We believe, in accordance with spiritual truth of the
highest realization that as long as the human being strives to have fun it will
never become free.
It will remain a slave to its own chemical feedback loop; a
hamster stuck on a wheel. If you like having fun, you are not awake.
The body’s natural tendency is to feel connected, alive, happy, and transparent and inspired and to follow what feels right and deepen in its potential. Fun can be and is a natural outcome of this dynamic.
And fun is related with sex, self-connection and connection with others which seems to be most scary and taboo for many people.
And in fact fun sounds to me like a poor translation of contemned,
lightness, sensitivity, openness and laughter.
I am getting reports back from various festival 'spiritual'
or otherwise attendees this summer, and they are enlightening to the nature of
how greed, elitism, and disrespect run rampant.
It is what I feel about anything that tries to get 'big' and
capitalize on trend, which may have started with good intentions, but goes the
way of business in the lack of conscious organizing and focus.
If "people
dancing, singing, exploring consciousness and sharing resources" was the
steadfast 'bottom line', then the ways of corrupting the forum of the festival
would not gain hold.
When I first started hearing about and being exposed to
Burning Man I felt a bit excited to see some of the relations I knew as a child
growing up in and with predominantly 'hippie/alternative' environments and
people.
But as I learned more about what it takes to make the festival happen
and saw that the 'gift economy' and alternative modes of existence that were
being engaged in were predominantly not being brought back into the commons,
were more or less just being bragged about to market BM, I could see it wasn't
maintaining its original supposed intention.
That, just like so much else, the 'fun and pleasure focus'
gave way to money and image, it's inherent in the 'ego identification' it
seems.
It is one thing to just admit, "Hey, we just want to
get together and have a lot of fun exploring experience and partying, take a
break from our 'everyday lives'...and
perhaps find ways to create business and
market ourselves when we return so we can make more money".
or at least a debt inducing financial system that keeps many enslaved to it, while at the same time letting corporations infuse themselves into the environment and use up so many resources and
energy to hold the event, when much of that could be used to forum and brainstorm in local communities on the very issues that the festival is supposedly attempting to support.
ps/smoh
