People often come back to the dark. This time we bring you the experience of a woman who came for a dark retreat for the second time, four years after her first week-long stay. What brought her back? Relief from the demands that bombard us from all sides every day, and the feeling that everything is just as it should be.
I was looking forward to inner calm
It’s lovely. I was so looking forward to resting again and getting back to my inner calm. I simply adore it. Holding on to it in everyday life is much harder, because there you’ve got all the demands of the people and world around you.
My second time in the dark, and the feeling is the same
It wasn’t my first time in the dark, it was my second. The first time I was here for a week, this time for a shorter stay. But the feeling is exactly the same. First the thoughts that keep bombarding you from everywhere fly away. Then that whole “I ought to” flies away. And then comes the feeling that everything is fine, everything is as it should be, and you can simply exist like this. It’s brilliant.
My biggest challenge is to keep hold of it in everyday life, at work and at home. I know calm from there too, but here it’s amplified. When you feel a deep calm, here you reach even deeper – if depth can be deepened at all.
Here I really don’t have to do anything
The huge benefit is that this environment makes no demands at all, and you really don’t have to do anything here. As long as you let yourself accept that, which is hard these days. The moment we’re working, there’s an automatic demand to finish some task. I go shopping – that’s a demand. I look after the children – that’s a demand. There are plenty of demands. Here I only do the basics: I wash, I brush my teeth, I eat. Apart from that, I don’t have to deal with anything around me at all.
I love my life, and after the dark I experience it more deeply
I’m not running away from the world by coming here. I love my life and the world around me, I love people, the things I do, my work and my four cats, and I enjoy looking after all of it. What matters to me is that underlying feeling that carries me. Becoming aware of it at such depth is wonderful, and then comparing how it looks in everyday life.
I notice one more benefit. Because my senses aren’t so overloaded here, afterwards I’m better able to perceive my cats and the people around me. I open up more when I talk to people and we go deeper. I can’t imagine reaching that depth through ordinary life alone.
How can someone like me just be?
Before my first stay I was a bit scared. In everyday life I’m performance-driven, I’m always doing something and switching between things. I wondered how someone like me could just be. I try to do it in ordinary activities too, for example when I swim, I just breathe and focus on my body. But it’s different. Here I realised how valuable it is when you can really just be. Without rushing, and without thinking about what comes next.
After my first stay I knew I’d come again
I was first here four years ago, and ever since then I knew I’d come again. It was just a question of the right timing. I’d happily come a third time too. But it takes time to sort out in everyday life what you’ve taken in here, and to try to use it to deepen your ordinary activities.
There are no bogeymen here
To those who are afraid of the dark, I’d say that getting to know yourself and moving forward a little isn’t anything to be afraid of. The circumstances here aren’t any scarier than outside. Not being able to see certain things means I don’t even have to think about them, and it’s calmer. There really is nothing to be afraid of here. There are no ghosts, no bogeymen. There are just people who support you and take care of you. That’s all. It’s a lovely experience.
We’ve put together the most frequently asked questions that people ask before a dark retreat.
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