Hi Tomáš and Lenča!
So, a few lines about the dark from my point of view:
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- I was looking forward to the dark, and as the date got closer I also started cutting out all the vices of everyday life…no alcohol, cigarettes or coffee (not that I overdo them otherwise…but I had a healthy respect for the dark and wanted to go in as clean as possible)
- after we arrived and got a lovely welcome, we were given the basic instructions, Lukáš and I had another walk around the area (two of us friends went into the dark, each in our own cabin of course 🙂 and then I hurried off to switch off the lights 😀
- for the first 2 days I slept a lot – I’d been looking forward to that since I was at home, and I really did spend more time asleep than awake, but I was surprised by how vivid my dreams were, and that only grew stronger the whole time.
I remembered much more from my dreams, they were more vivid….for me, dreams in the dark were the main source of self-analysis - on the third day, when Tomáš brought me food, I admitted that I was starting to get bored, that I didn’t really know what I should be doing. I got a simple but very apt answer: “Do nothing. Where else can you afford the luxury of doing nothing? All inspiration comes to a person when they do nothing, or do something monotonous and don’t think…a painter doesn’t paint a picture by thinking…”
- From then on I TRIED to do nothing….tried is in capitals on purpose, because it’s part of my biggest lesson from the dark….more on that below
- The following days went very similarly for me – during the day I analysed situations from my life, sometimes I had a little cry, made myself laugh or got angry….I always looked forward to the food, which was excellent, and above all I slept a lot – wakefulness in the dark, where “nothing” was happening, alternated with very dynamic dreams.
- The intensity of the dreams kept growing, I was often able to control them consciously, I had dreams that continued like a series, or dreams within dreams, where I woke up from one dream only into another.
- I ended the retreat early, after 6 nights, when I felt that the intensity of the experiences was too high and I was starting to get lost in them
- I came out cleansed of old, unnecessary opinions and definitely lighter…the biggest lesson came after a conversation in my friend’s cabin, when I went to tell him I was leaving early – a conversation together with Lenča and Tomáš, who helped my realisation enormously – that lesson was CONTROL…
- It’s clear from the lines above that I was trying to keep everything under control, from preparing for the dark, through trying to do nothing, right down to influencing the course of my own dreams. Only after talking to these amazing people was I able to feel the invisible-obvious: that things happen by themselves and all we can do is resist them – like trying to change the flow of a river with our hands…all we achieve is tiring ourselves out, and what is meant to happen happens anyway. That even our thoughts form by themselves, we’re not the ones who create them, all we can do is hold on to them and so block new thoughts from coming
- In the month after the dark, many more new realisations came, and my reactions to situations in life are often different from before.
- Based on my experience, I’d recommend the dark to anyone who’s thinking about it, and for my part I’m glad I chose a dark retreat with Tomáš and Lenča.
Feel free to use whatever you think is suitable on the website for others too, and thank you for the retreat 🙂
Pavol (27)
