Experience Report: 8 Days at Burning Man

[waking_dreams]

Introduction
Basics
A Handful of Experiences
Selected Event Listings
Profound Experiences
Conclusion

::Introduction::
A couple weeks ago, I spent a week out in the desert at Burning Man. Leo mentioned this event in his Spiral Dynamics: Stage Green video, though to be honest I've wanted to go since I was 15 and didn't get tickets until this, my 4th consecutive year of trying. This will be a lengthy post. There are more things going on at the event than you can possibly experience in a week, certainly more than I can write about even from just my own experience. If you like an adventure and are looking for a great way to pull yourself from Stage Orange into Stage Green, this event may be just what you're looking for. I took notes in my commonplace book while I was there and have focused this report on things I thought would be of use to this community. If you're curious or have any questions, I'm happy to answer them or point you in the direction of someone who can. Here goes!
 

::Basics::

What is Burning Man?
From Wikipedia: Burning Man is an annual event in the western United States at Black Rock City – a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, approximately 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno. The late summer event is described as an experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles: radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leaving no trace. The event takes its name from its culmination, the symbolic ritual burning of a large wooden effigy ("the Man") that traditionally occurs on the Saturday evening of the event.

~~What does it take to physically get to Burning Man?~~
You sign up for the ticket sale in late winter/early spring, then you try to get tickets in a lottery style sale. The main sale sells out 30-40,000 tickets in under 30min. If you don't get a ticket in the main sale, you can still buy one from somebody whose plans changed if it's really important to you.
If it's your first time, you scour the internet for information on how to survive in a hot, dry, dusty alkali environment and you begin to place Amazon orders for the things you'll need. These include eye and lung protection for dust storms like goggles, bandannas, kefiyah/shemaghs, and 3M dust masks, personal lighting so you can be seen at night so you're not run over by a giant art vehicle in the dark, sunscreen, earplugs, the list feels endless but you can get away with a fairly minimal packing list if you know what to bring.
There is no commerce permitted in Black Rock City except for sanctioned ice and coffee sales at center camp, so you must bring everything you need to survive the week: Clothing, Food, Water, Shelter, and the aforementioned extra supplies to help you survive dust storms and heat. It's also recommended you bring some kind of gift for the community/your neighbors as well as whatever you feel you need to radically express yourself. 
We flew from Ontario to Las Vegas, picked up the RV we booked months in advance, and spent 2 days at an Airbnb in Vegas to make all our food in advance and make last minute trips to Walmart for supplies we forgot. Once we were ready, we drove 8 hours north to the event. We bought two bikes at Walmart to get around inside the event. We overpacked, of course. We rented an RV because my partner didn't like the idea of waking up in a tent covered in dust. This simplified things, but dust still gets all over everything. Go figure.    

 

::A Handful Of Experiences::

Here are my notes I wrote while at the event.
I should also note here that the art theme for 2018 was "I, Robot".

In spiral dynamics, each stage transcends and includes the stages before it. There were so many people in great shape, and there’s even at least one full service gym called The Pink Gym where I was able to get a few good workouts in next to people who have clearly incorporated the fitness aspects of stage orange. There’s camp Settle This Like Men who teach Brazilian JiuJitsu, Thai boxing, and HIIT cardio classes. There’s also an ultra marathon every year put on by a camp called Pink Lightning. There were a couple climbing/bouldering walls, a Classical Greek naked gymnasium for oil wrestling and philosophizing, and of course, there are countless yoga and meditation classes in varying styles and degrees of seriousness. 

I saw a stage blue looking fellow wearing boat shoes, navy shorts, a Ralph Lauren polo, and a MAGA hat. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

Overheard a talk at a large camp where the speaker was romanticizing stage purple. Hearing lots of “Like”s and “Umm”s made me grateful to be able to learn from teachers like Leo who have put effort into eloquence and delivery.

