It’s still surprising to me I started doing reiki and attending pagan festivals. I really didn’t know what reiki was until I sat down in level one class. I knew it was something vaguely related to energy and healing and that it was practiced by people who smell like patchouli and talk a lot about crystals. Don’t get me wrong. My values are as hippy as they come. But until I started attending burning man events, I was more of the free love and end capitalization kind of hippy. I prided myself in avoiding the more “woo” side of the commune.
But once I started attending burning man events and spending time with those other kinds of hippies, I realized we had some things in common. I didn’t always agree with their reasons for believing the things they do, but I could recognize that their spiritual experiences were very similar to mine.