What a Party!

I surprised myself last night (or should I say this morning) by coming home at 6:30am from a great night at a sacred dance gathering by Avaloka. I don’t even think I snoozed during any of the meditation sessions, but I did get a wonderful vision of a multicoloured square spiral all lit up and floating in space feeding the roots of an equally tubular/lit up tree – all that with a rolling ocean floating far underneath in space (can you believe I’ve never even tried drugs?!). It’s hard to describe, and I guess that’s one reason why visionary artists paint what they see (I’d have to learn more about perspective and 3D shaping before I could manage this one, but at least there would be no human figures to draw). I was still energized when I got home, but fell asleep relatively quickly and got a short 5 hours in before waking up to noise in the apartment. What a role reversal – I’m usually the one making noise in the kitchen after my young university student roommates come home at 4-5am as I’m waking up for my day. Now I know how it feels.

Recap:

Renate, a wonderful Austrian student in our special 2-week intensive, and her friend Bernhard came to pick me up and we headed to their friend Walter’s apartment for a few minutes before finding our way to the 23rd district on the outskirts of the city where the Avaloka event was being held. The event started at 9pm and there were already a lot of people there when we arrived at 9:30pm- some enjoying a campfire outside, others sitting in the indoor stairwell with a gorgeous projected drawing in the style I’d like to make (that was also the smokers’ hangout), others having a drink in the room with a bar, others sitting quietly in the small meditation room, and others standing around chatting in the main room where the vegan food bar, DJ station and band stage were located. I couldn’t believe that this was a temporary set up. Every wall and floor were covered in felt and the whole decorated in a combination of Tibetan buddhist style and techno with projections on walls and ceilings. These are the folks who put on our school’s opening party, but that didn’t prepare me for this night. As an ex-events-planner, I could fully appreciate the organizational skill and talent that it took to put this together.

We just had time to say hi to all our classmates before the opening meditation started, and I’m amazed I understood a lot of it, mostly because the leader used a lot of body language and talked about stuff I was familiar with. I had also used Google Translate to read the schedule ahead of time and knew he would be addressing inter-religious perspective and a Tibetan meditation that opens the brain and body to cosmic rays. This was followed by a solo dance performance that led to great dancing to an ethnic and tribal DJ music mix. It felt so good to just close my eyes and move to the music, focused on my own internal experience, just as everyone else was. Being a barefoot event, however, my knees could only take so much, so I had to take frequent breaks.

I liked the fact that there was a quiet meditation room I could go to when the noise and crowds were too much. We could still hear and feel the vibrations of the music through the walls and floors, but it was still a very serene room. I returned there at midnight for some Tibetan and Sanskrit chanting and when we came out, I could see that the crowd in the main room had doubled and that there was an awesome band, Airrapide (drummer and didgeridoo player) that really got the crowd going. I’ve never seen a didgeridoo player go for so long – amazing! At 2:30, I and most of my classmates returned to the meditation room for a session led by one of our Academy friends and models, Alexandra. It was beautiful, accompanied by hoop drumming and chanting. This was definitely my kind of party.

More dancing, a plateful of roasted vegetables with couscous & hummus, more chatting, and just hanging around and then it was time to leave. Renate & Bernhard were going to drop me off at the U6 end stop, which is in direct line to my place, but they accurately sensed that I was nervous about riding it alone at that late hour (although the world was waking up for Sunday in Vienna), so they kindly insisted on driving me all the way home. They reassured me that Vienna is an extremely safe place, as I had heard before, but I’m just not used to being out at night anymore so I truly appreciated it – comfort zones stretch and shrink and stretch and shrink – such is life.