Here is the first out of three film projects I will complete from my trip to the Burn. I’ve been trying to capture my experience in words, and will continue to do so after this film, but see if you can feel what I am feeling in the imagery below, as it speaks much louder than my words do. (Or so I would like to think)
Above all else, what I learned at Burning Man 2022, was that I can live my dream in this reality, or I can live my nightmare. Both are accessible to me at all times. In this dimension. On planet Earth and in my inner world. I shot the footage for this video on the last day’s sunrise. You may have noticed the Temple in the background of the bike shots, less than 12 hours later all that wood, becomes ash.
If I live my waking dream my life would look like this: Community, security, safety, consistency, abundance, peacefulness, stillness, & inspired movement. If I live my waking nightmare my life will look like this: Alienation, abandonment, shame, exclusion, inconsistency, panic & abuse.
They say we get to choose. Every day. Which reality we exist in. Though sometimes we land ourselves in situations where circumstance chooses for us.
When unexpectedly on the playa, I found myself in my waking nightmare…I was faced with this vital question:
How did I get here, emotionally/energetically, but more importantly, how do I get back ‘home’?
I understand that humans have the Power to call in that which we seek, & and to send out that which no longer serves. Great care must be taken here, as it’s easy to call in what has served us in the past without awareness. It’s familiar, therefore it’s easy. Our system understands how to implement this reality and I am coming to believe that unless we intentionally implement the dream, the nightmare can appear to surround us without warning.
My pilgrimage to Black Rock City was an incredible awakening & a vivid reminder of what I already know to be true. It took a deep desert disaster to finally admit to myself what has been happening in this grown-ass woman’s life; She was consuming the suffering of her childhood for her daily bread! That’s the problem with familiarity, the familiar slips in, unnoticed.
I had been trying to achieve wellness via methods that created the imbalance in the first place. Speed, schedules, assignments, disapproving words, expectations, force-fullness, crossing boundaries, sitting in danger, compromise, risk & repeatedly accepting situations, plans & people that don’t feel safe for me.
I’ve identified a sick sort of ‘safety in danger’ that I’m sure many of you can relate too.
Scorching hot & impossible to ignore, was the amplification of the patterns in my life that I was consciously seeking to escape from, but subconsciously still participating in! Amazingly…this vivid comparison and post festival accident (more on that later) was enough to reset my system onto a path of safety, trust & acceptance.
The reward was finally recognizing that in order to shift my outer world I have to cultivate an inner world which exudes what I seek. As above, so below, as within, so without. At the center, I find stillness. So mote it be.
I survived, my beauties, as we often do. Through things that could have taken us away, and I am so grateful to be here, on a different sort of other side, to continue working on my path to self mastery. My ‘Learning Man’ gift was an incredibly visceral & compounded experience of life in My Waking Nightmare, however the short but sumptuous glimpses of My Waking Dream were tantalizing & true.
I will go back again, with a clearer vision, to Burning Man 2023. If meant to be, and beyond.
With much love and respect,
Danielle I. Diamond
Danielle Diamond 