Rainbow Gathering

The Rainbow Gathering was a mixture of good and bad experiences. The bad experiences started almost from the very beginning but I was able to pull a fair number of good things from it as well. I talked with one of the most interesting people I've ever met. He's a Welsh guy in his mid-20s and one night while several of us were huddled around the fire, he started to sing. His look was very interesting as well, like an elf might look, with a thin, dark colored vest made of hide, pendants and charms around his neck, feathers in his hat and boots on his feet. His songs followed a steady cadence and he sung out verse after verse until I thought he must not be able to remember any more but he kept on without missing a word or a beat. He made me think of what a bard must have been like in the old times, singing and entertaining those around him. His singing ability and delivery were excellent but the lyrics were really striking as well, relating to spiritual matters or nature and the elements. Over the course of my time there, I heard him sing well over a dozen songs, one of them continuing for nearly 10 minutes without a chorus. His ability to remember and recite all of it to perfection was remarkable. When I got to talking to him, I learned that many of his songs are from experiences in a sweat lodge in a place called Teepee Valley in Wales. He also runs a magic school there and is knowledgable about many esoteric topics, especially divination methods. He is very experienced with the traditional tarot decks and held an afternoon information session for me and a few others about the archetypes of the major arcana. He is also very well versed in Western magic practices but doesn't delve into Eastern craft for some reason. I asked him about elemental magic, thinking to my experiences at Burning Man of bending flame and wind with energetic manipulation. He has seen these types of things accomplished several times by other people and stands as the only person I've met outside of that day at BM to have seen such a thing.

By the peak night of the full moon, 300 people had come to the gathering. Everything there was very relaxed all the time, the main activities during the day being breakfast and dinner. When the food is ready, everyone is called to the community area via loud, simultaneous shouting of "FOOD CIRCLE!" and everyone gathers into a circle around the fire pit. They had a specific ritual that was repeated every time consisting of holding hands, singing songs, collective OMing, raising the hands over the head then together and down over the heart and kneeling and putting the forehead to the ground while giving silent thanks for the meal. The meals are cooked by volunteer members of the community and served out around the circle. Donations are collected at the end in order to buy food for future meals.

I was able to meet some good people there but overall, the social atmosphere was quite strange. Much of the younger crowd seemed to be following a popularized image of 'The New Age Movement.' They definitely had the look nailed down.. multi-colored, loose fitting clothes, crystal and feathered accessories, hippy hats, bare feet, and nearly every head in dreadlocks. They spent lots of time doing hair wraps for each others dreads, making jewelry, and kitting various clothing items. There was plenty of yoga, OMing, breathing, and talk of vegetarianism. None of this is out of place amongst hippies but many of them were missing the knowingness that I usually find with these type of people. They didn't seem to know much about themselves or what was going on with the other people around them. They were still clouded in their illusions rather than basking in the sunlight of their awareness. I felt as if they were on their journey and searching for truth but thought that if they became a hippy, it would somehow begin to dawn on them automatically. Truth and knowingness comes from within and not from the clothes you wear, the company you keep, or what you do to your hair. I'm not saying that they were wrong or doing anything bad.. I just think they are searching in the wrong places. I'm definitely not saying that I'm better than them and am looking in the right places.. we're all continuing to search for truth and correcting our mistakes along the way.

However, the feeling that I got from the young people there is one that I've felt in many places of Australia. Australia is known for being a bit behind the times due to its remoteness, but people usually think of movies, music, or fashion trends that tend to arrive months after the rest of the world gets ahold of them. I think the same thing is happening here in terms of the mass awakening that is currently happening on our planet. From what I've seen, Australia is a few years behind (Nimbin being the exception). Lots of people here have that unconscious knowing that there is more to life and they have a desire to find out what is it. However, they are still looking to other people or various other external influences instead of looking within themselves. Once people start looking for truth, it's only a matter of time before they start finding truth. The only other country I've observed is America and I think everyone can now see that big things are happening there and that more and more people are starting to become aware of things to which they were once blind. I've also had interactions with friends from all over the world and they say big things are happening in their countries as well. South America seems to be one of the hot spots in particular.

Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent. Back to the gathering.. The idea behind the gathering is that everyone is accepted and welcome no matter the race, creed, religion, etc but neither I nor Dillon every felt welcome there. The members had been in the area for up to three weeks before we arrived and had formed strong friendships with each other in that time. I definitely felt the presense of cliques there and they were hard to break into. I talked to some other people who arrived the same day that I did and they reflected the sentiment. At first, I was quite disappointed by this and didn't understand why people wouldn't go out of their way to welcome in new people. After a few days there, I began to notice a type of self-rightousness amongst the older people that can sometimes be seen in hippy type communities. They once again become intolerant in their ways due to their belief that their way is the best way. Their distain for the intolerance or wasteful lifestyles of normal people eventually closes them off as well. Before heading to the gathering, I did some reading about the history of the event and came across mention of a Hopi prophecy that predicts a new spiritual group will arise, consisting of people from every background on the Earth. They will help to bring in a new era of awareness and they will call themselves the Rainbow tribe. I read that some regulars of Rainbow Gatherings believe themselves to be the fulfillment of the prophecy and I actually heard a song at the gathering about them being "the prophecy fulfilled." Basically, a large portion of the older people there thought they were pretty damn cool and it effectively made me sick to my stomach. I thought they were just as closed minded as normal people but they're a bit worse off because they should really know better.. having had the experience of spiritual insight at one time or another in their lives.

The most disturbing incident happened within a few hours of arriving. I was sitting in the food circle while some volunteers were walking around serving people. The sun was setting behind me, turning all the clouds pink, while the nearly full moon was rising over the mountains. I took out my camera to capture this beautiful background which was behind the circle of people sitting together. A woman who was sitting 30 people away from me shouted, "STOP TAKING PICTURES!" very loudly. It startled me and I looked over. "You've been taking pictures all day! Give it a rest. Why can't you just BE??" I was extremely confused because this was the first time I had taken a picture and I had no idea why anyone should have such an extreme, not to mention hostile, reaction to such an ordinary event. Everyone was looking at me by now and I glanced across the faces and saw that other people were indeed looking at me like I had done something wrong. I felt a wave of shame come over me and felt humiliated. I dropped my camera without saying anything back. My friend made me feel better by saying that the woman's outburst was completely ridicilous, that other people had been taking pictures too and besides, she didn't see the big deal anyway. I thought that there must have been some rule about cameras or electronic devices but that even if that was true, there was a better way to deal with it than what had just happened. I decided to go over and talk to the woman.

I sat down and told her that I had just arrived that day and I didn't know if they had a rule about taking pictures but that right away upon my arrival there, her verbal attack made me feel publically humiliated and unwelcome. I explained that if she had a problem with something I was doing, the proper way to deal with it would be to come over to me to talk about it rather than yelling at me across the circle. She waited until I was finished and then started telling me that many people there don't like to have their picture taken because electronic devices can mess with someone's energy field and that it's polite to ask permission before you snap a photo. I listened to her but was a little bit surprised at her rationale for her aggression. I can understand that maybe cell phones and the like are bad for your energy field but having your picture taken? I'm nowhere near sold on that. I tried not to let this experience sour the rest of my time there but it honestly did a fair bit of damage to my attitude the rest of the time. Although that was the strongest example, I observed serveral other offenses that self-proclaimed conscious people would not commit.

In the end, despite the fact that the majority of my experiences there were negative, I'm very glad that I went and experienced it. I had the opportunity to observe and live a different lifestyle and even though I didn't care for it, having a new life experience can always be jotted down in the positive column. I think that communal living can be tremendously beneficial. Humans lived in tribes like this one for tens of thousands of years before the rise of civilization. It's a simple lifestyle and has a long list of benefits. In my opinion, this particular gathering missed the mark but I think the structure and organization of the town and the activities was right on. With a different group of people, my experience might have been totally different.