Here’s the PDF dowload of the original Beauty Engine book in its first format.
Feels a little outdated now but its still gots lots of good stuff and the outline and tools of how we craft creative community and experiences still holds up nicely!
It contains much of the science behind how we produced our recent PALENQUE 2012 event.
http://beautyengine.org/the-book/
What i did on my Palenque Vacation
or
PALENQUE 2012, A Super Fun Mythic Adventure of Evolutionary Proportions
Palenque 2012 was the culmination of a kind of social experience i’ve been looking for for over 15 years.
I’ve been attempting to integrate the experiences i had on the trip for almost a month now and am still reeling from the many profound gifts and inspirations i received. What a doozy!
I am SO GRATEFUL to all those that contributed their time, energy, resources, inspiration, gifts, support, creativity, goodwill, vision, prayers and blessings in pulling off so beautifully what was a TRULY ASTOUNDING MYTHIC ADVENTURE!
Here are the top three most successful aspects of the PALENQUE 2012 MYTHIC ADVENTURE which really stand out in my mind:
#1 CELEBRATION AS AN EVOLUTIONARY VEHICLE!
So what do i mean by this?
I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing and participating in some pretty amazing social events over the past 25 years. I’ve seen celebration serve both personal and collective evolution for many years now. I’ve been studying the qualities of these events that have had a profoundly positive effect on my consciousness and very intentionally wove in their techniques, tools and scripts into PALENQUE 2012 with Polly. I guess i really am an ‘pro-human activist’ of sorts in this regard and our Mythic Adventure helped me to realize this.
We celebrated AND we evolved. Well, i did.
I had deeply mythic experiences which transformed me and i have come out the other side changed. From what i’ve gathered so far, most of the other players have as well. I came back more devoted to the power of creative community and mythic experience than ever before.
The Science of Celebration worked well in PALENQUE!
Sometimes we forget to nurture our intentions and allow ‘the party’ to numb us rather than help us to wake up, but this was not one of those occasions.
May we continue to come together in celebration of what it is to be fully human and ALIVE, to celebrate in creative, conscious community and to WAKE UP TOGETHER!
#2 Creative engagement played a major role!
I think if someone were to ask me what my Spirituality was, i would have to say-
‘being creative’.
I find that creativity puts me in touch with Purpose, Beauty, Strength, Wonder, Mystery, Awe …and for lack of a better word ‘The Divine’, more than anything else in my life.
Creativity brings a sense of purpose and meaning to my life that gives me the means by which to connect with my fellow persons in a way that nothing else can.
Exploring my creativity continues to provide me access to the flowing currents of life, light, energy and inspiration that fuels ALL my work and play!
So naturally i was very happy at how creativity played a key role at the event by giving all of us the chance to connect within ourselves to our inner currents & energies…and then join that energy outwards with each other.
It was really inspiring to watch our group connect with the locals through the process of creating art together…it created the most wonderful vibe!
The event was crafted in a way that enabled everyone to participate in ways that were suited to their comfort levels as well as gently encouraging them to explore new avenues and modes of expression.
#3 The spirit of THE GIFT!
This was probably the biggest source of SHIFT that occurred in my consciousness.
Being immersed in a heartfelt container in which people were sometimes falling over themselves to share…was healing, inspiring, nurturing and affirming on many levels.
Polly and I hosted PALENQUE 2012 as a gift to our community & the world as an intentional act of AFFIRMATION towards GIFTING and GIFT CULTURE.
Now don’t get me wrong, i had misgivings about creating an event for free for my friends and was hesitant to come onboard at first. Polly set out with laying down the groundwork of the event before i was even convinced it was a good idea!
I’ve noticed in creative communities that there is a lot of heated dialogue right now around ‘being valued’ for your gifts and ‘getting paid’.
Now the thing is, creating experiences is MY ART and it GIVES ME JOY…so if i always wait around to get paid to do what i do…i’m not going to be doing what i love as much as i would like to!
Its a sort of ‘Catch 22′ many creative people get stuck into.
I notice that when i get stuck in the ‘am i getting paid?’ mentality my access to my ART, MY CRAFT and MY ENTHUSIASM drops drastically. So finally i decided “F*** IT, lets do it!’
I also thought- ‘hey, its 2012 for goodness sake and we’ve been invited to host an invite near the Maya Pyramids with a group of creative, fun friends for Spring Equinox, WHATS MY FRICKIN PROBLEM!!!??’
That voice of scarcity and fear is strong though, isn’t it? It persisted up to and even into the event itself. In Palenque, when i was tired and overwhelmed with the tasks at hand…i found myself saying-
‘OH FOR GODS SAKE I’M NOT EVEN GETTING PAID FOR THIS ____!’
Being immersed in a temporary community dedicated to the sharing of gifts and creating art/ was not only incredibly healing (and reminded me of another dusty event back in the 1990’s) but ACCELERATED MY DESIRE TO SHARE EVEN MORE.
….
The following also played a huge role in making the event a success, in my mind:
Palenque 2012 was:
Personally speaking, Palenque 2012 was the ‘Burning Man’ experience i’ve always wanted!
It’s true that, in part, PALENQUE 2012 was a constructive response as a community builder and experience designer to early formative experiences i had out in the desert.
My first time on the playa back in 1997 my camp burned down and was replaced WITHIN HOURS by the POWER OF THE GIFT. A very humbling and profound awakening for me then!
Radical Self-Expression, a core tenant central to The BMAN Festival serves its purpose to an extent…but what about RADICAL COLLABORATION and RADICAL PRESENCE?
The EGO can only shout over each other for so long, like the proverbial art cars, blasting louder and louder and louder…
Caroline Casey herself said recently in regards to the ENVISON FESTIVAL down in Costa Rica-
‘how can a festival that blast thousands of watts of sound on multiple speakers in the rain forest be called REVERENT?’
….
My experience in Palenque gave me a powerful dose of the value of both COLLABORATION and HEARTFELT PRESENCE.
It reminded me that as Stewards & Pioneers of community science & ‘party-as-achemical-vehicle’…its is VITAL that we tend to the feminine aspects of our pursuits.
Nurturing the reflective, watery, ‘YIN’, heartfelt, emotional, process-oriented, communicative, ‘being fully present’ aspect of outward community action yields a quality of experience otherwise not possible!
We are in times that say- CHANGE OR DIE, so forgive me if i’m hurting anyone’s feelings.
Its not me that’s throwing down the gauntlet, i feel it is EVOLUTION ITSELF inviting us to STEP UP OUR GAME. (literally in our case!!!)
PALENQUE 2012 showed me that these two paths, CELEBRATION and EVOLUTION when woven together, enliven the other in ways that ARE UNIMAGINABLY AWESOME!