People at this event who really “get it” have this quality where they refuse to let their external circumstances dictate their emotional state/internal experience. Case in point: I was out last night seeing incredible art when we began to experience unrelenting whiteout dust storms with high winds and low visibility. We dismounted our bikes to rest at an environmentally themed piece of art, a 34’ tall polar bear made out of white car hoods with video of endangered species and natural environments being projected onto the bear at night. We soon discovered that right on the other side of the polar bear, there was a group of participants who had parked their camp's art car, were blasting disco/house music, and had set up an impromptu pizzeria and were making by hand, baking on the spot, and handing out slices of the best pizza I have ever had. They did this while constantly cheering and dancing like they wanted to do it more than anything in the world.
Here's a picture of the polar bear in question. 

 

Walked into a camp where they were giving a talk about psychedelics. I only caught the end of it, but the discussion seemed somewhat surface level. Then again, talking about something which should be directly experienced will always fail to capture the essence of the thing.

Experienced countless random acts of kindness by strangers and did my best to dish out as many as I could, too.

The event is quite multicultural and international. I heard as many as 10 languages spoken throughout the course of the week.

As soon as we turned off the paved road onto the open desert floor, we turned on the radio to 94.5 BMIR, Burning Man Information Radio, where volunteer disc jockeys and radio hosts broadcast a temporary radio station. The first thing we heard on this radio station was a radio hour called “Ask a Tranny” hosted by a group of transgender individuals who were taking calls from anyone anywhere who had any kind of question about being transgender. Questions included the specifics of surgical procedures, hormone therapy, sex life and dating, passing as the gender you transitioned to, vocal training and more. I used to be triggered by this kind of thing, but my motto for the week has been to pour myself into the vessel and not to be bothered by the shape of the experience.

Met a participant from Mexico who seemed to be at stage orange. His camp is what is commonly known as a plug-n-play camp where the camp members park their RVs in such a way as to make the interior of their camp inaccessible to participants not camping with them. They have enough money to hire a private chef, pay people to clean their camping space for them, and buy triple price tickets for at least a couple dozen models. Our new Mexican friend seemed to be enjoying himself as he was “on so many shrooms”, and spent his week partying hard and banging models. On the one hand, it’s his money and he can do what he likes with it. On the other, it seems like this camp has missed the mark on several key points of the event. Forget radical self-reliance, this camp couldn’t exist without the servants they paid for the week. Radical inclusion doesn’t mean you have to let everyone into your camp, but this camp seemed pretty exclusive from the fortress-like manner in which their camper trailers were laid out to who they allowed to camp with them. As far as decommodificaiton is concerned, these guys seemed to treat people like commodities.

At a neighbourhood block party between our immediate neighbours, one of our neighbours had just returned from a talk about 5-MeO-DMT which he said mostly went over his head.

Two of our neighbors were a gay couple living in Los Angeles who have been coming out to the event for 13 years. Off the side of their camper, they built a small yet impressive shade structure and chill out area for their camp called Furkini. What is a furkini? It’s the bottom half of a bikini made entirely of furry fabric in every wild colour scheme imaginable. They handmade these and were gifting them to anyone who would try one on. The pastel furkini they gifted me is surprisingly comfortable and supportive!  I brought up meditation at one point and they talked about it supportively but in a way that told me it probably wasn’t a part of their life. They were friendly to the max, fun to be around, and exhibited lots of green traits.

On Sunday, the last day of the event, I went to center camp and caught a couple talks by people more towards stage yellow/tier2 thinking. The first speaker, Rob, decided to master his finances so that he and his wife could quit their jobs to sail around the world for years. The daily reality of being on the ocean provided a distraction-free environment for meditation, reflection, and inquiry. Some of his insights were to not let others opinions of you stop you from living your life, to travel more so that you can dissolve your ability to judge people, to not suffer your past memories and future anxieties, and to develop the ability to live with presence and clarity in every moment. He and his wife also wanted to give back because they felt it was somewhat selfish to life a monk on a mountaintop type lifestyle, being meditative in a boat for most of the time without doing anything to uplift anyone else, so they started a scholarship fund to help put kids through college from some of the financially challenged countries that they frequently stopped in as they sailed around the world. The scholarship fund is donated to by them and anyone in their network of sailing friends and acquaintances who would like to give back.

