Before the dark retreat – light
The start of my week-long dark retreat was classic… shortly after switching off the light I lay down and slept. That first night a dream came in which I was undergoing darkness therapy but had, for some reason, found myself back outside in daylight. Because I had been thinking about a dark retreat for a long time and looking forward to it, I was trying with all my might to get back into my little chamber. I couldn’t manage it at all. When I woke up in the morning, I realised that fortunately I hadn’t gone anywhere, that I was still in the dark, and I was literally flooded with a feeling of joy. A great start!
After waking came the necessary exploration of my surroundings, getting my bearings in the space, morning hygiene and, given the limited space, a not particularly successful attempt at stretching my body on the sleeping mat. Then followed an alternation of lying and sitting positions, waking and sleeping. During Lenka’s first visit I shared my dream and learned that a lady in the cabin next door was already considering ending her therapy. Once again I realised how at ease I was, and I was very grateful for it.
The first unusual sensations came on the second day, when, during quicker changes of position, tiny “flickers” began to appear before my eyes, as if little lights were starting to blink. Those little lights became more frequent with each passing day and began to appear even with the slightest movements. At first it reminded me of small sparks. Later, as the intensity grew, I had more the impression of a strobe light flashing somewhere at a disco, and in the end it took on the form of sunbeams reflecting off the surface of a pond, playfully throwing cute little flashes into my eyes, whether open or closed.
Later these light sensations could be induced even without movement, by concentration alone. I even started to manage to calm this flickering and turn it into a constant light. It wasn’t hard to work out that the light wasn’t coming from outside but from within. Its focal point was in the area of the chest, and it mostly bathed the lower part of the face up to the eyelids. When I calmed down and concentrated inwardly, it then grew stronger and lit up my whole face with a literally unreal radiance. It had a white to golden tinge. My own observation thus confirmed what I had learned earlier: that there is light within us, that we are this light, this energy. At one moment I imagined this small, seemingly separate little light of ours returning to the source at the end of an incarnation, and I was flooded with an immensely intense feeling of bliss and delight. Two words came to mind: a phenomenal affair!
Darkness – Me and the fly
Let me go back to the beginning, when, before switching off the light in the cabin, I was looking over the living quarters and spotted a fly on the wall. It occurred to me that it might not be the best companion in here, and I removed the fly.
Later, around the middle of the week, as I was falling asleep I had a short vision in a half-sleep in which, out of nowhere, the head of some insect with large eyes appeared very close in front of my left eye. My eye seemed to form a dividing space between us, and through it we stared at each other. It was strikingly reminiscent of a scene from an action film, where you look out of the window of a skyscraper office into the windows of a black helicopter just before it opens fire on you. The vision lasted several seconds, long and intense enough for me to remember it well.
The next day Lenka brought me her usual excellent food, and when the door had closed behind her as she left, shortly afterwards a typical buzzing sounded out of nowhere in the dark. That was the greeting. Then came the getting acquainted. The fly launched raids from one side to the other, up, down, in all directions. In a room of a few square metres you begin to feel like Pearl Harbor under attack from Japanese kamikaze fighters. When we lose one sense, the others supposedly sharpen to compensate for the loss. So with the loss of sight, hearing is automatically heightened! It’s not hard to imagine what an amazing acoustic experience such a fly can offer in this small space in the dark. Fortunately, after flying several kilometres even a fly gets tired, lands and falls silent. It usually stays in this position precisely until you start falling asleep. Then it fires up its turbo engines again, and you can be sure it will head for your nose or your ear. When it then tries, with an incredible racket, to get inside your ear, flapping its wings all around, a person quietened by darkness therapy feels as if a large bird at least the size of a raven were landing on them J
The following day Tom brought the food, and when I asked what could be done about the fly he said: nothing, in a day or two the fly will die. I should take it, he said, that it had appeared there for a reason and that it was meant to be. He promptly added the story of a meditating samurai on whose nose a fly lands. He cuts it in two with his sword. Each half then grows a new body, and from one fly there are two. The samurai destroys them all, and before long he has a whole swarm of flies around him. Nice story, nice point. I accept the fly, I don’t fight it so that the problem doesn’t grow, I let it dissolve. And indeed, the fly weakens, grows ever quieter, the raids diminish.
The next day, at food delivery time, I’ve forgotten all about the fly and am enjoying it. But only until the door closes behind Lenka and, after a moment, the familiar buzzing sounds again. This time, however, louder. For an evidently fresh fly had arrived on a visit, younger, a new generation. A fly with a zest many times greater than that of the first fly. And the raids begin all over again… J On the last night, the witty Universe then replaced the fly with a mosquito… J
Back to the darkness therapy …
Throughout the whole darkness therapy I felt the darkness embracing me lovingly in its arms. Infinite darkness without any boundaries. On the fifth day, while sitting on the floor, I literally froze. Suddenly I began to feel that I could make out the outline of my leg. To my right there seemed to be a lighter spot, and when I waved my hand I was shading it. I began to have the impression that I could see the space of the room too. I got goosebumps. It was unexpected and, moreover, it had a surprisingly unpleasant, gloomy tinge. I waited to see what would happen next, but to my surprise it vanished after a while and darkness settled in again. I didn’t manage to bring it back. Only the unpleasant feeling remained, which, I don’t know why, called to mind the princess from the fairy tale Bajaja entering the dragon’s lair… When I lay down again after a while and was falling asleep, a short vision appeared of a child’s bed with a blanket and changing pictures of animals. I realised it was a scene from my childhood, so I tried to immerse myself in it more deeply and work with it. It was immensely interesting and, I felt, cleansing too. Lately I have been leaning more and more towards the theory that it isn’t enough just to be a positive “sunshine-and-rainbows type”; if a person wants to be mentally and physically healthy, sooner or later they simply have to clear out their traumas and blocks in the end anyway.
