Category: Participants’ experiences

 pocccHi Tomáš and Lenka,

thank you once again for your darkness and the regular visits.

My second darkness was different

This time I walked from Bykáň on my own. In Úmonín I trusted my sense of direction, and at the end of the village I carried straight on along a field track, but to the neighbouring village 🙂 . By then I didn’t feel like going back, so I cut across the fields.

I wasn’t as nervous as the first time

I have to say I perceived the darkness differently, in a friendlier way. I accepted it, and you could tell from my inner state and my inner mood… I looked into the darkness differently, and physically I didn’t need to have the heating turned up so high.

After my first dark retreat, when Tomáš gave me the tip to accept the unpleasant things too, to watch them, not distract myself and not fight them, that’s what I do, and I did it in my second darkness too.
For the first three and a half days I enjoyed it like a holiday. I was in a great mood, with just tiny ups and downs that I observed.
On the fourth day after eating I was lying on my back and a slightly unpleasant feeling came. A feeling that I didn’t have enough oxygen. Even though I knew from experience that I had enough oxygen and could have the heating on instead of the air conditioning (more peace and quiet, and in my first darkness my body needed heat).

A passing feeling came over me

Then I turned over onto my right side, and a very strong unpleasant feeling came that I’d leave tomorrow, maybe even today. Thoughts kept coming that there’s no need to overdo anything, that other people had also left their second darkness early, that I’d already tried and enjoyed everything there and that there’d be nothing new. After a few seconds it began to settle, and after a few hours I felt fine again, just like at the start of the week.

I realised that it had been pretty interesting. That it actually wanted to get me out on the basis of some sort of evidence and reasons, but in reality I was OK. I didn’t need anything, I was fine, as if I weren’t one, but those thoughts and emotions were separate and wanted something else.

Otherwise I like to look back on my dark retreat, and thanks to it I also know that life is really about acceptance and about where we direct our attention.

Take care 🙂

Honza

Hi Tomáš and Lenka,

How did I find out about the dark retreat? 

I found out about the dark retreat from some article years ago, and it was interesting reading for me. At the time it never crossed my mind that I’d take part in it myself one day. Now I see it as a seed that was planted in me, which had to sprout in my head and ripen before it could push its way to the front of my thinking, with all the daily worries and so on.

Time flew by… and I was in the Dark 

Once I’d decided on the retreat, I was glad the waiting time was long, so I could prepare for it in the meantime and think about what I’d got myself into. Well, suddenly it was here and I still hadn’t figured anything out. I had full support at home, so that made the final decision of whether to give up on it easier…

Arrival 

When I arrived, you showed me into the cabin, explained a few organisational essentials and left it up to me when I’d switch off the light. There was some muesli and fruit ready for me. And that’s when I started thinking about the orange. How on earth am I going to eat you in the dark? So just to be safe, I ate it while the light was still on 🙂 .

I pressed the switch… and there it was

After switching off the light I started trying everything out. At first I mostly walked along the walls, but it didn’t take long before I could find my way around pretty much without any trouble – finding food, the toilet, taking a shower . I even had a little notepad where I wrote down notes, moods, thoughts and so on. It’s perfectly readable. My handwriting is hardly ever that neat even when I can see…

Why am I even here? 

For roughly the first three days, questions were really racing through my head: why am I here when there’s so much work at home I could be doing, why did I (blow) my holiday leave on this at the beginning of the year, and so on. So several times I wanted to give up, switch on the light and leave. Luckily, I didn’t.

I really had no sense of time at all, because a strong wind was raging outside at the time and I had nothing to hold on to, not even roughly. I did know it might be afternoon or just after lunch when I got food, but then I’d go to sleep and have no idea at all whether I’d slept 2 or 8 hours…

It’s better to isolate yourself completely

The biggest mistake I made was letting Tomáš pass on news from home at the start: whether one of my daughters had passed her final state exams and whether the other had landed safely in Ireland. Now I wouldn’t want that and I’d wait until I switched the light on…

Who moved me forward there?

I don’t know exactly when I started really enjoying the dark retreat, but that probably doesn’t matter. I exercised regularly, the way I’m used to at home and at training (taekwondo) . Still, the time came when there was nothing left to eat or to do, and that’s when the thoughts started flowing. Lots of people came back to me, even from my childhood, people I’d long forgotten, and I realised how and where each of them had steered me or influenced me during my life…

What did it give me? 

