I signed up for a dark retreat because I’d been intrigued by the book Tvary tmy (Shapes of Darkness) by Mr Dušek. I had no specific expectations; I reckoned I’d quite possibly just get some rest. But I was also hoping some piece of advice for life might turn up, or that my aching back might get some relief. And a piece of advice for life really did turn up, as a deep experience (which I describe in the chapter The main experience), but I’m getting ahead of myself… Let’s start from the beginning…
Practical tips
First of all, I have to confirm that 3 nights are not enough. I had 6 nights and for me that was just right. I’d definitely recommend at least 6 nights. I think it’s a good idea to bring a few pencils and a notepad. Don’t take biros – they can run out. I didn’t make many notes, but afterwards I was glad of every single one. Next time I’d try to make more. After all, in the dark, when you wake up, you remember everything easily and it’s all clear, but it’s still a tiny bit like a dream and it can fade with time… I was also glad I tried lots of things straight after switching off the light, then turned it back on and sorted out the things that weren’t entirely clear to me in the dark… My last practical note is that I was glad I’d brought warm socks and slippers – the air conditioning blows warm air up top, but it stays up there, and it’s cooler down by the floor.
So my things are unpacked and nicely laid out under the bed. Notepad and pencils by my head, and now it can all begin…
First impressions – how to cope with horror films
The first 3 days you’re getting used to it. The wheel of thoughts from everyday life and work keeps spinning in your head… Luckily you can tell yourself you’re not here to chew over your everyday life situations. You don’t have to. And after a few turns you clearly see that the intellect is going round in circles, which is another reason to let those thoughts go. At least for now. The moment comes when you’re alone with yourself. There’s nobody and nothing to blame. There’s only YOU. As it happened, my mum and dad were in the dark around the same time. And the interesting thing was that dad was mostly bored and the darkness put him in a foul mood, while mum enjoyed it and said she relaxed beautifully. I had both states. It was mostly positive, but the negative feelings came too. For me personally the worst was when the thought came up that even though I was in the dark, I wasn’t one bit closer to any truth about life. That actually I had no idea how to lead my life or what the point of life was. An unpleasant feeling of helplessness, futility, uselessness. As I’ve already written – in the dark there’s only YOU, and YOU can get properly chewed up by it. There’s nowhere to escape to. There’s nothing to distract yourself with. Darkness can be intense and it can be pretty unbearable. But so I don’t just scare you – some of the fears I’d been afraid of before the dark turned out better than I expected. Maybe I’m a scaredy-cat, but when I watch a horror film and then turn off the light, I can get quite frightened by some shadow and I’m glad I can switch a light on. Luckily I hadn’t watched a single horror film for at least six months before the dark, and I was hoping I wouldn’t remember any while I was in there. Well, not a chance :). Of course I remembered every horror film I’d ever seen. But oddly enough they didn’t scare me as much any more. For one thing, in absolute darkness there are no shadows to tease the imagination. And for another, when you’re calm, you can calmly tell yourself in good time that these are just thoughts and they can’t hurt you. In fact you can even use them to practise surrender. Tell yourself that physically you’re safe and mentally this is here now and there’s no point running from it. I said to the thoughts, “go on then, eat me”. Then the little horror characters stood there looking a bit puzzled. They tried coming closer and backing off, and then it got boring, so the mind let them go :). Another good piece of advice that Tomáš (our host) gave me is to breathe deeply. For the horror characters it wasn’t quite necessary yet. But it didn’t hurt, at the first image, to take a few deep breaths in and out before inviting them to feast on me :). Another powerful tool against fear is trust in God. When you tell yourself and realise how complicated and amazing life is, and that we can’t create it artificially – then it’s obvious that the forces (or God) that created all this far exceed our intellect, and we can surrender to them with trust. Trust and surrender are a powerful tool, and their strength depends only on how sincerely you mean it. Imaginary horror characters can’t stand up to that cannon. So all together: consciously recognising that thoughts can’t hurt me, breathing, calm observation, trust in God and surrender to him were more than enough protection for me.
