Darkness isn't anything at all. Literally. It's nothing and that fact binds it to the value-point of our practice; meditation - the art of no mind, no self, no...thing. "Let darkness be your candle," Rumi said.
Or how about Einstein? "Sometimes it's a deep and dazzling darkness that illuminates."
Perhaps, the most poignant quote about darkness that encapsulates the reason for this adventure is, “When you gaze into that abyss, it gazes back, and it tells you what you are made of.” Nietzsche.
When we practice it's to enter the black of our minds. Rahita in Sanksrit. Emptiness. Now, that black won’t be a metaphor.
If darkness is anything, it's emptiness. Technically, it's the absence of light, measurable only indirectly. Nirvana, too. Emptiness. Only measured by the absence of attachment. The term, commonly thought of as peace or enlightenment means to extinguish. Extinguish what? The flame of identity. The candle of the mind. It might as well mean darkness, too. That's the punk rock essence of eastern enlightenment. Black, like leather jackets and rebel fingernails.
If our interest in meditation is anything, it's a trust of absence. When we accept that the next step in our learning of the world is not in the acquisition of more but in streamlining for less, we might see darkness, emptiness, and if we're lucky ourselves in a different light.
See ourselves differently. This means, we often gain self-worth in an additive way. We collect merit. But, the core of all spiritual practices implicitly states, like darkness, the measure of your wholeness is determined via the absence of identity. That living absence is the essence of spirit, god, and nature.
Think about it.
The most fulfilling experiences we have are when we give ourselves up. Our wholeness is achieved when our thinking and the identity that thinks, much like the black of lightlessness, vanishes. A mother emptied into her child. A child emptied into playing a game. A teenager emptied into their first kiss. A traveler emptied into a foreign land. A body emptied into a workout. A lifeforce emptied into the beyond? "More" is old and outdated. "Less" is about to have its time on the billboards and magazine covers. Full-on emptiness? That's still an avant-garde delicacy.
Dark Retreats...
"She was just sitting there, man, in the darkness, and all of a sudden she looked down and saw her arms made of bright white light." I forget who told me this. When you're a meditation teacher, you walk the margins and often cross paths with those coming back from the alien pockets hiding in the world.
They reiterated the account of their friend who had done a dark retreat and my eyes widened with sympathy. My body, my mirror neurons, and my imagination all fired in a lusty harmony that sent chills through my skin. "Yes!" my intuition rang and when it rings, I do my best to listen because intuition is the voice of destiny but destiny depends on a keen and courageous or foolish vessel to embody it.
"The cowards never start and the weak died along the way," said Bill Bauman co-founder of Nike. I contacted Severin at the Hermitage in Guatemala a few weeks later. Maybe the idea will die en route, but at least I'll take a step in this direction. To my surprise, the rooms were fully booked until May. Not that fringe, after all. And here we are, the intention is still alive!
How does it work?
The logistics of the process are simple. There is a fully furnished room with bed, shower, and practice space. There is a small double door through which I will get two meals a day. I will enter with a candle and have my moment with a flame. Then, hours before dawn on the 11th day, Severin will get me, open the doors, and I will watch a sunrise. What happens in between is anyone's guess. At first, I thought, "I'm going to go crazy in there. Literally, crazy." Since then the paranoia has dissipated but it's not without reason.
The biology explains that I'll start to hallucinate. My brain will release 5-meo dmt, a powerful psychotropic compound that's made waves in the psychedelic communities for its potent ego-killing nature. I've had plenty of "medicine" induced ego-deaths. While it's not my motivation, it's likely to occur. One more psychological death, why not? Dying before we die does a psyche good.
Severin screened me before accepting me. He explains this is an unprecedented experience for first-timers and it's important that they are stable mentally and emotionally. I passed! He has since asked me to be very clear about why I'm doing this. Besides my gut telling me, I don't know.
Exploration and Discovery
I believe one of the most redeeming qualities of our species is our thirst for exploration. I respect Pandora for opening the box, even though it didn't end well. Same for that curious cat and that lovable monkey.