Throughout the week various feelings and moods alternated in me, and I could easily sense the emotional pendulum swinging to one side or the other. Once, for example, immediately after waking, I felt such a very pleasant flow of energy in my body that I got the feeling the therapy was becoming more interesting with each passing day and that for true “connoisseurs” one week is damned little. At other times, on the contrary, I asked myself what I was actually doing here, when I have long known that I should walk the path of joy in the present moment. It dawned on me that one human life is too short to be wasted doing things we don’t want to do and squabbling over something that isn’t actually important at all.
In conclusion to my dark retreat …
After the dark retreat it is now easier for me to be aware of the same luminous essence of all living beings and the absurdity of efforts to create the impression of separateness and difference between one and another. I could therefore imagine introducing compulsory therapy in prisons, where there are people most lost in the illusion of separateness. To objections of the kind that criminals cannot be forced to go into the dark against their free will, I would reply by asking whether the mere fact that they have to be locked up in prisons isn’t already against their free will? But to do justice to the right of free will, I would offer criminals a reduced sentence in exchange for completing darkness therapy J
Lenka asked me to include in the description of my impressions and experiences any negative ones too (I personally particularly appreciate this likeable approach). It took me quite a long time before anything even came to mind that I could point to as “negative” in some way. So then… perhaps only that the wooden floor needn’t creak, the electric heater needn’t occasionally crack loudly as it cools, and I would welcome a slightly bigger shower 🙂
Apart from that, I would recommend an energetic cleansing of the spaces – the cabins – in which, in my opinion, all sorts of energies linger from previous visitors, who come and go here in fairly large numbers. I would see a Somavedic device as ideal here, as it reliably cleanses these things (I have almost two years’ experience with it). I don’t think the darkness alone can remove these things – otherwise the dark underground dungeons of castle torture chambers, where violent acts took place, would have to be among the cleanest places. That this isn’t so, and that negative energetic imprints remain there, is something most of us probably know…
My great thanks go to Lenka and Tomáš for offering people this opportunity. Great thanks for their overall care of their clients. Special thanks to Lenka for her superb, varied meals of amazing flavours, evidently created with love.
THANK YOU!!!
Martin
A month after darkness therapy ….
I still look back on the dark retreat as an interesting experience. I had a little peek into my inner self. But it wasn’t so much visions that mediated this to me as emotions, thoughts, intuition. In that darkness and silence all sorts of interesting things could be observed, such as the fact that words are linked to pictures. If I say the word house, a picture of a house pops up in my mind. It’s an automatic and brief process that we don’t normally notice. It confirms for me the theory that if the reality around us is a projection of our inner images (pictures), then it’s evidently a good idea to be careful about what we say, what we talk about. That’s how we create it. It makes sense to me. That’s an important message, above all for the eternal “pessimists, complainers and grumblers” – we are fortunately already aware of it.
The most interesting experience was probably the one with the inner light, as I mentioned before. We are made of light; plants feed on light, animals on plants or on other flesh, which again is only “stored” light. We could live on light alone if we didn’t have programmes about the necessity of eating.
Personally, I’m not tempted to switch permanently to a pranic diet and give up food. What does tempt me about it, though, is the freedom of choice. Not eating merely because I have to and because I’m dependent on it, but because I want to. Today I know that if I don’t eat for 21 days (after my fast), I’ll survive. That’s a kind of twenty-one-day guarantee of freedom. But I would quite welcome a permanent freedom, i.e. knowing that I can stop eating at any time for however long and then come back to it at any time. That would be the ideal state, in my view. But then again I don’t crave it that much, I just like the idea. I should probably start, though, by ceasing to overeat and thereby robbing myself of energy 🙂 Stop eating at the first feeling of fullness instead of my current “at the third feeling of being stuffed”! 🙂
To the question of whether I got bored during the dark retreat, I answer that I wouldn’t call it outright boredom. An absence of activities, yes, but by boredom I imagine something a little different. Here I knew the whole time that something was going on, even if it might not look like it. I had planned that inactivity, so in fact I was “carrying out” my plan the whole time… 🙂 It’s true, though, that every change of position, a few steps to the toilet, going to get some tea – all of these were incredibly pleasant diversions, literally an experience; I savoured those moments enormously. So I didn’t suffer, but it’s true that I was looking forward to having it behind me.
I also remembered that when I started concentrating on the flickering and it settled into a constant, intense light, I suddenly began to hear the beautiful sounds of the sleeping night jungle, as I know them from expeditions to the Peruvian Amazon. Exactly like when, after an ayahuasca ceremony has ended, you rest in the arms of the night and savour that connection with nature, with the Universe…. I could still hear those jungle sounds on the first evening at home, but not any more.
In the dark I often thought of ayahuasca. How could I not – both expand consciousness, both lead to the same goal, each just in a slightly different way. Whereas darkness is like slowly unbuttoning a blouse button by button, ayahuasca is tearing the blouse open with a single pull 🙂
So much for my postscript to the dark retreat.
Martin