Observations while awake and dreams at night
After a short horror detour, on to more interesting things. As I’ve already written – in the dark there’s only you. So it’s good to be able to be alone with yourself. I think good preparation is when you’re already making some effort on a spiritual path in everyday life. If, say, you know a few yoga exercises and can enjoy them, then you can have a lovely practice in the dark. There’s time and space for it, and you can easily feel your body without any disturbance from outside. It’s also good to try meditating. If you’re used to sitting in silence for at least 15 minutes a day and now and then enjoying a quiet mind, that’s a great trump card to take into the dark. Here you have time to enjoy that silence for much longer 😉 I enjoyed both in the dark. I slept a lot. I really enjoyed the food, which you can concentrate on well in the dark, savouring every single flavour. I also realised that when I savour it and eat slowly, I eat much less. And after the first day, when I was still wolfing everything down, I felt how demanding digestion is for the body. The following days I ate less and felt better. But even so, I usually had a little nap after eating :).
The dreams were very interesting. With your eyes open you see only black, but when you fall asleep you see dreams in colour :). (Well, almost only black – except that even in absolute darkness I had the feeling I could see my body and hands as a silver outline. Maybe I was just imagining it – I don’t know. But I didn’t want to get too distracted by it, so I didn’t look at myself much.) The dreams were quite a pleasant distraction from the dark. The most interesting part, I found, was on waking. I’d be having a dream in colour – I open my eyes
– and black. I close my eyes and see light. As if someone behind my eyes had switched on an old projector with a yellow light. The light grows in intensity and the colourful image of the dream is drawn. I open my eyes again and blink – darkness. I close my eyes and the projector lights up again. I found it interesting that it was reversed – in the world that normally offers so many images there’s absolute darkness, and the mind can generate a vivid, convincing dream image once the eyes are closed. Even though I’m basically awake and aware.
The first dreams were sort of normal. First I dreamt I was some kind of scientist, or magician, or maybe just an assistant in some scientific-magical workshop 🙂 Because I’m still young and the dream was interesting, I was also helping some sexy young lady in a leather outfit 🙂 The dream was long and I can’t remember exactly everything I did (but nothing improper ;)). Then the information crept into the dream that the world was going to end. We tried somehow to prevent it, but it was soon clear it was hopeless. We did manage to find out, though, that people who cut their hand in a certain way between the fingers would survive. So we did it. I don’t remember much after that, but we survived. Suddenly in the dream we woke up with some bunch of young people who were saying it was great that we’d survived. But somehow I felt they didn’t realise the magnitude of the event. Anyway, everything looked normal. And they decided to go and have a drink to celebrate. To me that seemed an inappropriate way of handling the fact that we’d been given the chance to survive. But what could you do – life went on and there was no point talking them out of it… Then I suppose I somehow woke up. The feeling from that dream on waking was – that it was an interesting story. And also that people are rather frivolous…
The next dream was more interesting – I think it was on day 3. It was shorter and less elaborate. I was also a bit disappointed that it wasn’t in colour, but sort of black and white. But it was all the more interesting in content. I was in a classroom where some old lady was teaching us. At first I could see her and she had terribly wrinkled skin. Then I stopped seeing details, and instead of people I just saw these grey eggs. It was hard for me to make out what was going on. But I understood that someone was saying the old teacher had died during the lesson. For a moment her body lying on the floor flashed before me. But then I again saw only the grey eggs instead of people. It seemed strange to me that even though she’d died, her grey egg existed unchanged. The students’ grey eggs got up and went over to her. They were nervous. But her egg was calm. Unchanged. Some doctor came, injected her with something, laid her on a stretcher and carried her out of the room. It seemed pointless to me, given that she was dead, and above all pointless because her egg was calm and needed no intervention. The feeling from that dream was that her dying wasn’t such a significant event at all and actually didn’t change much.
I don’t recall any other dreams. Here it’s perhaps a slight shame I didn’t write them down.
The first wonderful experience
Instead of dreams comes a truly beautiful waking experience. On waking on day 4, I woke up into an amazing calm. A calm that’s hard to compare to anything. Perhaps only to a few successful meditations. Or partly perhaps to the calm when Mr Sri Brahmam came to Prague for a lecture/satsang. (By the way, Mr Brahmam is supposed to come again this year – so I warmly recommend it. For the place and date see: http://www.brahmam.cz ). It’s hard to compare or explain that calm. It was a beautiful feeling of deep calm. A calm where you lack nothing at all and need nothing else whatsoever. You have no need to deal with anything at all, and so you’re actually happy, but you don’t even have any need to deal with whether you’re happy or not. Simply a calm where ordinary words and concepts have no meaning. I don’t know how long it lasted. I’d guess about 20 minutes. Gradually the calm slowly faded. Not that I had any disturbing thought. Just the depth of the calm thinned out. I was quite sorry about it, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I was still calm, but it wasn’t so amazing any more. I tried to deepen it again, but for one thing I had no idea how, because the mind was still without thoughts, and for another I realised that it was a gift, and the mind or some wanting of mine has no means of reaching a calm like that. The rest of the day was fine, but the deep calm remained just a morning experience.