The speaker immediately following Rob was Kim from Connecticut. She has an academic background in consciousness studies, and her talk was specifically about developing the ability to live in the present moment so that we can show up for life and learn to sit with whatever the contents of our experience may be instead of shutting down and escaping with a coping mechanism like drugs, alcohol, shopping, or in Kim’s case, being overly nice. Yes, being nice was Kim’s subtle addiction, her way of suppressing discomfort so that she didn’t have to deal with the reality of her experience. To overcome this, as her masters thesis, she did some high quality shadow work where she would do daily guided meditation followed by open ended meditation with the intention of discovering and sitting with her difficult emotions that she had been avoiding. Then she produced 16 paintings expressing each emotion in question, and with each new emotion, she would paint a new phase of the painting on top of the old one. Her dedication to radical self expression as a means of serious shadow work is the kind of thing we ought to aspire to, and it shows the potential for developing a personalized process that works for you specifically as a result of pulling from numerous ideas and disciplines. Kim displayed stage yellow traits of being multiperspectival in her knowledge and well studied in how consciousness works. She mentioned in her talk that she’s interested in quantum mechanics, so after the talk, I pointed her in the direction of Leo’s videos on quantum mechanics. She also expressed both interest in and fear at the idea of trying psychedelics because of her mental health history, but she seems to know that to transcend herself, she needs to seek out more direct experiences.


::Selected Event Listings::

Here are a selection of events from the What/Where/When event book they give you at the gate on your way in. This is a small portion of the total event registry, and countless unique happenings occur that are never scheduled! You can circle in pen as many events as you want, but chances are you won't get to very many of them. There are a million and one cool things happening between you and the event listed, so if you don't have a deeper desire to really be at that event, you will be distracted by something on your way there. Cool art, a hot guy or girl, a camp doing an impromptu grilled cheese giveaway, nice/interesting people, or mild to wild heat exhaustion if you're not careful. 