Above all, I came to terms with myself and knew what’s important in life, how I want to see it… But it’s not the case, now that some time has passed, that I learned everything in the dark and now everything’s fine. It isn’t, but I know how to work with it…

It gave me an awful lot, and it was my one long holiday around the world, even though I was in a single cabin. In the dark, all kinds of colourful ornaments, vaults and patterns appeared before my eyes… They created a kind of setting around me, probably so I wouldn’t get lost in the endless darkness.

It wasn’t the same darkness any more 

After I learned that I might feel sick and dizzy when the light came on, I decided on my own to switch the light on just to be safe already on Friday afternoon – I needed to leave early on Saturday morning, so that the long journey would be relaxed. The strange thing was that when I switched off the light again to get some more sleep before morning, it was no longer MY darkness, the one I’d been with for almost a week. It was different, impersonal, foreign, and luckily it was only short. I guess it takes time for us to get used to each other… maybe next time… 🙂

I already have moments when I miss the darkness. That peace and time for everything, without any outside influences…

Thanks again for everything!!!
Milan

Hi Tomáš, Lenka,

I went into the dark full of expectations

I expected to experience a feeling of balance, calm, a state without thoughts, and maybe to realise a few things that would show me the direction to take in my life. Now I realise that it was exactly those expectations that were out of place, because basically none of that happened. What surprised me most was that I didn’t experience a thought-free state, apart from a few moments. On the contrary, so many things were racing through my head that I was amazed myself.

A talk with Tomáš helped me

During the retreat Tomáš  explained to me something I had already heard and read many times, but evidently I needed to hear it again: “Thoughts are around us all the time and they will always race through your head, the important thing is not to pay attention to them”. That was my exercise. I also did yoga very often and tried to keep my attention on the present. Unfortunately I only partly managed it.

Time?

I really appreciated the sense of time flowing. It happened that I thought only a few hours had passed, and then, when they brought me food, I found out that a whole other day had gone by. During the retreat I basically wasn’t bored at all.

I perceived with other senses

I enjoyed the feeling of not seeing and having to perceive everything only through touch and smell. I got to know the space by feel quite quickly, and after that I moved around fairly confidently, although I didn’t avoid a few kicks against the walls or the bed 🙂 .  In the same way I enjoyed the food, perceived only through smell, touch and taste. The food was amazing. I often try to come back to that sensation when I eat.

I heard what was going on around me 

I was worried that the surrounding sounds would disturb me. Even though in the cabin you can hear when someone starts a car in the yard, or when the neighbour, whose fence runs right next to the cabins, drives his tractor. Now and then I also heard a thud from the neighbouring cabin (the cabins are fairly close to each other). In the end these sounds didn’t bother me at all. On the contrary, I enjoyed the birdsong.

I really enjoyed sleeping and getting up whenever I felt like it or needed to. I wasn’t governed by time, light or obligations. A beautiful feeling.

I really want to thank Tomáš for the talk after the retreat ended, which I was grateful to him for. I want to thank Lenka and Tomáš for the space they have built and for how they looked after me.

When I then left, I kept the feeling of calm, balance and stillness during the car journey and for the whole rest of the day. By the next day this feeling of calm had faded.

David

Hello Tomáš and Lenka.

I need to say a few things at the start so my text makes sense. I’m a practical bloke, I can’t write as flowery and nicely “esoteric” as the others. I write the truth and get straight to the point. Meditation, contemplation and practical therapies (as a client – regression therapy, for example) have never come easily to me, because on the one hand I’m a logical creature, and on the other I have a very restless mind.

Right now things are going crap, total rubbish. The effect the dark retreat had on me is largely gone. I’ve fallen back into the merry-go-round of everyday life with the same frustrations, hopes, dreams, loves, expectations and dissatisfaction with myself. I’m restless and hectic again. But maybe the Dark helped me subconsciously and I just don’t feel it yet… I’ll see, and let it surprise me.

I’m glad I did the Dark

But even so, I’m very, really very glad I could do the Dark with you! I didn’t get the feeling that anything fundamental or groundbreaking was revealed, I didn’t discover the truth about the universe or the meaning of life. But it was still worth it.

I hesitated before going in

I have to admit that the day before I started, I was hesitating about whether to go. I was scared/worried that a week of “doing nothing” would drive me completely mad, because I can’t stay still for 5 minutes (unless I’m asleep). I have a very scattered mind that won’t let me rest. It constantly churns out stimuli and basically can’t be stopped. But imagine my surprise when I didn’t go mad! It did take me 3 days to calm down, but then I could work on myself psychologically.