Life is an unalterable trajectory into the unknown. Some deny it. Some tolerate it. Others embrace it. Those that can embrace the mystery seem to enjoy the journey more easily, especially when the curveballs come.
There’s one more option, though. Seek it!
"Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go," said Captain James Cook. Now, I'm certainly not charting unknown territories but to me, they are unknown and my ambition is leading me into, hopefully beyond, the event horizon of myself. Cook explored thousands of miles of unmapped perilous seas throughout the 18th century, including the Antarctic ocean when he was in search of the mythical continent Terra Australis. I'll be in a cozy room with lights out, very far from danger. To me, like most of life, it’s all a game. All of it. Even life. Even death.
Terra Australis would be discovered, by someone else, January 27 1820 and from then on be known as Antarctica FYI. Cook failed but he tried, as I will try to touch Nirvana and will certainly fail. It’s my hunch that the myth of enlightenment is just that, a myth, meant to lure the barbarian-minded masses to “eat our mental veggies” and, finally, start to manage our minds, nerves, and hearts well.
Meditators across time, us included, have embarked on similar journeys through uncharted terrains in search of these mythical places within themselves. Real or unreal, the journey is ours. That is our game.
Take away: When we practice, consider it is in every way an exploration. The mythical point, our inner Terra Australis... or let's rephrase Terra Anima (Land of Spirit), is ours to reach and define. Darkness, in relation to this pursuit, is an asset - a candle that illuminates the inner path.
Madness, Fear, My Fragile Mind
When I first speculated about the challenges of the retreat, the first thing I imagined was going a little mad. It's more the lack of things to do combined with the darkness that triggers this assumption. My brain will surely start to concoct all sorts of visions, notions, plots, and fantasies to simply pass the time. With zero distraction I'll be left with an unbridled mind.
How fragile is my sanity that 11 days with myself would bring it crashing down? Very fragile. Or not. We shall see. Until then I rationalize…
It's those that can appreciate the insanity of being alive that are, certainly, the sanest. I tell myself this because I believe it. Does that mean, the maddest of us all or the sanest? As long as we can wink through the delirium.
My time working at inpatient facilities in Florida with people whose minds wobbled on weak foundations taught me, the moment there is recognition of madness, there is hope for recovery. These are messy terms but, without getting stuck on the semantics of what is and is not sane, the intrinsic value of seeing ourselves objectively is intuitively felt to be helpful and a solid starting point for growth. Right? Good old Socrates hit the nail on the head when he said, "Awareness of ignorance is the begging of wisdom." And... awareness of madness is the beginning of sanity.
So, the darkness will call out the Ravas (demons) and devas (angels). If I can keep my wits about me, hold my mala, keep my posture, and steady my breath, I will smirk at the drama of an innately thespian mind. I might be thankful for the entertainment; more immersive than VR and as binge-worthy as a good Netflix series. Fingers crossed.
Take away: Do what is mad and know that it is! Meditation is biologically insane. No animal would take the time, in ecosystems that are as opportunistic as they are dangerous, to sit inactively and dumb to the circumstances around them. Risky business. Embrace the oddity of non-conventional choices. What has conventional thinking afforded us? Certainly, many things that we appreciate. More interestingly, what has conventional thinking taken away? Like darkness, what we haven't experienced is hard to measure, and yet, that darkness is felt through the fantasy of the impossible.
Stand in Front of Infinity
Time is the measure of change. Change is perceived through the senses. Imagine every atom in the universe stops. Electrons, protons, and neutrons all go motionless. Besides an immediate and bizarre end, I imagine the universe would simply pop. Invisible, untraceable, untouchable, and unknowable, despite it still being there. A tiger in the grass. An emotion never expressed. A book never read. There, but not really.
Without colors and objects streaming into my eyes, my sense of time will start to break down because humans are mostly visual animals. Therefore, time is mostly, for us, a visual phenomenon. With fewer hints of interaction, cause, and effect, the speed of time should start to dissolve into a soup of changelessness. Seconds will fragment into twisting appendages short and long. I hope. Hours might spaghettify into blips of eternity the way light is stretched in the guts of black holes. And me? The hypothesis is that I too will become changeless.