The next day, on waking, the calm was there again :)! I was terribly happy to be experiencing it again. But actually my being happy was only in the background, because the calm was amazing in itself. I enjoyed it enormously. Maybe it lasted a little longer. I don’t know how long. Perhaps only a little more than 20 minutes. But as soon as I saw it starting to wane, I wished I could hold on to it as long as possible. But that effort was futile. It seemed that when I tried to hold on to the calm, more wanting appeared and the calm leaked away faster. I found, once again, that I couldn’t do anything about it, and so I enjoyed the last few beautiful minutes. It’s hard to explain. I don’t fully understand it myself. But if I wanted to analyse it somehow, I’d say that the calm is inside all the time. It’s just that our mind isn’t normally able to experience it. It seems that wanting itself is the obstacle. It seems you need to try to calm the mind and not grasp at mental concepts. Not get bogged down in opinions and thoughts and wanting. Gradually free yourself from strong desires turned towards the outside world. Then perhaps the calm will appear again… I don’t know…
The main experience of the dark retreat
After the experience of deep calm I told myself I’d received more than I expected. Perhaps even more than I deserve… But the strongest experience was still waiting for me… I have problems with my back and on the very last evening it started hurting somehow more. I don’t remember which came first, but at the same time I was tormenting myself with the thought that the outside world is bleak. Mechanical. Meaningless. And full of suffering – especially when your back hurts. I told myself there was no point helping the world and bringing more children into it. My back hurt more and more. And the thoughts about a world without meaning and without love were at times perhaps even worse than my back. I told myself that I’d received such gifts here in the dark and I’m no better, maybe I’m even worse. I felt sick from my thoughts, from not knowing which way to turn, from not knowing what to do about my back, and from the fact that it hurt… Here I used Tomáš’s advice. I needed to breathe it out. I breathed deeply and puffed the futility away. I blew it off so it wasn’t even in front of me. It helped me quite a lot. I blew away the tormenting, hopeless thoughts about the wretchedness of the world. Only an aftertaste was left. I told myself I’d sleep it off now. But my back decided otherwise. I was lying on the bed and felt as though a nerve was being crushed between my lumbar spine and my pelvic bone. I’d roll over somehow, for a moment it was better, and then the pain again. I was glad the thoughts about how bleak and mechanical the world is were no longer racing through my head, but the pain wouldn’t let me fall asleep. I don’t know how long I tossed and turned, but then I gave up. I lay there and gave up rolling over. I observed the pain. I wondered whether you can die from pain that strong. In that pain, tiredness and surrender, the thought of death didn’t even scare me much any more. Suddenly I saw my chest being lit up with light. It felt as though my energy had begun to leave my body. It occurred to me that I was dying. Then it occurred to me that I was sorry my girlfriend would be left here alone. To be honest, I don’t know exactly in what order the following things happened. The sorrow at leaving my girlfriend deepened and grew into an enormous sorrow that I hadn’t given the people around me enough love. It was no longer about specific people around me. It was meant for all people and in all situations. I think I have a relatively clear conscience, but suddenly the thought that I’d more or less done people no harm and had been rather useful seemed desperately and indescribably inadequate. I felt as though until now I’d been terribly ignorant and blind. As if until now I’d thought of myself as having a school-leaving certificate in humanity, and after the veil of ignorance was lifted I found I was barely in my first year of primary school. I was terribly sorry I hadn’t radiated more love in my life. At some point during this realisation I saw the energy that had been rising from my torso turn slightly, and I felt relief in my back. It still hurt, but the pain began to recede. Then I felt the middle of my chest. As if my heart wanted to make up for what it had missed, and it shone all around and pushed out from my chest. And I burst into tears. Like I hadn’t in a long time. I was sorry for my wasted life so far. I felt enormous love and was terribly sorry I hadn’t been giving it. It contrasted hugely with the despair and mechanicalness of the world I’d been thinking about in the evening. It was clear to me that what had been missing was for me to give love. That was what I’d been missing in all that mechanicalness. I suppose I’d been afraid to give love before, because I lived in the illusion of a world where things can run out, and I hadn’t realised that love isn’t that kind of thing. Also, maybe I didn’t give enough love because I was born into a culture that has got used to giving love only conditionally, as a reward, as praise. But now I clearly saw that love is something that shines, and shines all the time. That love is more like a muscle, and the more you use it, the more you have and