[run lola]

I don't understand why they want to limit the tickets? If it's for the quality of the festival, I dont think a smaller crowd would make boom better next year!
Boom is like a big village festival!

If you don't understand this – go and ask those who spent 24 hrs waiting in line to get inside in 2008 …

same thing happened in 2006 and people bitched about it!
bad planning and the road was crap
true the car queue was scary! but I think Boom is doomed no matter what they will do
too bad! I love boom, the best evaghhhh

[Ascension]

Boom was doomed when they added an electro stage…That's what anti-boom is for.

[nodsamadhi]

For me, psytrance events are spiritual journeys/awakenings.  I know I take the spiritual stuff more seriously than others, but for me “raves” have a connotation of irresponsible escapism, whereas psytrance is about ecstatic healing and spiritual/creative inspiration (and I mean in-spir-ation in the sense of its etymology specifically).

Sure its great to party, and I've been to plenty of parties, but at these events (especially the outdoor two night events) it's a celebration, a spiritual journey, a family get-together, a nature retreat, and a good workout all in one.

i couldn't disagree more about the spiritual nature of psytrance parties – sure there are banners with pictures of deities from eastern religions and occasional samples about “opening the mind” and such, but my jaded friends and i have come to realize that the reviewer saying “oh wow i had such a SPIRITUAL experience at that party!” usually just ate some really good drugs. there is *definitely* a lot of 'irrational escapism' alive and kicking in the psytrance scene…

there are some organizers who try to work their belief systems into the party planning in some way – whether its a giant triangular fire pit, 'sacred geometry' in the artwork, or some cosmic alignment of the soundsystem and dance floor – but i don't think that the organizers' beliefs/intentions are completely in line with many/most of the attendees' beliefs/intentions. sure, sometimes you have a “ritual” but more often than not its just staring at girls twirling around in revealing costumes.

i've certainly had some powerful experiences at parties in the past…but after having become involved more with things going on in the backend (and having seen how people who throw “spiritual” parties sometimes operate) i'm a lot more interested in being honest about the fact that we're just getting people together to dance and enjoy themselves in a place where there are less-strict cultural guidelines about what's “ok” and “not-ok” – striving for freedom following the concepts of hakim bey's TAZ (much like the early free festivals did) rather than trying to promote a guaranteed spiritual enlightenment via drug use following the concepts of leary, mckenna, etc.

my experience has been that people who force the spiritual side of things tend to take themselves & the events way too seriously, which leads to a much more constrained experience and often results in drama of various forms (heightened by the use of new-age spiritual claptrap instead of real honest communication when discussing plans, issues, problems, etc.), not to mention the concept that they are doing it the “right” way and any variation is therefore “wrong” – much like the fundies.

[cosmicvibrations]

there is *definitely* a lot of 'irrational escapism' alive and kicking in the psytrance scene…

Agreed.

oh wow i had such a SPIRITUAL experience at that party!” usually just ate some really good drugs

Why does that make their experience less spiritual or less valid? Who cares about the means – a spiritual experience is a spiritual experience. And if you're implying that you can have one anywhere, you're right!

i don't think that the organizers' beliefs/intentions are completely in line with many/most of the attendees' beliefs/intentions

I think you're right on that.

i'm a lot more interested in being honest about the fact that we're just getting people together to dance and enjoy themselves in a place where there are less-strict cultural guidelines about what's “ok” and “not-ok” – striving for freedom following the concepts of hakim bey's TAZ

TAZ = win…

As I think you're also implying, organizer intentions about spirituality absolutely aren't needed for people to have powerful experiences on the dancefloor. it will happen anyway…

I agree that the spiritual aspect of psy parties is talked up, but I think it's DEFINITELY there at a good event, and that's what all the talk is about. psytrance in and of itself is something I use as a tool to bring on powerful experiences. I've had a range of them dancing to psytrance alone in the dark (sober, in case you're wondering) for long periods of time. why would it be possible for that to happen, but not happen at a party where the music is even louder?

and the whole concept is a ritual anyway. ecstatic dance facilitated by repetitive, relentless beats is an old, old ritual as I'm sure you know… even most of the people there with a purely hedonistic agenda (whatever that means) are participating in that same ritual, whether they know it or not.

In short, I catch your drift, but I don't care how people attain their spiritual experiences at party. they happen, and it sounds like we both know it. I agree that there's hype, and I agree that there's hedonism (whether that's a good or bad thing is in the eye of the beholder), and escapism is alive and kicking for sure. It's difficult to escape any of those, and that's especially true in a culture that's marginalized by society. Sub/counter-cultures have a lot of problems.

[Blaize224]

meh, it's all personal perspective . . .

