I just returned from one of the toughest journeys I have ever undertaken in my life, spending a week at the mighty Ozora festival in Hungary in the blazing sun, cosmic thunderstorms and human body maladies of all sorts to a degree I have never experienced here ever.
If this wasn't a shamanic trial I really dont know what qualifies...
While it will take me months to even come close to grasp and eventually write down what I have just experienced I simply want to share some of my ego pains and concept-shattering epiphanies here that came as forceful as they came unexpected this year, at a time when I felt reasonably sure I knew what was in store for me in a general sense. How stupid huh? I ought to know much better by now but the clarity of nature's slap this year was unmistakable - and as rough as a coastal cliff on a ship's hull grinding without mercy at the seemingly solid. ;)
I am still shaky from what felt like an eternal voyage to and from the festival grounds across Europe, and all the impactful impressions that have gnawed away at my ego structure thoroughly, my expectations and my relationship to the cosmos.
Just when I thought I had it "somewhat figured out" ("it" meaning my place and relationship to this psychedelic playground, the tribe and the universe that has led me to find myself many times in the past) this year came as an utter shock to my body and rigid structure of human presumptions as to what it would bring me and where it would take me. And why I even came.
The weather this year was brutal, we cooked under the group tarp with our lovely little psy family that found their way to congregate and get through this most shamanic week together in a spirit of exploration and eventually surrendering to the utter might of the cosmos & the unknowable but experiencable flow of life. Just like everyone else here.
Nature intervention
As opposed to my petty little human expectations that I seem to carry with me to the gates every year despite all the lessons in the past teaching me to go into the tribal gathering without any, the weather was toying with the little human beings to a cosmic degree this year.
The arrival was marked with hot weather - as usual. Takes the body a few days to get used to, even though it seemed to be one of the hotter years since 2012 from my pure subjective feeling.
However in the first third of the festival, we got hit by heavy rainfall and storm attacks, to a degree that everyone was forced to abandon whatever mission they were on just to secure their little human encampments, and those of their neighbors calling out for help - unless they were aware enough to let go of everything and let the chips fall where they may. I couldn't. Or at least - I didn't.
I literally found myself in soaked underwear, holding fast to the group tent of our lovely camp neighbors from Bavaria - along with the 5 of them - holding on for dear life to the tent pillars with all our might and screaming at every mighty gush of wind threatening to tear down our whole structure, in order to prevent the only refuge from being blown away along with all of us down the hill - for more than an hour straight with no end in sight in the ensuing dark of dusk.
The whole day after it was a pure mudbath, I will share many impressions when the pictures have been developed, as most Ozorians will still be on their way home and or recovering at this time.
A second rain attack hit us at a point when the time of day was already too late to dry out the excess humidity and puddles, so the mainfloor and most locations of the festival grounds remained soaked and muddy for the better part of the week despite heavy sun intensity picking back up for the remainder of our time here.
As I put it during the week:
"It seems nature has somewhat given up on supporting to uphold the human illusion of perceptual separation for sheer human convenience in favor of a graphic mixup of everything. Like it was time we needed a wet and harsh wake up call of ice-bucket water in deep sleep.
Everything that was dry became wet, everything solid got soaked and became soft and mushy. Food got spoiled, clean clothes muddy, dry tents flooded, precious items blown away, tobacco papers stuck together and useless, bandages unusable despite the need for healing of open wounds, people thrown together in need of their mutual help in a futile attempts to master the divine force of nature's totality hammering down on us."
It was relentless. And then some.
Everything in physical reality seemd to be thrown together mercilessly all of a sudden, and it messed not only with our perception of the validity of separation, but also brought out many of our hidden underlying hangups, as the mud brought out the hard rocks in a deeper layer of the ground that will hurt your feet if you step on one that is usually covered by dirt.
Human intervention & psychedelic chaos in art
It will take me a long time to even try and piece together the human aspect of this year. There have been strong suspicions and impressions in our camp about stark black magic being performed at the festival grounds by someone or something, there was an odd sort of epidemic going around that really doesn't seem to fit the classical concepts of "food poisoning" or "water contamination", though we can still not rule that out yet, it's too early. Half of our camp buckled under the weight of the aggregating impacts and puked for half the night before our day of departure after ten days on the festival grounds. And we all managed to work through it in the better part of the next day before our 20 hour journey home through "civilized society"...
But naturally, there were a lot of positive magic influences everywhere and everpresent as well.
I want to give a special shoutout to 
Have a look at his amazing mural and show him some love if you can get the vibe behind the art:
As for "me" I will need a few days to catch my breath, heal my foot wound that came as a result of impatience with the human aspect of trying to keep nature at bay (and that handicapped me for the whole week, making every step painful). I need to give my stomach ample time to get rid of any energetic hangups it might still be carrying as my digestion still hasn't returned to normal and I really need to shut off soul and human-mind input for a few days in stopping attempts to do anything.
Ever since I stopped controlling things after the mighty slap of the weather to my ego, nature seemed to get kinder again - considering the circumstances as kind as it could be- and while I had the hardest time to get with the fact that I took its heavy turns as "personal" challenge this week, I think I finally got the message that I needed to get - after a myriad of pain and tribulations that have literally dwarved any other challenging Ozora I have ever had, including the ones I have yet to write about, from all my 7 years down in the valley.
Here's to new friends in the storm, to old allies in the floor battles of the polarities and to all those who have shown me the aspects of my human existence I have apparently attempted so masterfully to hide again from myself in what I thought Ozora might give me this year and "why".
The causality hangup will need to go soon, and I feel very grateful to have a new friend in my life whom I have gone deep into this topic and others with, thank you Eric for all your takes on what causality means to you and what we are actually doing at this place from your fresh perspective in joining us this year for the first time.
I feel rigidity of mind and approach is human fate - and maybe that needs to be overcome, not sure yet - as much as I want it to be something else. And despite my constant claims I find that TRUE open-mindedness, outcome-independence and the letting go of my detachments from expectations to my human journey in the specifics to be as tough as when I first started exploring this psychedelic playground in 2012 before any of these cosmic experiences ever came my way.
Thank you my friends, I feel really grateful to have you in my life <3
Special thanks to nature for slapping me so hard that there literally was no alternative other than to surrender to the abysmal prospect of despair and everlasting night in light of my futile hopes for the week. It was a mighty show and the lessons from this year will carry me far, in good times and the bad. As tough as the week was, as meaningful I will remember it forever for all its glorious moments and one of the best days of my life I have ever had in the middle of the week of chaos and cleansing through trial...
I love ya.
Image sources:
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Jardim Psicodélico @ facebook.com
Ildikó Répáczky @ facebook.com
Daniel Rusty@ facebook.com
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