The dark retreat was very beneficial and enriching for me. I didn’t find the darkness frightening at all, and I was glad I didn’t need to go back into the past and sort something out there, which really pleased me 🙂 but working with the present, calming my mind, tuning in to the here and now – that was a real challenge for me.
In a crisis I switched the light on
The crisis came, it was awful; at one moment (which lasted about a million light years 🙂 I really lost any sense of why I was there and what I was doing there, and at that moment I switched the light on.
Luckily there’s that gap before your eyes get used to the light again and you can even start doing anything about leaving the cabin, and in that moment, as I was looking at the shining crack by the door and wondering what now, what am I going to do, I realised that there was still some unfinished food waiting for me (which I always looked forward to and really enjoyed), and I realised that I didn’t want to eat it knowing what it was, I didn’t want to look at it and I didn’t want to miss out on it – I wanted to savour it again in the dark like before, because that had been really lovely.
And then I switched the light off again
So I got up, switched off the light and went back into the dark.
Into that pleasant, calm, embracing, cosy darkness. And the moment I went back, time finally stood still. Calm came. Calm in the whole cabin and inside me too. If I were to describe it, Tomáš, in your words: “the clouds parted and for a tiny moment the sun peeked out”. For some “time” I luxuriated in that state and explored it. It was lovely. When anxiety crept up, I tried to track it down, then I allowed it to leave, and it left, and when I fell asleep I had a dream:
I was at home; I knew my husband was at work, my daughter at nursery, and I was alone in the house. I went to have a look in the cellar and noticed a flame had shot out of the pipes. I went up the stairs to look for some kind of fire extinguisher, and when I came back down to the cellar, the flames were already creeping across the ceiling and up the walls (like in a film), and I knew I could no longer put it out. So I ran upstairs to the bedroom and started looking for things I could save. Each time I picked something up I put it back again, picked up another thing and put it back again, picked up something else and put it back again, because none of those things had any value. All the things were worthless. Everything worth saving was not in the house.
After the dark retreat came the light
That’s all. That’s my lesson. The rest of the time passed with me longing terribly to get home to my family.
Coming back out into the light was amazing! I was as if under the influence of some intoxicating substance – the beauty, the happiness, the wonder, the joy…I’m smiling even now just writing about it, and I know that back then I couldn’t stop smiling for at least two days.
Thank you for a beautiful experience, for your kind care and attention, and I wish you and your children that every day may be like that first day after you come out of the cabin :).
I hope I’ll be able to repeat the retreat again some day.
Take very good care.
Jitka