For the first time in my life I was able to calm my mind and meditate. I could talk undisturbed with my inner child and even with my adviser.

What did the Dark give me?

The Dark gave me a certain amount of calm and balance. The certainty that I’m walking in the right direction. Whenever I think of that, I remember the quote that the wisest people walk their own path. Though I’m a terribly long way off being the wisest person (a few thousand light years, probably)!!

During the Dark, the negative sides of my personality also became clear, of course – ones I know about, naturally, I just consciously try to play them down more or less and not really look at them. But I didn’t discover any demons I’d have to be afraid of, or that could plunge me into acute psychosis.

My experience, overall impression and emotional experience of the Dark? Not transferable.

Practical things: the vegetarian food was excellent – and that’s coming from me, a committed carnivore! The cabin was just the right size. The temperature was easy to adjust. I could hear the planes, but they didn’t bother me at all.

An important observation to finish

I have one very important observation to finish with: if you can, go by train, bus, boat, submarine, plane, on an elephant, or get someone to drive you there and back. I don’t recommend driving a car after the Dark. I’m an experienced driver. I drive fast and aggressively, but safely. I do about 40 thousand kilometres a year. On the morning I left, I felt strange – as if I wasn’t in my own skin, or more precisely in my own body. I got behind the wheel and drove really, really slowly. And even so, in the very first village I nearly smashed myself up. I badly misjudged a bend (that was a first in my life!!), and nearly flew off the road. Then I had to get a large Red Bull and a coffee at a petrol station, otherwise I couldn’t have carried on. On the way home (about 250 kilometres) I had to stop 3 times, because I still felt strange – as if I wasn’t anchored in this world.

Wishing you a lovely day and plenty of rain (for nature), I’ll say goodbye

Dan

Dear Lenka, dear Tomáš

This morning I left without saying goodbye.

I trust that, in all your wisdom, you won’t take my behaviour as rudeness and so won’t be hurt by it. My longing for home got the better of waiting for you to wake up.

Now, at home in the middle of the night, my sleep has vanished under the flood of returning experiences from the dark, and of today’s encounters, emotions, the mass of impressions, sounds, words and activities out here “outside”.

And so I’m writing. I owe you that goodbye. And a thank you.

How to describe the indescribable without it sounding banal…

The name of your (and for a little while my) dark hut – the Northern Sanctuary – I only fully understood once I was inside. Sacred time. Undisturbed, therapeutic, full in its emptiness….

I like having the chance to be just on my own. After Mr Hrabal, I call it my Too Loud a Solitude 🙂 . But here it was also long, and wrapped the whole time in a deep inner sense of peace.

Try as I might, I couldn’t fend off certain expectations.

Not much of that happened here.

Staring into absolute darkness, watching my thoughts, listening to the silence, meditation and prayer, gentle yoga – uniting body, breath and mind, patience taking turns with restlessness, walks along the walls, bodily needs, food, thinking, singing, dreaming – waking…

Round and round, seven days and nights, like in a fairy tale.

Days and nights, with the boundary between them fading. One thing at a time. And there’s plenty of time 🙂 Time to hear, in the silence, the answer to your question, time to hand over old pain, to dissolve thoughts going round in circles, time for pure being, for opening the heart..

In the sleeping bag, a deep, bodily feeling of being a dragonfly larva, a metamorphosis.

I smile at the mirroring. It’s here too 🙂

Family

A reliable thermostat, quietly humming, switching on and off to keep it pleasantly warm (except when my hasty fiddling with it brings on a chilly spell). The occasional song of a little bird outside, bringing joy, so sweet and precious. The wind with its moods, whistling, howling almost eerily, wailing, and then falling quiet again. Food you wait for, not knowing when it will come or what it will be, and you accept the variety of flavours with gratitude..

Friends

Precious little things that help enormously: mala beads, dark chocolate, a smooth gemstone, citrus, cedar and lavender, warm tea, a meditation cushion…

Other company

An ant in the blueberries, a night-time mouse under the hut and its far-too-loud gnawing that made sleep impossible, a clucking hen bringing me back into the reality of time.

A mishap that drove me outside and straight away made me think about my own foolishness. Coming back, and tears of gratitude.

The darkness gave me enormous gifts

A few surprising insights in dreams and meditations. Deep feelings of love, peace and humility. May I manage to keep the treasure I’ve found. May it benefit others too.

