Inside, everything is relative. Time doesn’t flow there and there is no one there except you yourself. I think it doesn’t, in inverted commas, matter much how long a retreat you do, as long as you get past at least the first three or four days. Since there is no time inside, the darkness keeps you there, in terms of how it feels, for as long as it sees fit.
For me, one day in the dark felt like about 3–4 days. So I had the feeling I’d been shut in there for at least two weeks.
The process of darkness therapy doesn’t begin when you switch off the light in the cabin.
It begins the moment you work up the resolve to book 2–3 months in advance and send the money to the account. Because those are the first questions and crises when you enter the dark. “Why am I here? I’m wasting time here, and money too.”
The process begins already at the point where you find a week to enter the dark.
Because that’s exactly what put off many of the people I told about it.
The hardest thing was switching off the light
Even now I can feel in my bones that heavy feeling when I decided to switch off. I only managed to sleep properly on the first night. After that it was a big struggle.
The first three days really are about something different from the days after. I got used to everything there fairly quickly.
In the first three days
In the first three days I had the feeling I’d already resolved everything I had to resolve in that darkness and that I could actually go home now. I went through my whole life, all the people, all the experiences. I forgave many people, thanked some, and also tried to forgive myself.
But I’d come to the therapy with my girlfriend, who was in the cabin next door, so I told myself I’d stick it out to the end of the retreat at least for her sake.
Everything was telling me to get out of there, but that’s exactly what your mind wants. It wants to help you out of an unpleasant situation, and in the short term that’s good, but in the long term that premature escape would probably only have trapped you in a loop.
The fourth day was about cleansing
I was going to the toilet about every 15 minutes for several hours (my estimate of time is based purely on feeling). I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I was drenched in sweat. I couldn’t sleep, had no appetite and couldn’t even lie down any more,
because the bed had come to feel terribly uncomfortable and hard, and my back was suffering.
I tried to exercise a little, lie on the floor, sit, shout, roll about, do nothing at all, and still it kept getting harder.
Every moment new realisations came to me that showed me how naive I’d been to think I’d received everything I was meant to in the first three days.
I also felt that something opened in me that could be called the third eye, and I received great insight, but I’d rather keep that to myself for now.
All those days I tried not to let myself believe there was anyone or anything else in that cabin besides me. All sorts of things cross your mind in there and you can get wound up about anything. I knew that if I allowed it even partly, I’d probably go mad with fear. So no, there was nothing and no one else in there besides me. It was just me against myself.
Nobody from that week lasted to the end
Before the last night, the minutes and seconds went more slowly than ever before. That absence of any sense of time and that endlessness of time in the dark is something I can’t even describe. With the last meal that was brought, I learned that in the morning, when I came out of the cabin, I’d be there alone.
Nobody from that week lasted to the end. I don’t know whether there was some other, more demanding energy around in those days, or whatever to call it, but it was a shock to learn that in the morning I’d be there alone, and that even my girlfriend hadn’t lasted and had gone home a few days earlier. In that moment I fully understood that I wasn’t there for her, nor for anyone else, but only for myself.
I’m in the dark only for myself
It was the moment when everything started to sink in. After all, you have your last few hours left, and everything starts to become even more intense. If I’d been fairly wrecked mentally and physically from lack of sleep up to then, in fact I hadn’t been at all yet. The last evening was something that put my hand on the handle of the outer door a few times.
But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the light. I always went back to bed. The whole realisation of that retreat came precisely then
I’m here to accept myself
I’m here to accept myself exactly as I am. With all my flaws and the things I don’t like about myself, because only then can I truly be me.
I even have tears in my eyes as I write about it. Lenka and Tomáš were wonderful advisers and helpers in that darkness when they gave me a few minutes of their time for a conversation.
A few more difficult moments came
When at dawn I flung open the cabin door and naively thought things could only get better now, because I’d got through it all, a few more difficult moments came.
Outside it was about -15 degrees, dawn was breaking and, worst of all, snow, which I otherwise love, was absolutely everywhere that morning.
Which is the very worst thing for your eyes, because it’s a terrible amount of light reflecting off the snow at you.
And so for three endless hours I stuck out of the cabin, half of my body outside and half inside.
I was indescribably cold, but I had to be there so that my eyes could get used to the light before the sun came fully up.
Until your eyes adjust
On the internet people wrote something about half an hour until your eyes adjust; for me it took three hours, during which I felt like vomiting and my whole head was spinning, so all I could manage was to lie there, drink some water now and then, cope with the cold and bring my dark retreat to an end.
Then, after all that, getting into the car and driving to Prague in weather where there’s snow everywhere and you have to drive with particular care and caution was the final little treat of the whole week.
It’s all finally behind me
As soon as I pulled onto the motorway to Prague, something indescribable suddenly came over me, when I suddenly started laughing and shouting so much that I still get goosebumps from it now.
I knew that only at this moment was it all finally behind me. My whole body was charged with euphoria and my soul wanted to fly out with happiness.
I thought that, having hardly slept at all for the last 3 nights and days, I’d just get home and collapse with exhaustion. But that surge of energy that came over me in the car charged me up for the whole day, and I managed to function all day and enjoy every moment.
Many things and realisations are still coming even now
I feel I’ve strengthened, as the saying goes, my spirit. There’s a lot of it, and the dark retreat was the most demanding thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. When I remember the whole thing, I’m happy. Indescribably.
Truly,
Rainer