The Collesium was nice. So was, Michelangelo's David. The torii gates of Japan, also. I’ve seen many beautiful artifacts of humanity and nature. But, it's always been a dream of mine to stand outside of time, to sense what remains from the other side in as literal a way as possible. There are a few doors that get you there, but darkness is a door I have not opened.
Why seek infinity? Because time has been colonized by civilization, mutilated by its ambition.
We are so deeply ensnared in seconds. Every hour of our lives is tethered to duties and agendas. It feels, so often, that we're living at the end of a moment, gasping quietly for the space of a fresh beginning. When the lights go out and take time with it I will find myself, fingers crossed, in a scenario that is more similar to the beginning of it all. I think of what Stephen Hawking said, “As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe." So, when time is gone, I will have time-traveled back to the womb of my life and rest in what was always most real.
Take away: We are deprived of time itself because our senses are overwhelmed with constant change and duty. Civilization is a remote control and our fingers, in fear, fervor, or fascination, have found their way to the fast forward. We race against the consequences of our choices in the name of progress or maintenance. It can be suffocating because speed is stress and in the constant drip of adrenaline and cortisol, we are thirsty, not just for our rest but for a resting world.
Be a Better Yogi
This is my job! I am determined to innovate rather than replicate. From the Keshin (ancient yogis) to the Buddha, to John Kabat Zinn, to Headspace; there is a very obvious trail of evolution. As an individual teacher, a guide up the mountain, it's my duty to explore further and deeper than the casual student, teacher, or corporation.
The Buddha leveraged the pragmatic potency of meditation by think-tanking under the Bodhi Tree about the deeper nature of desire. The Keshin, thousands of years before the Buddha, were the ones who discovered that the human being as a physical and psychological instrument could be shaped, perfected, and purified to better understand the world and beyond.
John Kabat Zinn translated the essence of Buddhism into something simple and scientific. Headspace, Calm, Insight Timer, and every other meditation app are branding and digitizing the bare bones of these teaching for a new generation.
The darkness is only a stage. In it, I'll practice the way I always do. One round of OMs on the mala is around 45 minutes. One round of Kumbhaka on the mala is about 90 minutes. One round of the Gayatri Mantra on the mala is about 90 minutes. 5-minute breathwork circuits. I have strategies. The darkness will enrich my flow state. Alongside the dmt, I'll be dripping in serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, anandamide, and endorphins.
I will apply all of that to a single question, why is it so hard for people to meditate even when they know through their own experience it’s good for them?
In the catalog of meditative wisdom, if I can answer that, as a teacher I can chip away at the overwhelming attrition rate of meditators who via their own testimony are so confused as to why they can't seem to just sit and do the thing they acknowledge helps.
Other forms of this question; why is stress so seductive? Why are we so attached to identity?
Take away: There are real problems to solve both personally and societally. Maturity involves carrying more responsibility. I aim to mature. I'm trying at least. There is a great satisfaction that parents, business owners, and self-governed people know, a satisfaction that children must wait to feel. If we are willing to shoulder the weight of duty in the name of others, community, or even generations we have done something good for ourselves and the world. We need that, now. It depends on powerful choices. One of these powerful choices is a shift in focus, away from the addict-mind that technology, politics, and capitalism seem to be nurturing. We must develop a counter behavior that pulls us in, instead of out into the frenzy. Meditation is the answer. Decentralized peace. Autonomous identity. Stable heart.
In Closing
To darkness. In a world lit up by stars, street lights, and gangs of blinking gadgets; perfect darkness you are rare. A delicate negative not ready to be exposed, as shy as a black city cat, regal and feral, who knows enough to never be seen. If just one unwelcomed pilgrim-photon makes its way into that room during this retreat, you would be shattered, and the trick, or is it a trip, that I'm trying not to expect would vanish. There are many masters. You are one.
I owe this experience to Severin, owner of The Hermitage, a refined intentional hotel/private retreat center at Lake Atitlan. Check it out. Step by step, deeper into it.
Stay Inirly, insiders!