That’s for the days to come…

A blackbird has just whistled outside. Time to go to sleep 🙂

And so I say goodbye to you. And thank you so much. For the sanctuary, for your loving care, for everything… thank you, thank you, thank you.

No longer a larva and not yet a dragonfly. Transformation isn’t easy,

Hanka

For a long time I’d felt that I needed to switch off for a while. To withdraw somewhere, be alone with myself and sort out my thoughts, or let them come, which, unfortunately, in everyday life I usually never make time for.

Given that it was winter and I could only take about a week’s holiday, a dark retreat seemed like the best option.

Given my close connection to the Kutná Hora area and my assumption that a more remote little village might be quieter than other places (which turned out to be true), I could hardly have chosen a different, better place than Lomec near Úmonín.

What was it like there?

I liked the place itself too: a large plot, where the lie of the land and the trees separate the little sanctuary huts, both visually and acoustically, from the main road, which isn’t very busy anyway. So even the outside made a positive impression on me, as did Tomáš, who showed me into the huts when I arrived and explained how everything works.

Inside, the huts are practical, the space is just right, and they still smell of wood. Only the bed was too soft for me. I was a bit worried about how the heating would cope in winter, but the electric heater works perfectly.

It’s up to you

The good thing is that you decide for yourself when to switch off the light, you’re not locked in, and so on. So it’s all up to you. The food was fine too, the portions were big; I’m a relatively big bloke, but I couldn’t even eat it all.

The retreat showed me what I need to deal with

I’ll admit that I didn’t really find out much about the dark retreat in advance or train for it in any way. And everything was fine. Well, to be honest, apart from the fact that each day felt longer and longer to me, so a week was just right for me. Every day I did some physical exercise and also tried to meditate. That didn’t really work for me, though.

The whole week my thoughts kept drifting to just one topic, but, as I only realised with hindsight, that was exactly the topic I really needed to deal with.

So, to sum up, I liked the retreat and it was useful for me.

Thank you, Lenka and Tomáš, you’re doing a good thing and you’re doing it well!

 

Hi there,

In the dark I could feel all the fear, helplessness, panic, anger and sadness at the highest intensity I have ever experienced. And I really was scared of what I’d find in there. On the other hand, I feel that I now know what’s inside me, and that maybe I was afraid it would be worse. But it was very hard for me to go through all that pain that has been lying inside me since who knows when. At least I feel I’ve learnt to work with those emotions better in normal life too, but I’m still learning.

Before the retreat I read lots of positive reviews on the website about how people came out calm, full of light and who knows what else positive. Then I also felt a sense of failure, that I hadn’t managed it. What helped me more, on the contrary, was hearing that people leave early, or even come back later to finish their retreat. After that I didn’t feel under so much pressure that I had to get through it.

I know that feeling is my own thing. All my life I’ve heard that I have to put up with things, and I keep convincing myself over and over that I don’t have to. The process simply goes on and something definitely shifted strongly inside me – if you want to change, you have to do it yourself anyway.

Best wishes,

Lenka

Hi Lenka and Tom,

What did the Darkness give me? I’m writing it with a capital -D- on purpose, because that darkness really is absolute and magnificent. You probably can’t find darkness like that anywhere else 😉

The Darkness gave me exactly what I needed

I didn’t expect to reach nirvana, or to have some great unknown secret of the universe revealed to me. And that’s a good thing, because it gave me exactly what I needed: it cleared my springs, clogged with the silt of everyday life, and I realised again, with amazement, what and who really matters to me. It sounds like a cliché, surely you know that already… except you forget, and you think things are simply given and permanent. And so, with a stream of tears that lasted two days, I washed away the silt inside me and once again saw the truth clearly, in all its nakedness. It was a feeling that is hard to put into words. In one sentence I’d probably say it like this: Thanks to the Darkness I will try to be a better person.

Looking back

Now, a month later, the feeling isn’t as intense, and you tend to slip back into old habits and patterns, but when that happens I stop for a moment and close my eyes. I find a little piece of Darkness inside me, sink into it, and that “calms me down”. I hope it stays with me! 🙂

Thank you for doing such meaningful “work”. 😉

Bye, and have a lovely spring 🙂

Iva

 

Hi,

I’m probably not much of a writer and I don’t think I can put together anything you’d want to put on your website… 😉  But I’ll write you something, do with it what you like… 😀

This was already my second time in the dark with you

The first time was in October 2016. That first time it was a kind of test for me, whether I could even last it out. I exercised a lot and mostly battled with boredom. I did gain some insights into myself there, but I didn’t manage to put them into practice. Everyday life somehow ground me down again…

A lot has changed since then

This time it was very different. Since December 2017 I’ve been on my spiritual path, I’m interested in shamanism, I meditate a bit. I’m trying to live in the present (which is pretty hard going 😀 ), and I’m slowly leaving the consumer way of life behind. Permaculture and sustainable living as such really speak to me.

