The universe means well

When you decide to vanish off the face of the earth for a while and unplug from the endless rush, you discover that silence and pitch-black emptiness are your best teachers. The moment you close the door behind you, the world outside stops existing and the journey into your inner self begins. It’s not that nothing happens – rather, things start happening that you’ve never had the time or the courage for until now. Time moves at a completely different pace here, and you start sinking into depths that may even surprise you.

Imagined conversations as a path to relief

You might be wondering what you’ll do in there the whole time, but you’ll see – your mind will find you on its own. Little by little, all sorts of things start rising to the surface: old hurts, traumas or unresolved conflicts from the past. Darkness therapy gives you a safe space for what you might call an imagined conversation. In this absolute calm, you can talk in your head with people who hurt you in the past. You can get angry with them, shout at them, or tell them everything you never managed to say before, all within this safe fiction. The experience helps you rebalance the situation in your mind and settle it. When you then go back over the facts in your thoughts, you find the event no longer triggers such a strong emotional reaction in you.

The universe isn’t out to get you

During your days in isolation, it may dawn on you that there’s no strict outside judge waiting for you after death. The only one who really judges you is you. You’ll see your life not only through your own eyes, but also through the eyes of the people you’ve dealt with over the years. A dark retreat shows you that the universe never means you any harm. Even the most painful situation you’ve been through is really a task meant to move you forward. It’s just a reflection of your own inner state. As Eckhart Tolle says, things will keep happening to you in life until you understand the test and pass it. You have the chance to move from the role of someone who’s merely surviving to the role of the creator of your own happiness, just as Joe Dispenza advises.

Like being back in your mother’s womb

You definitely won’t be bored in the cabin. You’ll feel safe, almost as if you were back in your mother’s womb. You can sleep whenever you feel like it, and you don’t have to justify to anyone why you’re doing nothing. If you like, you can listen to meditations or play a musical instrument. A Tibetan singing bowl or a small drum is great – in that silence you can really feel the air molecules passing the vibrations on to one another. Just don’t bring a guitar unless it has really good tuning pegs. Without your sight you’ll knock it out of tune straight away, and the harmony of your playing will soon be gone. For moving around the space, I recommend putting an exercise mat in the middle of the cabin. It makes a great reference point, so you won’t bump into anything.

When you grab a banana instead of your headphones

Even in the middle of such deep work on yourself, you’ll have some comic moments. You might, for example, want to listen to something on your MP3 player, feel for your headphones and only realise after a while that you’re holding one banana and two apples. Or, while you’re cleansing on a vegetarian diet, you head for the toilet, find you’re sitting slightly askew and very nearly end up in the narrow space by the shower.

Definitely bring a power bank. Small players run down quickly in the cold or with frequent use, and it’s better to keep them plugged in right by the bed so you don’t get frustrated when the battery dies in the middle of an important sentence. And when you finally step out into the garden after a week, watch out for the timed sprinklers by the cherry trees and roses, so you don’t get an unwanted shower with your very first breath of fresh air. Above all, be happy and love yourself, because that’s really all life is about.