Rediscover Your Life Purpose
Psychedelics: A Tool for Self-Improvement?
How I Tried To Learn What Everyone Already Knew - “After sailing around the world for 17 years, Rob shares, 9 extraordinary insights that 30,000 hours of meditation have helped him find.”
Let’s Talk Spirituality - “How can we best seek higher understanding without ideological constraints? Participate in a discussion surrounding our relationship with source.”
Dangerous Dreams: A Lucid Dreaming Workshop
Introduction to Reiki
Puja Workshop: Honouring Energies
Soundbaths - meditative sound experiences offered by several camps, involves singing bowls, tingshas, gongs, chanting, etc.
1 on 1 Shamanic healing
Energy Work 101
Free Yourself From Sugar
Relational Alchemy - at least a couple workshops doing this
Two different camps offered free life coaching, one from a Buddhist perspective
The Kabbalah of Burning Man - “Learn how the non-dogmatic Kabbalistic perspective provides an eerily perfect model for thinking about Burning Man.”
Ignite Passion Talks - basically toastmasters
A talk about MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD
Who’s In Your Head? - “Learn to visualize and communicate with the many aspects of your psyche, from your inner child to your deepest fear. Tools for self-love and healing.
What are Power Animals & Spirit Guides?
Write a Letter to Your Future Self
Life is an Adventure - “Come learn adventure as a mindset, not a destination: tips on ways to develop an adventure attitude.”
Investing 101
A handful of blockchain and decentralization talks.
Ask A Drunk Scientist
Ask A Drunk Lawyer
Dildo Jousting
Make Your Own Loincloth
Hug Workshop
Nude Welding Workshop
Ritual Stuffed Animal Sacrifice
Sensual Hotdog Eating Contest
DIY Fidget Spinner Nipple Pasties
Let’s Talk UFOs
The 3rd Annual Anonymous Naked Yearbook
Naked Shots of AI Ethics - “Let’s get naked and drunk and discuss artificial intelligence ethics, bias, and fairness.”
The Annual Naked Pub Crawl
PowerPoint Karaoke - “Volunteers from the audience present informational talks with PowerPoint accompaniment, but there’s a catch: they’ve never seen the slides.”
Pin The Dildo On The Robot
The Billion Bunny March - A parade where people dressed as carrots are chased by people dressed as bunnies who are chased by people carrying giant nets and dressed as animal control.
Ecoshanti, Spirituality & the Environment - “Explore core values that enable us to live eco-friendly lifestyles in harmony with the planet.”
Several Polyamory Discussion/Q&A events
Enlightened Masculinity - “As we become more comfortable with the masculine, our armour vanishes and we develop a greater capacity for intimacy.”
It’s Easier To Change The World Than You Think - “Hear how a group of Burners is changing the world with a simple scientifically-proven practice called “I Smile First.”
Numerous green energy workshops and demonstrations.
How To Design & Build an Off The Grid House
Numerous social justice themed workshops such as Breaking Stereotypes: West vs. Middle East, People of Color Camp meet & greet, Queer meet and greet, Dear White Burners, as well as several workshops on consent culture.
There are wheelchair ramps at certain points on the open desert for people with physical disabilities to have access to get onto art cars and participate in art tours.
Plenty of adult themed classes like intro to BDSM, intro to Shibari, how to make a girl squirt, etc.
Several open mic events for comedians, spoken word performers, poets, etc.
Black Rock Observatory - First half of the week they were looking at Saturn and Jupiter, second half of the week they were looking at the Moon and Mars. There were a good number of science based classes ranging from the neuroscience of psychedelics to bismuth crystal making to the ecology of the surrounding Black Rock Desert.
Numerous Alcoholics Anonymous/AnyA meetings. Lots of camps give out free alcoholic drinks in the evenings and Burning Man has a reputation for being a place to do drugs, but people seem to be generally responsible and many people burn sober for varying reasons.
DELICIOUS FOOD.  Some camps like to gift food to anyone who happens to be around.
Several bike repair shops located around the city.
All kinds of live music acts, not just DJs playing house music. There’s even a Black Rock Philharmonic Orchestra.
Lots of fire jam/flow workshops for people to learn, practice, and show off skills in fire poi spinning, flaming hula hoops, flaming juggling, flaming ball on a chain, flaming whips, you get the idea!
Two camps putting on full blown big top circus acts, no animals involved as none are allowed at the event, just some seriously talented people.

 

::Profound Experiences::

During my stay in Black Rock City, there were 3 pieces of art I saw that deeply affected me in ways I couldn't explain in words at the time. Here's my best attempt at doing so anyway.

~~The Man~~

This is the main piece of art at the event, it's the reason for the horseshoe shape of Black Rock City because everyone shows up to camp around the Man for the week with the purpose of burning him down at the end of the event.
3 months before I got a ticket, I had a lucid dream that I was at Burning Man. I walked towards the center of the event until I could see the Man to make sure I was in the right place. When I saw the Man, I woke up.
Seeing The Man in person left me speechless. I sat down 30-40 feet away from the Man and counted Mala beads with the mantra "This is a dream" for every time I noticed the dream-like quality of my direct experience. When you've had the lucid dream I described and end up sitting in front of The Man in waking physical reality, it becomes astoundingly easy to notice how like a dream your experience is.
The image of the Man is laser etched into my memory. It's as real as my experience of yesterday, and my memory of it feels clearer than the picture above. 
 

~~Radialumia~~

^^^That's me standing in the middle, having a mindfuck as the result of great art^^^
Biked to Radialumia at a 1am on Wednesday,
As we approached we heard the music and it was the best I’d heard at the event so far.
This thing looks like a microorganism that's been blown up to massive size and outfitted in technicolor LEDs and giant folded flowers made of corrugated plastic on each spike that fold and unfold. The whole thing is automated, the effect is astoundingly beautiful, and it looks like it's alive with motion and color.
Got up close and couldn’t contain my emotions.
It was so beautiful I couldn’t stop smiling,
This direct experience of joy at the profound beauty of this art made me cry and smile at the same time.
Then I started crying for real,
Which turned into ugly crying as I hugged my partner.
I finished ugly crying and returned to regular tears of joy
While I did some energetic breath work.
Felt much better.
My partner told me half an hour had passed,
It felt to me like 5-10min.
I only realized as I was biking away that I feel like I gave up on my original life purpose which had to do with making the kind of big beautiful public art you can see at Burning Man.
 