I knew exactly what I was going into the dark for

I knew what I was going into the dark for, what I wanted to sort out and think through, the things I don’t have the headspace for in normal life. I came to several major life decisions and I’m gradually managing to put them into action. My relationship with my wife has become much stronger; I understood what she expects from me and isn’t getting, so I’m working on that a lot. And it’s going well!

I’m not so attached to things any more

I’ve started clearing things out inside me and around me, and I’m putting non-attachment to things into practice.
As for the stay itself, the biggest difference compared with 2016 was mainly the food for me. Back then I had raw food, and for a long time after the retreat I kept thinking fondly of Lenča… Yum 🙂

It’s just that I didn’t enjoy the food much this time…

This time I only really enjoyed it on Sunday, plus all the little desserts – basically everything Léňa made. The person who cooks for you probably thinks vegetarian cooking is anything without meat. They don’t really think about what should and shouldn’t be combined. Sometimes it felt like that fairy tale about the doggy and the pussycat baking a cake. After one meal I had such a boulder in my stomach that if it hadn’t been dark, I’d have gone and thrown it away. So if I ever come to you again, I’ll definitely do it as a fast, on water only. (Unless Lenča goes back to cooking 😉 )

On top of that, after a few days I realised it was bothering me quite a lot that I kept thinking about what Tomáš would bring and when he’d come. I felt like a little animal in a pen, watching out for the farmer. 🙂

This time I even saw the sunrise

It was nice in the cabin, and I was actually glad the air conditioning wasn’t working. The occasional click of the electric heater was more pleasant to me. This time I was even lucky enough to see the sunrise on Saturday, even though I got pretty frozen doing it.

So that’s about it. Have a lovely time there, all of you. I wish you lots of success and happiness, and maybe even a few more children? You’re exactly the kind of people who ought to multiply… 😀

With love, Martin

Dear Lenka and dear Tomáš,

Thank you very much for the dark retreat in your magical southern sanctuary.

I’d like to take stock of what the darkness has revealed to me so far (so far, because I can feel it will certainly carry on, as I’m now following my heart, and that is a real force). I’m very grateful to the darkness for it, but to the two of you as well.

The emotions and tears are slowly subsiding, and what remains and keeps deepening is a feeling of peace in my soul. The doubts that used to whirl around in my head seem to get an immediate answer as to why this or that is the way it is, and my soul sinks back into deep peace without any sense of guilt: “What on earth did I say, what did I do”. It simply is “the way it is, full stop”

I’ll be completely specific, because there’s simply no other way now: it’s wonderful that you are both just the way you are.

To you, Lenka

thank you for your rushed, sometimes chaotic and loud way of speaking. Because if I hadn’t experienced it, I wouldn’t have lived through what that rush can stir up in someone who is quietly sitting in the darkness: chaos, inattention. And this is actually what was happening to me as a teacher, mother, wife, woman: I was too fast and hasty, then people didn’t understand me and I asked myself: “Why are they like this towards me?!” That’s actually why I didn’t quite catch how the departure would go, and I probably woke you rather inconsiderately, wanting to say goodbye and thank you properly. Thank you for a great lesson: calm and composure. You can’t imagine how my chaotic nature tormented me. Thank you that, thanks to you, I left it in the sanctuary.

To you, Tomáš

in turn, thank you for your calm and balanced approach. For reminding me again and again about covered eyes, for the time to put my questions into words: “Why do you actually think that?” and for waiting for my answer. And for explaining what will happen once I’m home after the therapy. Above all, thank you for the calm, order and harmony. But could I have appreciated these qualities so deeply if there hadn’t been the contrast of the chaos brought about by a different approach? No, I couldn’t! 

It is absolutely necessary and natural for good and evil to be present in all of creation, in every person, animal, plant… Otherwise we aren’t able to experience and feel ourselves and everything around us.

And a human being is a divine being, not a machine.

Thank you both so much for the deep peace of soul that the two of you and the darkness have given me.

Míša