"How beautiful can life be? We hardly dare imagine it." — Charles Eisenstein
For a lucky few of us, Quest Festival meant something so much more than a mere weekend escape from the madness of society or an excuse to get wasted out of our minds. The real, high consciousness, transcendental experiences that occurred over these short few days became truly pregnant with magical possibilities—fragments of lessons and insights on a near cosmic level that many of us are now still grasping onto, still processing in our sober minds in order to somehow take a piece of the truth and light back into the authority, separateness, and rigidity of our “real worlds.” 💭
The foremost lesson underlying it all, that always bears repeating, is how similar we all are—and how we are all learning the same lessons, only with the most wildly and creatively different circumstances of our lives. But in the end, everybody just wants to love and be loved in return, to hear and be heard, to truly see and be seen. People move towards what feels good, so when you give people your sacred space of unconditional love, listening, and acceptance, together we can finally reveal our deepest inner selves: as endlessly fascinating, profound, and beautiful little children.
Indeed, adults are but children confined in these mechanical, steel-wire bodies and personas—little nymphs and daisies, goblins and fawns just waiting to come out and dance and sing in the candlelit dark. It is this innocent magic borne through art, love, and beauty that can, and will, save the world. And what true beauty is is but the purest expression, the utterings and howlings of our deepest truths, resonating with one another in the harmonies between the soulful notes we play, the falling flows of our bodies together, the colours of our brushstrokes alive... the poetic essence of our very beings. So make art, and love, and bask in the beauty of existence—it is all around you, behind every mask, every glance, every sky and leaf. We are all here in a heaven only waiting to be discovered.
What does it truly mean to be alive? Everybody has different answers to their own philosophical inquiries, but for those who have sat in a circle of soulful human beings sharing the utmost depths of our heart and soul to complete strangers, holding hands and chanting love amongst dancing rainbow lights, making our sacred promise to care for mother earth, laughing together, singing soulful songs from the depths of our being, spinning fire, flowing and letting fall our bodies together to the music, looking into one another’s eyes, sharing space and saying yes to our vulnerabilities and inner children and magical beauties… well, it really does bring it up a notch, what kinds of ecstatic experiences of love and connection are truly possible to us as the sensitive and beautiful human beings that we truly are.
I came close to tears so many times, listening to one another's inner children opening their hearts and expressing some of the purest, most beautiful and heartfelt poetries I've ever heard. The beauty of the ambient mushroom was in its ability to liberate the inner rascals of everybody, making us all feel that much less alone in hearing others speak our heart. When our purest expression becomes a beacon of the highest beauty, we know that what each of us are deep inside must be none else but the very light that birthed the cosmos.
Yet, what made it all beautiful beyond all anticipation is the authentic and profound healing, the catharsis and release we were finally able to feel from the tensions that have been built up for so long, too long in this such rigid world we all live in day-to-day between these pockets of magic. There is an ache that we all feel inside, a gash of separation from the womb of Nature, a profound disconnection from the trees and soils and spirits, from our human families, tribes, and communities, and from the full expression of our inner light, of our silliness and creativity and vulnerabilities and all the awkward bumps and soft spots and laughs and groans and moans and sighs and any and everything else in between.
In a sacred space of unconditional acceptance, we are all of it and we are whole. Fallen and dissolved away are the imaginary shackles of artificial needs, of social media and television and social hierarchies and engineered fears; of Abrahamic monotheism, Newtonian classicalism, secular nihilism, Darwinian dog-eat-dog-ism, and all the other disempowering narratives we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that we are any bit smaller, less magical or less alike than we really are.
As I recognise the God in you, and you the God in me, we can at once manifest our highest truths and deepest depths in this cosmic playground of ours. We can finally release the spirit of divine play. The world is ours; it is magic, it is woo-woo, it is hocus pocus, bloobaloobies, childlike imagination extending out into infinity. We are only limited by our beliefs, and when the imagined narrative as it is now serves us no more, we have the power to reset our imaginations and release the open-minded space to manifest a new, better, and truer world.
Every soul is a droplet's reflection of the ocean of existence; everything is an interconnected web of harmony, relativity, and intervals; musical notes dancing with each other, finding our place on the bar, reaching at our harmonies with one another. The universe without is a reflection of the universe within, and we are all creating each other's world through the thoughts we think, the vibrations we energise, the love or fear we emit between each other. So come back to live in the divine now which you once inhabited as a child, and join the holy moment, the dance of life. Recognise and realise your power, shine your light so you can spread it, heal yourself so you can heal the world.
Ram Dass said that, from a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it's got you. Everything is a lesson, and we must recognise it when it comes, and move in the direction of our fear and of our light. Every moment is practice for the next. There is no need to doubt yourself. Heed your calling and set your intentions. Be empowered, be radiant, be authentic. And above all, be a beacon of love. What you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world. So focus on what you can give, not what you can get, and you will suddenly find yourself letting yourself go, releasing all the tensions of self-protection and insatiability as you fall into effortless inner peace.
With positivity, guidance, and unconditional love, everybody can respond by reflecting back and becoming their highest light. We cannot judge anyone for anything—it is all one. One happening, one pulsation, one universe. Ergo, our prejudices are always wrong—we must always try to look past them. And forgive, forgive, forgive. The line between love and fear cuts through the heart of every man, so carress your inner darkness that you might see reflected in others, and heal it with your light. There is only one truth and one way forward and that is love.
And finally... find the others. We are most powerful when we are together. We are the culmination of billions of years of evolution right here, right now. We are gods, we are magic, it is all right here, this is heaven only waiting for us to realise it together. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, the only thing that matters in the end is your people, your community, your tribe—and that can extend to the whole world if you let it. After all, you see the world as you are. As we have found at the festival, default, unconditional love for a community of strangers is possible. This love was inside us all along—it only needed the right circumstances to be called upon and flourish in harmony with all of each other.
Our transcendental experiences these nights were a calling from the universe for us to become light-workers, and we must now bring this out into the world by manifesting love for all beings. Love everybody, hug everybody, smile at everybody. Face the disharmonies in your life and sing your harmonising song. We must heal the wounds that hurt the most—not to judge, but to build bridges to those who are lost the most, the most far-out and dissimilar manifestations of ourselves. The greatest beauty is found in the greatest healing, the connection of the furthest notes, until the world is finally whole.
Behind these masks we don, we are God in drag, spirits of divine light, love, and compassion; of infinite possibility and creativity. We are all here to contribute our gifts towards something greater than ourselves. These gifts of ours are found in places where we feel most alive. As much as we must move in the direction of our fear—our unlived adventures, our dormant possibilities—we must, above all, move in the direction of our light.
If you feel the gentle fire within you to alighten the world as I do, to find somewhere we belong and express the fullest depths of our love, then go forth and spread the spores of inspiration that you bear deep inside. It is just in our nature as human beings as part of this balanced whole to create beautiful spaces of love and tenderness, to manifest The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible. As Alan Watts put it, we do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses. If you feel it in your heart to be right and true, you must only and simply keep moving in the direction of your light.
And take us with you... we are all just walking each other home.
