It has been just over 2 weeks since I returned from my first vision quest to Burning Man.  I have written pages and pages about it in my journals, and am only now starting to phase out of dreaming about it every night.  This blog is an offering; a gift that I carried back from the other world upon the wings of dreams.  Much of my experience was intensely personal and private, but much of it was not.  I would like to share a bit here.  Some will be freshly written in this moment, and some will be dipped from the journal entries I have written in my quest to process, and create with the experience I was given.  I will start by saying that I have changed forever.  There were pieces of my soul waiting for me to find them in the Black Rock Desert.  I am more me now.  I am more open, brave, strong, loving, badass, tough, inspired, hopeful, and connected to my higher path.  The experience cannot be underestimated.  You may of heard people say that Burning Man cannot really be described, it must be experienced.  They are right, so I will not try to describe it much.  Instead, I will attempt to tell you about my experience, and the alchemy that ran through my veins as I walked with my people in the dust:

“I was ignited in the fires of intense present moment that burned through to my past and future.  Ancient versions of myself surfaced in my present form, and memory mingled with hope for another Golden Age on Earth.  I felt the desert all around me, as I touched Death and Life, and the immediacy of both in each dry dusty breath.”

Something happens when 52,000 people all gather with the intention of opening and connecting without judgement.  Something happens when the intention of love is focused by spirit.  Vibrations raise, and the dimensions blur.  Can we touch the other worlds?  Do the high beings who live there acknowledge our creations, and join us in our dance?  Walking up to the Temple of Juno for the first time at sunset I knew the answer is “YES!”  During my time in Black Rock City I could not stay away from the Temple.  It grounded my spirit firmly in the eternal now, and proved to be the shamanic center of my entire experience.  I danced with fire in front of it at sunrise, and watched the full moon rise over it from the deep playa.  I meditated, journeyed, cried, and slept in it.  To me it was a temple from a city of light in another world that came to our world for a brief time.  A shining piece of imagination made into form as a temple to dreams, love, hope, imagination, and ALL the people of the earth.  No religion but love. I woke from a dream sleeping with my head at the western edge of the altar.  My body was filled with the glowing pink light of sunrise, and I knew this:  I am a priestess without a temple no longer.  

“Crowds passed as I dreamed, visioned, and witnessed the light coming to me from all around.  I went so deep that when I surfaced with the bright vision of sunrise through the dust, I was surprised to find myself on the Temple floor surrounded by strangers in a strange land.  I was home, I was in my place.  . . Love and knowing that I have arrived in a time of great joy, understanding, and at last—belonging deeply to a people and a way of life… There are no words I can lay to the page to fully express the gift of this experience. “

Anubis was there too.  The Opener of The Way.  The shaman priest of ancient Egypt who helps us make safe passage between worlds.  He stood proudly in the middle of the desert, filled with the power of a God remembered.

“There is more of course.

Of sunrise over the desert, and the sacredness of welcoming the sun with fire in my palms.  Of the feeling that comes into the heart as dawn breaks, and we give thanks for living through another dark night.  The story of the soul’s journey in the darkness, always completing itself at the break of day in the light of rebirth and eternal life. 

We came forth by day, and danced in the lightness that this age can hold.  The joy, playfulness, and wonder that this time asks of us. “

And I wrote a song:

“It is a song of sunrise, and the colors that flow from an open heart emblazoned with love.  It is filled with the impression of the mass radiance that emanates from a people aflame with the light of creation and dreaming.  Of a world that reflects the wisdom of our ancient past merged with the visions of a far distant future.  We are the unity point. We are the seed in the parched earth fed by the waters of hope and imagination.  We are the new day perched on the horizon of time… “