can give. I felt terrible sorrow that I’d been hiding love and had been afraid for it. It was clear to me that every being craves precisely love. And that our concept of giving love only conditionally is a terrible misunderstanding of the order of the world. It was clear to me that love needs to be given to everyone and always. And perhaps even more to those people who are doing something wrong. When I was turning it over in my head on the train the next day, I kept running into our cultural concept that surely you can’t give love to people when they’re harming someone. But that’s just a concept we’ve cultivated in our culture through misunderstanding love and confusing it with helping and other doing. It isn’t at all about supporting someone or approving of what they do. The only thing it’s about is radiating love to everyone around you. Love isn’t me serving someone or helping them. That’s the mechanical side of things. Love is just Love. A warm feeling of affection and warmth that you want to shine out into your surroundings. In my view it’s most aptly hidden behind the smile we give to strangers without being able to get anything out of it. Love is when you spread good cheer around you. Your eyes shine. When I think about it, maybe this good cheer is far more beneficial for changing the people around us for the better than our ingrained method of love only as a reward. In my view love works far more directly than frowning at someone for having done something wrong. In any case, this was a huge experience for me. Now, 3 weeks later as I write this, it’s only a memory. But it can still warm me in the middle of my chest and move me. In any case, an experience by itself can’t change our habits. I’m still not an eternally smiling person and, if anything, I smile little. But I keep reminding myself of this experience and try to be warmer to the people around me. It goes slowly and I’m afraid there will be times when I half forget it. But for me personally, I now know at least one great meaning of life. I can no longer pretend I don’t know how to live my life. I see it as both a gift and an obligation. The experience of deep sorrow while dying is a great motivation for me. But I hope that everyone who reads this will try to be warmer and kinder to those around them. I believe we’ll all live better and die more easily. So I wish us all lots of luck in practice and plenty of love ;).
Thoughts from my notes
From my few notes I have a couple more interesting ones. They’re thoughts that came to me and that seemed important. They don’t carry such a strong experience as in the previous chapter. I may partly have made them up, but here they are:
At the start, as the thoughts from everyday life were still trickling in, I realised that: The mind cannot be present. By its nature it analyses previously experienced events and from them invents the future. We can shorten the gap, but the mind will always be a little behind or ahead. In the exact present the mind isn’t needed. And by its very nature it can’t function in the exact present…
I suspect the following thought came to me sometime at night, when I casually raised the question of what to do in life. The advantage at night is that you’re already tired enough not to scare off inspiration with your own doggedness. Anyway, I noted down: “Everything is all right. And the best thing I can do is to observe my life from a place of calm and without attachment.” There’s probably not much to add to that except thank you for this note.
Another piece of advice invented by me or by the dark was: “Be grateful – that is your path.” With hindsight it’s probably difficult to keep to in some situations. But still, when you’re not grateful, it can be taken as a warning light that your mind is leading you away from reality. It’s time to calm the mind and look at the situation from a distance. This is a situation I’ve been allowed to experience. What is it meant to teach me? What can I be grateful for in it? Maybe this reflection helps you to be more grateful – I don’t know… At other times, when you walk through beautiful countryside, you can feel good quite naturally. If at the same time you realise you’re grateful for it, then the good feeling is amplified, and I find that nice…
One last practical tip
I’d like to share one more obstacle. One day I probably woke up early and Lenča and Tomáš were late with the food. Of course my head had already started spinning a carousel of thoughts about everything that might have happened to them. And I was already considering going out to rescue them. Luckily I kept putting it off and putting it off, and then they came. The thing is, when it feels to you like they’ve been gone a long time, it’s far more likely that you’re making things up than that something has actually happened. Don’t be tempted and don’t leave your darkness early. You never know what experiences are still waiting for you and what you might deprive yourself of.
Conclusion
I’m very glad I tried a dark retreat. It was far more intense for me than I’d thought. I’d like to go again, but not for about 2 years. After all, an experience in which you die isn’t something you want to repeat just like that. Actually I’m slightly hoping it’ll be less intense next time, even at the cost of it being less instructive…
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