Dear Lenka, dear Tom,
thank you both so much for the chance to spend that wonderful week with you, the dark retreat, for the excellent food and for the insight I was given.
Leni, thank you for your amazing dynamic energy, which literally brought me back to life, and for the love with which you prepare food that is so utterly unforgettable. Tom, thank you for your gentle, calm energy, which deepened the experience of profound calm and peace, and for your deep words, thanks to which I was able to look at my experiences and thoughts from a different angle and so come to reconciliation.
Not a day goes by without me remembering the Darkness, and the two of you…
A dark retreat = a path to yourself, that is how I see it and feel it.
I would struggle to find words to express what I lived through, saw and felt during the dark retreat…
I have no need or desire to describe what the dark retreat revealed to me. Experiences cannot be passed on and they are mine alone. It would be hard for anyone to understand…
What I am happy to share is the fact that darkness is truly light, and that what we are looking for, we have within ourselves.
The darkness gives each person exactly what is needed. She is a beautiful, soft friend who surrounds you with love and reveals the naked truth to you. She strips you bare, and suddenly you are standing naked before yourself, without the masks and attitudes you put on out there…
The darkness gives each person exactly what is needed.
The darkness let me experience “the worst and the best” of myself, so that I would understand that nothing is either bad or good. It brought me to my knees and let me feel humility, unconditional love, oneness and deep calm.
For the first time in my life I feel happy. I have felt deep calm and reconciliation the whole time since the retreat, and it is beautiful and something I had never known before. In the dark I found the way to myself, I found myself. I am grateful that I was able to live every single moment of the retreat, even though there were two nights that I felt at the time as a negative experience. Today I know it was a gift and I am endlessly grateful for it (and thanks to you for that too, Tom, for your words…)
Afraid of going on a dark retreat?
Among other things, I was looking forward to the dark because I would catch up on sleep and wipe out my sleep debt. Out of the whole week I slept one night. Another surprise for me was finding my way around in the dark, which I had no trouble with at all. And fear of the dark? I felt completely safe and free in the dark.
I had been through so many courses and seminars, read so many spiritual books, yet I still felt a contradiction, a lack of fulfilment and a strong urge, a call welling up from deep within me. Only in the dark did I experience what I had only sensed…I found my way home, to myself.
I lived as a slave to my mind and ego. Only in the dark did I sense that the I is neither the mind nor the body.
There are so many words, and none can express my thanks for that deep week.
Thank you.
With love, humility and respect
Lenka
