Recently, I have talked a lot about my experiences at Burning Man in 2009-2011. I have begun to share with you the 10 Principles of Burning Man. Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the 10 Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception. I urge everyone to LIVE the 10 Principles every day. Here, I want to share with you the introductive text of the book I am working on titled "Life Lessons I Learned on the Playa." In this, I do my best to describe this transformative experience and place. It is my hope that you will more fully understand some of my thoughts and emotions going forward. Enjoy!!
THIS PLACE, THIS EXPERIENCE...
For one week each year, tens of thousands gather on a windswept, dry and dusty desert plain high in the Black Rock Mountains of Nevada, one hundred miles from anywhere. These determined and dedicated souls come from all over to build a city in celebration of the possible, the individual, and of community. This place, the playa as it is called, openly and without question embraces its new inhabitants and for each of them, and for just a few days, becomes the place they call home. It is a place that is at once harsh, but comfortable. The brilliant white expanse of hard gypsum dirt stretches infinitely to the blue horizon. It is an environment that challenges, tests your ability to survive, yet at the same time, provides a canvas of opportunity to bring any dream possible to reality. This is Burning Man.It was to this place where I came to seek some sort of meaning in my life. After many years of emotional upheaval and drifting, addiction, and denial of truths, I wanted to find meaning for my existence. I wanted to find meaning for all of those challenges that had presented themselves to me. I wanted to find meaning for my thoughts and my values. I had heard that Burning Man was nothing more than a weeklong, drug-filled, crazy party. Just a plain crazy event in the overwhelming heat of the high desert. But what I found from the first moment I stepped onto the playa was nothing less than an incredible, unexpected state of mind. I found a way of life and being that I could not have previously imagined, much less thought even existed. It was into this place where I set forth on a journey of personal discovery, self-appreciation, self-reliance, and acceptance of the real beauty of the world and people around me. While I may not have known it in those first few moments, my participation in this place and my embrace of this state of mind would profoundly transform my life.Like many of us who are “Burners”, I have difficulty explaining what home on the playa is like. After all, how do you adequately describe a “state of mind” to someone unless they have experienced it themselves? In a wholly inadequate way, here is my attempt at relating the place, the people and the ideal for you.This is a place where anyone can go and free themselves mentally and emotionally (and even physically) from whatever binds them to what we call the “default” world. We gather as individuals to be part of an interwoven community that celebrates cooperation, participation and communal caring of one another. As hostile and forbidding as the playa and its surroundings may seem, it's in this desolation and harshness where I found a beauty that is inviting and comfortable. There is a feeling that this IS home, and it surrounds me every moment I am there. I know I am home as the sun begins its brilliant orange rise from behind the mountain each morning and then crosses the brilliant sky to set in a blaze of pink, red and purple each evening. I know I am home as I stare up into a deep night sky filled with an infinity of stars and then look out on a dark-backed plain punctuated by an equally infinite circus of neon colors and flames. I know I am home when I am immediately greeted upon my arrival by strangers who become immediate friends, sharing the spirit of this place and embrace me openly without any preconception or judgment. In this vast emptiness, all of us become free to create a personal experience limited only by those boundaries we have set for ourselves. Transformation comes to those who can transcend those boundaries. I am forever awed by how perfectly the surreal beauty of this place seamlessly intersects with the astounding creativity and limitless imagination of humanity. This joining of the human spirit with the raw beauty of the playa is as paint to canvas, creating a harmonious community – a city – that rises like a mirage from its parched, dust swept surface. Burning Man is, at its core, a unique expression of thousands of unique individuals who have a singular focus – to create a community in celebration of the possible, and live in that community joyously, each participating, learning, and growing as part of a personal journey of self.
I will be sharing more of my transformative experience in the hope that you also can find new perspectives in your own life from my, and others, stories. For more information about Burning Man, I encourage you to visit www.burningman.org.
-Text taken from "Life Lessons I Learned on the Playa" by Larry Eiring, copyright 2013, 2023. Reference to Larry Harvey and the 10 Principles taken from "The 10 Principles" on the Burning Man Project website at https://burningman.org/about/10-principles/. Copyright by The Burning Man Project, 1989-2023.
