Hello Darkness My Old Friend

‘Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding,' Lao Tzu.

At least once a year I commit to an immersive experience of some description to challenge me, expand my capacity and deepen my connection to myself and the world around me.

Going in to the dark is a practise known to many spiritual traditions across the world and through the ages. Traditionally, this is done in a cave or underground. For my dark retreat, however, I had the luxury of a furnished room. 

I was fed through a hole in the wall where no light could get in. There was a ventilator bringing in fresh air and taking out stale air. Light switches were taped up so I wouldn't accidentally press one during the retreat. All windows were blacked out. 

Before I began I oriented myself to where everything was, clothes, shower, chair, loo etc. I lit a candle and meditated for a few minutes with it whilst it fought off the dark. Then, and not without some trepidation, I blew it out and was promptly enveloped.  

I went straight to bed. Perhaps more accurately put, I bumped straight into the bed, swore and then clambered into it. The next morning I still felt disoriented and heavy hearted. My circadian rhythms were expecting morning light, and instead, I felt the weight of the darkness on me. Thoughts that could have led to panic, thankfully lost the thread of their argument.

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” Terry Pratchett

Rarely have I experienced total darkness, not for any meaningful length of time. This was 4 days, relatively short for a dark retreat. 

I'm grateful to my father for taking me out into the night as a child to reassure me that the darkness is my friend and nothing to be afraid of. Later on in my life I spent a lot of time awake in the dark whilst in the army. We waited for it to come, we waited for it to go. We ‘used’ it for concealment and surprise. Sometimes, of course, it was 'used' against us. More often than not, in my case, I got lost in it! 

That aside, a dark world is not a blind world. I’ve often feared it; I’ve often craved it. Yet interestingly, until now, I have never really been in conversation with it. I haven’t allowed myself to really know it and be guided by it. 

I had anticipated feeling claustrophobic, cooped up, as I was, in a room. So immediate and complete is the darkness, however, that the world outside of me might as well have not existed, even though the feint sound of the church bell outside punctuated the timeless void of the dark. 

Many comical moments ensued, including on one occasion reaching for what I thought would be my toothbrush, but finding the kettle in a completely different corner of the room! My other senses heightened themselves. The feeling of the chair beneath me, the sound of the food hatch opening or the smell of the food - all of them I experienced as a continuum of me. Boundaries merge where there is no light. With less definition, came more clarity.

"You cannot fight against the ego and win, just as you cannot fight against darkness" Ekhart Tolle. 

I began the retreat with a fair bit of my own darkness. My fiercest opponent, that critic within me, was alive and kicking. Mercifully and amazingly the big darkness entered me and pacified my own shadows. With a steady and gentle hand it continued to guide me inwards. With nowhere to escape from my own thoughts, feelings and emotions both the challenge and the beauty of this practise revealed itself. A new level of relaxation and trust washed over me, after all what was there to fear? I was at one with darkness itself, a truly humbling experience. 

I had the help of Melatonin, which naturally builds up during a dark retreat. It is a regulatory hormone, which maintains the body’s circadian rhythms and also, thankfully, serves to quiet the body and the mind.

Far from being a featureless black, images emerged from time to time, many of which were beautiful and intricate. Towards the end of the retreat the ‘light show’ appeared. I was expecting this. The body produces pinoline, from the pineal gland, which creates lights in ones vision, whether the eyes are open or closed. They looked a bit like the northern lights. In longer retreats DMT is released by the body and people have spoken of psychedelic experiences of profound union.

This light show, though, was a side show. I went into the dark to shed a different sort of light on things and came face to face with myself. A black and perfect mirror, darkness is more than just the absence of light; it is alive, receptive and nurturing. Just as it brings forth life in the soil beneath us, in an equally mysterious and wonderful way, so too does it bring forth our own seeds of renewal and possibility.