The Do Lab hosted Temple Days at The Springs in Downtown Los Angeles earlier this month as the pre-event for the upcoming Lightning in a Bottle festival. The May 3 event featured a handful of speakers and workshops, covering topics from yoga and nutrition to incorporating spirituality into modern life and entrepreneurship. It allowed us to get a small, intimate taste of what’s to come at The Temple of Consciousness next weekend at LIB.
It’s amazing how much a day around inspiring people with positive worldviews can impact your mental state. Throughout the day, I found myself with an incessant grin on my face from the sentiments expressed, the people we spoke with and the strokes of genius that arose spontaneously. It’s difficult to capture all that went down during the day, but here are some of the highlights:
Naada Guerra and Gianna de la Torre pushed us to reflect on the difficult question of what our individual core purpose is, reminding us that if the answer is something requiring a lot of effort to produce, it might not be the true answer. If you do know that purpose, what are you doing to serve it? And what are you doing that’s holding you back from being completely aligned with that purpose? It was an eye-opening reflection exercise.
Mark Whitwell led us through an awesome session of hatha yoga, emphasizing the core values of the practice rather than swiftly running through the various movements. I greatly appreciated his unique way of explaining the concepts – it was very matter of fact. One of the big takeaways I got from his workshop was that being human entails active participation in reality, with moment-to-moment consciousness.
Finally, Dream Rockwell, co-founder of Lightning in a Bottle and founder of Lucent Dossier Experience rocked the stage with a genuine passion. She spoke to the benefits of celebrating those that we envy, and choosing to surround ourselves with those people. To not spend excessive amounts of time looking back on difficult situations that we’ve worked through to get to where we are, but rather spend that time looking up and celebrating the peak that we’ve reached by taking those difficult steps.
One of the most interesting facets of the experience was the palpable energy emanating at The Springs. A couple of the speakers had spoken to the power of the electromagnetic fields that people emanate, and I could feel it – it was the first time I had been around this many positively-spirited people in the same place. We would take strolls around the city in between workshops and during meal breaks, and there would be a noticeable adjustment in feeling when returning to the space. I could feel my thoughts and spirit lift when we entered the room. It was a sanctuary of positive energy in the midst of a bustling urban environment.
The event left us feeling inspired, driven, energized and open. Events like these are a wonderful way to center, recalibrate, expand and connect with new like-minded individuals (and those with unique perspectives). It led me to think that more of these events should be happening. If you’re a creator or attendee of similar events, please blast them in the comments! I can’t wait for Lightning in a Bottle next weekend, where the experiences of Temple Days will be mixed with a much larger collection of people, live music and camping in an area isolated from urban environments.
