts, and not in a way that’s designed to impress others. Try journaling, chanting, and karaoke (really!) to free your inner Voice.
COMMUNAL EFFORT. Lean in to your community, meaning your family, your friendship group, your colleagues, the people who live on your street. What do they need? How can they help you? Reach out.
CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY. Clean up your side of the street, metaphorically and literally! Consider: How do my actions affect others? How can I make this a better experience for us all?
LEAVING NO TRACE. Recycle, recycle, recycle. Just say NO to the Whole Foods “double bagging” policy.
PARTICIPATION. Say YES to life. And ask not what the party can do for you, but what you can bring to the party.
IMMEDIACY. Put. Your. iPhone. Down. Through the window of e-mail and social media, it is possible to be all places at once. But only the present moment—present to the air that you are breathing, the food that you are eating, the words that you are speaking, and the person you are kissing RIGHT NOW—is real. Meaning only in this moment are you free to create the life you want, and to revel in the authentic, mystical, numinous human experience that is your birthright.
A RETURN TO THE DEFAULT WORLD
In the beginning of this chapter, I described how a lot of Now Agers view the annual trip to Burning Man as a pilgrimage, which is defined in the dictionary thus: “any long journey, especially one undertaken as a quest or for a votive purpose, as to pay homage.” So what, exactly, are the denizens of Black Rock City paying homage to?
I think that ultimately BM is a celebration of freedom—or moksha: freedom to do our dharma, by contributing something meaningful to society; freedom in the pursuit of kama; and freedom to redefine what artha looks like on our own terms (our actual material needs, versus all the bells and whistles, the trinkets and baubles we’ve been sold on). Also, the freedom to make choices outside the “default” settings of everyday life—choices about how to think, look, and behave, which it can often feel have already been made for us.
And we all want freedom of choice, right? Thing is, the more choices that are made for us, the easier it is to exist on autopilot. Meaning the less effort we have to make to tune in, and to connect to what our higher Self truly needs in any given moment. To practice self-love. An attractive proposition, since getting present with our deeper desires may often involve confronting what’s not working for us (mind-numbing job, abusive relationship), or making “unreasonable” demands of others (higher salary, more fulfilling sex). Yikes!
Sure, despite my inability to engage fully with the immediacy of the event, for a little while at least my Burning Man experience actually made my “default world” a little less default. I was able to see things I had taken for granted (an RV park with a LAUDROMAT! Menus!) with fresh, appreciative eyes. As such, it’s as if the experience restored a sense of “immediacy” to my daily life (until I became fully entrenched in my social media feeds again, at least).
But the biggest takeaway for me? Another definition of a pilgrimage is “a metaphorical journey into someone’s own beliefs.” And it might have taken a minute to unravel it all, but life on the playa was a unique opportunity to experience my personal transformation, from Material Girl to Mystical World, in real time. Next time—yes, I hope there will be a next time—I’ll be leaving the expectations, the stuff, and the need to numb out behind.