This post reminded me why I love festivals so much. I was starting to feel out of touch with the experience. I’ve been so focused on paying bills, my health, getting my career on track and my relationship that I completely lost track of my spirit. And in loosing track of my spirit, the rest is following.I’ve been noticing some pretty scary patterns come up in my life that only I am responsible for.
When I’m focused on my art, and given lots of opportunity to create art, those patterns disappear. When I have a lot of free time and am going through something really emotional, I get really focused on meditation and learning. When I feel like I’ve fucked things up so bad, I leave where I’m at to attempt a new beginning. Hoping the past stays in the city I just left.The hard truth is, I’m the common denominator. If I’m only trying to save myself when I realize what my patterns are costing me, they will never go away. If I keep leaving my problems in another city, things might seem new for a while, but it will creep back in again once challenged with what I was challenged with before. If I’m only creating the art that is given to me, I will never show the world what’s truly in my soul and thereby withholding gifts from it that it very well may need.Resistance has taken over my life.
My ego is latching onto what it needs to believe so I don’t crumble from the weight of the responsibility I’ll have to take on from recognizing my own problems. We cannot rest our laurels on “triggers.” We all have them. If we constantly use the trigger excuse, we never have to take responsibility for our own growth.So there’s the first step. I acknowledge that I have a very, very long way to go in my growth. I accept my self-sabotage, and want to stop. The only way to stop is to put in the work, every day, even when things are good, because this is a lifetime of bad habits that I have to overcome. I see this in myself, and hope I can be forgiven, and use this knowledge to forgive others.
Desert Hearts will be my first festival of the season and it couldn’t be more perfect, as the lessons this community have taught me, are all centered and grounded in love. My new new year is spring, when festival season starts. As every event I go to shows me myself at my greatest capacity for love, my greatest capacity for wisdom and compassion and my greatest aptitude for just letting everything go and exploring as though I were a kid again. I can witness myself there at my best, and then remember that my perception of life is a choice. Life can be a festival if I want it to. It might be scary to be that vulnerable and that authentic and that trusting all of the time – but in the end, we are here to evolve. Evolution takes a lifetime, not just a few weekends a year.