It's like trying to decide which food is better than all the rest. Everyone is going to have different opinions. What taste great to someone tastes tart and bitter to another. There's no use in trying to distinguish definite characteristics of “raves” or “psy-parties” or any other collective event for that matter. Reminds me of listening to people talk about “white” and “black” people, very prejudice and close-minded.

Each event stands on its own, trying to put labels on anything so mutive and your bound to error in your judgment somewhere along the line. It comes down to individual and collective intentions, which is a very inconstant thing to measure.

[Ascension]

Homer Simpson: “See, white people have names like Lenny and black people have names like Carl.”

[Blaize224]

yep  😉

[nodsamadhi]

You don't have to disagree.  I started that whole post with “For me.” 😉

fair enough, i think you just kind of hit a sore spot (for me!) while i was sitting here waiting for the gas company to fix my leaky meter…

oh wow i had such a SPIRITUAL experience at that party!” usually just ate some really good drugs

Why does that make their experience less spiritual or less valid? Who cares about the means – a spiritual experience is a spiritual experience. And if you're implying that you can have one anywhere, you're right!

i do believe you can have spiritual experiences anywhere (even on drugs) – i think my issue is that there is sometimes a point where people decide that drugs & parties are *the* route to escape/enlightenment and tend to go a little too far. then the parties with good drugs or where they get along with the organizers/artists/whatever are 'spiritual' and the parties where they have a bad experience or don't like the music are 'not spiritual' and are therefore lesser in some way, even though plenty of other people are still have a good (possibly even 'spiritual') experience. this is part of the reason i was asking for a ABCDEF evaluation of the psytrance cult in that other thread 😉

i feel that what a 'spiritual experience' may be varies greatly from person to person, but so many are taught that there is an absolute spirituality (generally through organized religion, from which they flee to take up a different but equally dogmatic view) that it becomes difficult to deal with.

this is why i cringe any time i see the word 'spiritual' attached to any sort of psytrance gathering…or most things, really.

[septa]

You don't have to disagree.  I started that whole post with “For me.” 😉

and you can simply read “i couldn't disagree more…” as “For me, the spiritual nature of psy events…”

because if you look past that, i think you can see he brings up a lot of valid points.

i personally feel, as with a lot of other things, the “truth” lies somewhere in the middle. i try to be open to any kind of powerful experience that might happen at these events, regardless of how they come about. at the same time, i keep my feet firmly on the ground and try not to allow myself to become too delusional about the “special” nature of these events where i don't notice any ugliness or hypocrisies or anything negative because they don't fit into this ideal of what these events are supposed to be like.

[cosmicvibrations]

i personally feel, as with a lot of other things, the “truth” lies somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at as well.

[septa]

good post. it seems like we are more or less on the same page. and i did not mean to imply that spirituality might be somehow inherent with delusion or direct that comment at you personally. it was more of a general observation on how some people are way too floaty and lovey-dovey about these events, especially during the initial infatuation stage, when they are first introduced to them. the same goes for raves, actually. i've observed many people go from fuzzy-bear kandi kids to cynical jaded junglists in a span of a few years. fun stuff.

[cosmicvibrations]

That's so true about raves! It's a known phenomenon, that cycle of being infatuated, and then finding out (sometimes the hard way) that things aren't as they initially seemed. The partygoer is forced to face these flaws – and then decide whether they're still okay with being around them. In the case of the “rave” scene in my area, I decided I wasn't… in the case of the psytrance community, I decided I was. The benefits are worth it for me here.

Reminds me of the process of starting a relationship. 😉 The initial stage is reminiscent of bubbly NRE.

[Ascension]

tbh, I would say that starting off by going to parties and staying sober is the way to go, keeps your senses aware of what's going on and you don't start out thinking you like something in a delusional state of mind

[nodsamadhi]

That's so true about raves! It's a known phenomenon, that cycle of being infatuated, and then finding out (sometimes the hard way) that things aren't as they initially seemed. The partygoer is forced to face these flaws – and then decide whether they're still okay with being around them. In the case of the “rave” scene in my area, I decided I wasn't… in the case of the psytrance community, I decided I was. The benefits are worth it for me here.

i think that happens in more than just the psytrance/rave/EDM scenes, honestly…its pretty common to social groups in general from what i've seen & heard.

[cosmicvibrations]

^Also true. it's just caricatured really well in the rave scene, clothing and all.

Kevin, that's not a bad strategy. That's how I did it with the rave scene though, and I still got rather infatuated for a while. But I think that's okay, it's a normal part of the process. After a while, you get wise the various goings on you may not like or agree with, and you do a cost/benefit analysis so to speak.

Going to psytrance parties is worth it for me, for sure. It has just nurtured so many indirectly related hobbies that for me to stop going because some people are hypocritical, or self-destructive, or whatever else… would be quite silly.

[Author]

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