Your Life is the Event + An Invitation to Burn

Invitation to Burn

I have a story to tell you today.  It’s a story about burning & freedom.  Presented in true millennial fashion, which is to say a bulleted list.

You might have noticed I haven’t posted in 2 weeks.  Instead, I’ve been doing things like creating an e-course for creator rebels and designing my new website.  I’ve also been reading and drafting poetry, submitting poems for publication, lining up a volunteer position helping inner city residents write, and designing a global gift of love called “The Outsider Project.”

Needless to say, I’ve been working like one cray-cray woman on a mission.

Or, someone who’s been told they have a year to live.

Life changing productivity and making real dreams happen take great energy, inspiration, and courage.  Most people are just like me: they don’t write books, create businesses, or engage in serious life design unless they find ways to hurdle over inertia while staying inspired.  Annnddd, this is about running marathons, not sprints.  So when I go hard, I remember to burn.

This weekend, I unplugged from civilization completely and attended an event called Transformus.  It’s officially affiliated with Burning Man, an annual experiment in co-created culture and temporary community.  It’s a place of freedom and controlled chaos where social restrictions are relaxed or ignored altogether.  This is where the artists, healers, dreamers, change-makers, and joy-revelers hang out.

If you want to watch a video that captures the spirit of a burn, I have one for you here.  But if you haven’t attended one, don’t expect to get it.  You won’t.  It’s something that can only be experienced directly, and ideally, over time.

Maybe this will help.  Here are some of the things I experienced during my burn.

Burning: Story in a Bulleted List

• I co-conducted a spontaneous yoga and acro-yoga session with one other co-conductor, whom I met 5 minutes before our workshop, of which we were the only participants.  It was the workshop I had wanted to take but missed.  He taught me to give lunar hugs.
• I ate homemade chicken Thai soup after leaving a poi workshop.
• I stopped by a sparkle pony camp and found a hot pink fishnet shirt and a cream ruffle skirt.
• I found a citrine crystal at the giving tree.   I took my clothes off and swam with my crystal in the lake so it would soak up all the beautiful energy of the event.  For me this event was about abundance.  Abundance of every form.

• And a big pink sparkle pony.

• My friend John ended up wearing my sparkle pony skirt all night.
• I consumed mango mimosas and pancakes in the flavors of cheesecake, sparkle pony, and jalapeño respectively.  Women wearing nothing but rumba panties and vintage aprons served me.
• I danced.  I danced a lot. I danced to drums, to EDM, to Lady Gaga.  I did fan dance, I did belly dance.   I danced in my dreams, base shook the mountain I slept on.
• I drummed and watched many spontaneous grooves – my favorite of which could have been the cabaret hat dance by a girl in a glitter rainbow bodysuit.  Or perhaps it was a burlesque in a Queen of Hearts outfit.

I had some conversations: one was with a modern-day Gaian priest of sorts.  He told me the word HOPE had a hole in it and I couldn’t argue.  He cried a single tear of joy and unity during our conversation.  It dropped down his right cheek like liquid crystal and I don’t even think he noticed it.

• I made a sand painting.  My friend Ramon told me about his travels to Japan this past year and I made a huge dream-catcher with friends and strangers while we weaved our stories of the past year into it and summoned a new story for our coming year.  There was laughter, tears, talk of “fuck-it therapy” and declarations of love.
• I told at least a hundred people they were beautiful.  Sometimes I exclaimed WE are beautiful!  Sometimes I said YOU know you’re beautiful, don’t you?  I then understood: beauty was an easier approach than love.  This was how I proclaimed my love.

• I rode a huge rocking horse, I see-sawed with my sweetie.
• I drummed, played the bongos, learned about tantric yin drumming, shook a rattle.
• I worked, helping people slip into volunteer positions during the event and handling the “roadies” who helped with our drumming event during the effigy burn.
• I cried, a few times.  Some of it was from stress, overwhelm, and deepest child-heart sorrow.  Some of it was from transcendence, gratitude, and oceanic joy.
• I forgot, I forgot about my life, my work, the daily tyranny of my fears, the things I was trying to accomplish, my limited desires.
• I felt angry and alone and isolated.  I felt joined and welcomed. I felt mystery, beauty, connections, re-connections, and awe in the presence of the unbridled human spirit.  I felt nearly every feeling a human being is capable of experiencing.  It all just flowed through me and it was just OK.
• Several times, I looked around and wondered: who are these people?  They are beautiful, and I deserve to have them in my life!  These are the people I had been waiting for!  I affirmed that beauty is not perfection.
• I learned to carry a diamond in my heart.

I wanted to be a star, fallen.  Luminous in grass, burning.  I watched my dream catcher spark into turquoise-white light and climb the flame winds.  Then it launched, my word.  Flourish.

• Fire is prayer.  We held it in our hands, gazed into it, gathered beside it, played within it.  We lit the rain as it streamed its fountain of warmth around us.

This is where words fail so this is where the list must end.

Moral of the Story

Your life is the event.

Do what you want, when you want, with who you want.

Be radically free in creator rebel fashion.  Heal.  Change the world.

Big Creator Rebel Love + xoxox.  

Cynthia