Marco Cochrane’s “Truth is Beauty” installed at Burning Man 2013

We can get so very significant and solid and serious when moving through life.  However, if you are receptive, the moments come when everything becomes fluid and light and it is very easy and ethereal to just simply BE.  When I first met Parker Voss, he asked me compelling questions and spoke of ways to transfer positive energy to others.  I was drawn in.  He seemed to have a keen grasp on being.  He taught me things and put a new perspective on human possibility, but in a very grounded way.  So, when he wrote about his first trip to Burning Man and the scientific fact that we are physically made up of  mostly empty space (read that again and again, it is true!) , I was thrilled to share his recount with all of you!  

From Parker: “Last week I had a personal insight in the Nevada desert of all places. I happened to land a serious head cold the entire week of my first Burning Man experience, which for those of you who don’t know is less than an ideal place to be feeling sick.

Burning Man is the annual art and music festival held in the Black Rock Desert, and the general ambiance of the week-long event carries too intense of a vibe to afford to feel anything other than grounded in an open mind, body and heart.

This capacity usually comes naturally to me, but it felt somewhat forced at my weakened state, when my main interest became sleep. In an attempt to keep me entertained, my friend Lauren gave me the only piece of literature she had on her in the desert – a book on metaphysics – although I said I wasn’t feeling well enough at all for that. She suggested I read only a page, so I did.

This is what I got: our human body is scientifically proven to be 99% empty space, and that if the core of atoms which are the building blocks of our bodies (and everything in the world, for the matter) were the size of an apple, the distance between each one would be 2,000 miles.

I simply couldn’t conceive the enormity of what else could be there if apparently only very little substance. The very thought of it made my head spin. I considered the page read and fell asleep in my tent.

At sunset I took my bike out for a ride around the public art on the desert “playa” as it is known. I stopped at the one most memorable to me: a giant sculpture of a dancing woman called “Truth is Beauty” measuring 5.5 stories tall, whose graceful frame is made of steel rods covered in metal mesh and illuminated from within by thousands of LED lights that transition from violet to indigo to teal in color.

There’s no denying that her physical presence is commanding, yet she is mostly hollow. Her metal skeleton occupies space, yet her form also contains much more of it. In some sense, the greater part of her is empty space, and indeed light-filled.

At a fundamental level, we are very much the same.  We carry in and around our physical form a force much like her light. It is made up of another more subtle substance – a light like the sun’s, an energy that is as real as it beautiful and abundant.

Underneath a woman nine times my size, I became clear where there was confusion about the 99%. We are truly a force, not a mass. And we are 100% powerful to harness this energy to positively influence life in magnificent ways.”

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Parker Voss is a New York native, Georgetown-educated artist and designer, Reiki master, and trilingual explorer of the world and wellness.