~~Galaxia, The Temple~~
^^^This is what Tier 2 Architecture looks like^^^
The second main piece of art at the event is the Temple.
The tone of most of the event is loud and celebratory, but there's a very different mood at the temple. People come to the temple to write messages on the walls to and leave mementos of their lost loved ones. It's also a space for quiet reflection, introspection, and meditation. There was such an outpouring of love, gratitude, sorrow, and joy in this building. The temple is just a vessel that a crew of designers and builders gift to the event participants. The participants fill it with their mementos, messages and experiences and that's really what transforms the Temple into great art. On Saturday evening, the Man burns and the day after, on the 2nd Sunday of the event, the Temple is burned. I knew about this before coming out and had seen footage of temples past and decided that if I was going to try tripping at Burning Man, that it would be here. Here's the trip report that resulted from my experience.

^^^This was more or less my point of view during my experience^^^

~~4-AcO-DMT Trip Report~~
Enter the temple, find a good spot to sit.
2 20min+ meditations bookended by quick trips to the portopotties so that I could stay put for 2-3hrs during the experience itself.
Sit #1: Counting Mala beads with the mantra “Soften into" to soften into my sitting position
Sit #2: Strong determination sitting & focus on the visual field/center of the temple
22mg 4-AcO-DMT orally (basically the chemical version of mushrooms)
Deep, profound gratitude for everyone in the room, for everyone in my life.
Love.
     You better express your love for the people you love as much as they will allow you to because you don’t know if this will be the last time you see them. We tend to behave as though we have infinite opportunities ahead of us to do the things we love when in fact, the number of times you will experience that thing are finite.
Reflection on death
What is important (?) 
     Live your values. This is a reprisal of the lessons from my first 4-AcO-DMT trip. It’s especially powerful in a room full of reflections on lives that have ended.
The value of Direct Experience
People come to this temple from all over the world to pay respects to the dead.
The duality of sadness/joy melted away. Tears rolling down my smiling face. People are sad to see their loved ones go so they bring their memories to the temple to celebrate life.
Pay attention to the way people walk, dress.
Some people come in walking a certain way and leave walking a different way.
Felt moved to volunteer with the Temple Guardians next year.
Practice meditation every day to reconnect, it’s accessible at all times if you practice.
   Why does it require practice?
      Probably because we put up walls and accept various forms of conditioning.
First taste of "Consensus reality is preposterous"
Usually, I conduct trips in an empty bedroom with the lights off, curtains drawn, door closed, and me on an air mattress just having an experience. I'm not too interested in recreational drug use because of what I've seen it do to me and others. But I saw this as unique opportunity to have a potentially profound experience and the results were just that. The set/setting for this trip were excellent, entirely unique and cannot be reproduced as the building no longer exists. 

 

::Conclusion::

This event made me realize how much work I have to do. I have yet to fully incorporate the discipline aspect of stage blue/orange as well as several aspects of stages orange and green. Rather than kicking myself for not being as good as others at certain things, my stay in Black Rock City has inspired and motivated me to dive into the work when I return home. Even while I’m still here, there’s been a dust storm raging since last night so I’m using the down time for meditation, study, and reflection.
 

