Burning Man - Temple Ritual
One night mid burn week, I was out exploring with some camp friends and ended up getting triggered by some sexual expression that left me in a short panic attack; crouched unseen with my knees in my arms, my nervous system reliving how scared and violated I felt when I was assaulted a few years ago.
Later that evening, when the group split up and went back to camp, I felt myself magnetically drawn to the temple and I biked there and walked up to the portals to enter the space.
I’ve had years of therapy and processing of that experience and had an explicit intention to do some sort of ritual of healing for that experience during my time at Burning Man, and though I did not know what it would look like, the playa was helping it happen for me.
I now stood before the portal, straightened up and held my head high to gaze toward the soft glow of the temple, and slowly walked in.
There’s a PTSD re-embodiment technique to feel the sensations in your feet to keep yourself grounded in your body, and so i stepped forth, simultaneously holding my gaze on the portals and the temple and feeling the soft dust hold me with each step.
I reached the temple, and touched its dusty surface and felt it welcome me. Here, I could feel my pain and cry and I wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone.
And so I crouched down, knees in arms like earlier in the evening, and sobbed for myself. Feeling with the whole of my heart the overwhelming grief for how much of my vitality for life was taken from me that night; how years later, surrounded by love and beauty, I can still so easily be reduced to the rubble of those damaged mosaics of experience.
I cried for my months of isolation during covid when each morning I’d be awoken from a nightmare of flashbacks reliving that trauma only to come forth into the reality of a world of lonely isolation, my support system stripped bare, utterly overwhelmed and completely broken.
I felt it all, and I held myself with love. Slowly, as I let the pain be felt and move through me, an upwelling of love for myself came with it. A growing swell of gratitude for all the care I’ve given myself and all the beautiful friends and family who have supported me along the way. I felt a calm assuredness that even with all I’ve felt, I’m also going to be ok, that I am ok.
Feeling myself thoroughly honored in the ritual, I slowly made my way back out and onto my bike to quietly explore deep playa and reflect on the experience. Eventually, I came across an art piece with a single blinking red light and some glowing words of support dug into the playa speaking towards letting go and stepping forward into life.
It had a book and a sharpie in it, asking folks to “sign the guest book”, and so I stood - alone in the dark deep playa, all of burning man happening behind me, and I wrote:
I come here from the
temple, where I cried tears
of grief for the identity I lost
when I was sexually assaulted, where
I sobbed and held myself in all
the fear, sadness, and pain I’ve lived
in learning to live with that experience.
It is always a part of me,
and it does not define me.
I live with grief, I live with
the inner terror of that lived experience
and I am also resilient
and I also live with an unending
love for my deepest being.
For I have seen and known the
depths of my soul. And what I see
is beautiful.
-Luna
A few days later, on man burn night, after having another equally emotional temple experience, I made my way back to this art piece to read this message to myself again.
There, I found that someone had torn out that page and kept it for themself. I stared at the missing page, and thought on the anonymous burner who had stumbled onto the same art piece out in the dark deep playa and on reading my message felt compelled to tear it out and take it with them in their own rush of emotion. Maybe they too have felt that same terror, that same loss of self.
I hope they know that it’s not their fault, and that even if they feel broken now, that they too are also resilient.
And I hope the day comes that they can see the depths of their own soul, and know that they, too, are beautiful and so worthy of all the love and care in the world.