The makeup of this event is diverse. People come from all age groups, geographic locations, and walks of life. I saw people in their 70's, I saw a couple with their 3 and 4 year old kids. You can meet these people, too, so if you want to learn about anything, there's probably a person in Black Rock City you can track down and have a conversation with about whatever you're curious about. There are people at the event ranging from stage blue (Law Enforcement Officers) all the way up to stage yellow (Kim from Connecticut) with the majority of event participants falling somewhere in the orange (Mexibro) to green range.  This event will push you out of your normal patterns of life and out of your comfort zone in as many ways as you are willing to explore. You can spend the week mindlessly partying, ingesting intoxicants, and dancing to techno. You can also spend the week pushing your boundaries and deepening your practices, whatever those may be. I suppose you could even try a "D, all of the above" approach if you really wanted to. It's your choice. And of course, the art is tremendous and you've never seen anything quite like it unless you've been.

Highly recommended, give this experience a try.

Edited September 16, 2018 by waking_dreams
Formatting, grammar

[Leo Gura]

Awesome!

Will have to come back and read this more thoroughly.

Definitely want to go.

[waking_dreams]

Glad my copy has convinced you sufficiently! 

This is the kind of event where you're encouraged to participate by doing things there that are important and meaningful to you. If you suspect nobody is doing those things or you go one year and find nobody is doing those things, come back and bring your passions to engage as many people with them as possible. Like I said, Burning Man can be one big party, it can be a potentially powerful tool for incubating personal growth and transformation, and depending on your perspective, it can be both if you like. 

Edited September 16, 2018 by waking_dreams

[Leo Gura]

@waking_dreams The biggest thing that turns me off of it is the desert heat and sun. I'm too white for that shit.

It would be so much better if they held the event in Sept/Oct.

[Brittany]

Whoa. 

I am too monk-y for the party scene. haha  But this is cool. Thanks for sharing

Edited September 16, 2018 by Brittany

[waking_dreams]

@Leo Gura Part of the appeal and potential for the event to be a transformational experience is the challenge of surviving the elements. There are a million and one creative ways of creating personal, portable shade, though the heat is harder to avoid. I'm with you though, I spent most of the days not going out much, waiting for the sun to go down so we could venture out and check out art at night. Don't forget, it gets pretty cold at night too. 

@Brittany No problem! It's possible to attend and curate your experience to your liking. Black Rock City is a buffet of experience, though even I got a taste of how you feel while there.

 

[Hafiz]

I’ve been holding off on this thing for years, I want to set the intention to do this before Ike 35 so only have 3 years left to do so.

[Leo Gura]

We need to go to Burning Man and build a giant movie screen playing Actualized.org videos and a buffet of psychedelic drugs

 

[waking_dreams]

I swear I had a thought about screening actualized content during the event 
At the least, we could give a class about proper plugging technique lol

@Hafiz Life is short, make it happen! You won't be disappointed 

[eskwire]

39 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@waking_dreams The biggest thing that turns me off of it is the desert heat and sun. I'm too white for that shit.

It would be so much better if they held the event in Sept/Oct.

Hilarious. And so true - I grew up in the desert and I have zero interest in ever feeling that again.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, waking_dreams said:

I saw a stage blue looking fellow wearing boat shoes, navy shorts, a Ralph Lauren polo, and a MAGA hat. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

You sure he wasn't cosplaying?

I would wear a birdman outfit with a glorious glittering flowing cape.

[waking_dreams]

25 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You sure he wasn't cosplaying?

I would wear a birdman outfit with a glorious glittering flowing cape.

This thought definitely crossed my mind, it could absolutely be performance art!  A birdman outfit would be fitting for you, you even kinda look the part.

I met a guy from Detroit dressed as a smurf who works in harm reduction and described an experience earlier in the week of doing mdma and jumping into the Dr Bronners Shower Camp where they dump a bunch of soapy water on you and 30 other naked people and then you rub against each other to get clean, as well as The Human Carcass Wash where 30 people pair up and you wash your partner's entire body and then you switch you they take a turn washing you. I can tell I've got work to do because the idea of this and things like the naked pub crawl felt uncomfortable to me. Maybe next year.  

Edited September 16, 2018 by waking_dreams

[JustinS]

Nice! Been there twice and i think that's it for me. 

[Gabriel Antonio]

I wanna go!! 

 

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

We need to go to Burning Man and build a giant movie screen playing Actualized.org videos and a buffet of psychedelic drugs

Haha yea!