I Spent 4 Days in Complete Darkness

Voluntarily.

From June 2nd to June 7th, I was in total darkness. Couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. From Monday night to Saturday morning. Four days, five nights.

This was an intentional adventure, a retreat I had signed up for a few months prior. I had seen and heard about people’s experiences with darkness retreats and felt called to take a leap of my own.

Coming in, I had no idea what to expect. I had heard things like, “The hallucinations are 50x more intense than a DMT trip,” and, “It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” but I was a rookie, I had never done anything like this before. It was the purest form of stepping into the unknown, of the darkest variety. Fear was definitely on the mind and in the body.

What was going to happen? What would pop up? Would the hallucinations be super scary? Would I be able to handle it? Would I be okay on the flip side?

I didn’t know.

—

Spending four straight days in complete darkness was sacred work. I got extremely frustrated at times, wrestling with the endless whirlpool of the mind, wanting to shut it up and do away with it. I tried to square away nonsense that can never be squared away, as if I was trying to figure out how to stop the ocean from making waves. The futility.

There were moments of immense peace, like when I tapped into the frequency of unconditional love.

There were moments of immense boredom, with nothing to do, but nothing and everything to be.

There were moments of stabbing at air with a fork, whiffing as I blindly attempted to feed myself. I spent minutes trying to pick up a whole roma tomato with a spoon; it kept sliding off like a slippery salamander. Until I realized, I could use my hands. That worked.

The darkness retreat was incredibly unique.

If I had to describe what I took away from it in one word, it would be, “humility.”

As David R. Hawkins says, “In Reality, everything is spontaneously manifesting the inherent destiny of its essence; it doesn’t need any external help to do this. With humility, one can relinquish the ego’s self appointed role as savior of the world and surrender it straight to God. The world that the ego pictures is a projection of its own illusions and arbitrary positionalities. No such world exists.”

On Monday, prior to getting to the retreat center in the beautiful forest of Oregon, I stopped at a large nature preserve next to a river in a nearby town called Corvallis. I found a cheeky little spot down by the river, as if it were meant for me, and only me, that day. I sat on the bank of the river and watched the water flow. My stomach was quite uncomfortable, it had been for most of the morning. Eating a meal and dropping an enormous dookie in the park’s bathroom did nothing to alleviate the pain.

“That’s it.” The water was flowing. It was unexplainably perfectly guided, outside of the “well, there’s the banks of the river, the riverbed below, and the rocks and plants and fishes.” But how did all of that get there? How did the water even get there? Why was it flowing in that direction?

It was beyond comprehension, yet so simple. The water was flowing, guided by nature. Truthfully, the water was flowing, as nature. It didn’t need to make a decision to go through or around the rocks, it simply went with the current and the lay of the land.

I didn’t realize this until I had left the park and made it to the coast of Oregon, where I posted up in my car and gazed out toward the Pacific Ocean. For some reason, I felt called to reread a Divine thread from a dear friend, Jack Moses, on how to transcend the entire Map of Consciousness. I read through the lower levels, eventually landing on Jack’s post about transcending Courage. He wrote, “Adopting an attitude of inner neutrality and non-judgment in all situations, and opening oneself to new possibilities and guidance through humility, is how one transcends this energy level.

The key here, and at all of the higher energy levels, is that rising up the Map does not require the personal self to “work harder” or “try more,” but instead calls for deeper surrender of the personal self and trust in something greater than oneself.”

Once I read that, I felt something click into place.

Jack’s following post on the next level, Neutrality, read, “Below courage, one takes on rigid positionalities and sees the world as black and white, good or bad, right or wrong. At the level of neutrality, one begins to see the world as complex and multifaceted and avoids clinging to positionalities through humility.

Neutrality is the beginning of one being unattached to outcomes. An example of someone at this level would be the statement, “Well, if I don’t get this job, then I’ll find another.” There is no clinging, fear, or one certain way of doing things.

Neutrality is characterized by a steady openness to life, a humble not-knowing, and a trust that all is working out for both the highest benefit of the individual as well as the collective.”

Skipping up to Love, Level 500, “This energy level is unconditional, unchanging, and permanent. It takes no positions and is above the separation of positionality. There is a general love for all beings and all things, a consistent attitude of optimism, a constant certainty in oneself and God, and a trust that all is unfolding perfectly in the Divine order. “

And Enlightenment, which is the highest level, Level 700 and beyond, “There is only a consistent devotion to live as a channel for God to work through them.”

I teared up multiple times as I read through the thread and made the connecting realizations. It’s not about “me” or my preferences. It never has been. I have no idea how I ended up making the decision not to go to college, after which I moved to Jacksonville, Florida, of all places, to play professional poker at the age of 18. It still baffles me. The journey since then has been even more baffling.

That’s because it’s beyond me. The current working through me, you, and all things, which is the river of love, is beyond words or anything remotely comprehensible.

It simply flows. You get messed up because you get in your own way. You do that by thrusting positions and shoulds and rights and wrongs upon the current of life. That’s called resistance, and congrats on the tension. Let the river take you, free of limiting positionalities. This is what it means to let go and surrender.

As I realized in the darkness, any position, of any sort, as to what reality is or how it’s flowing, or how it should flow, is inherently limiting, because Reality is beyond any position.

There’s such a respectful amount of humility required to truly surrender. As Hawkins says, “The most important quality necessary for true growth and evolution is the practice and principle of humility.”

It’s so hard to put into words. How do you describe a beingness and a force beyond description? It’s something like… Give it all away to the force greater than yourself.

—

I was given a tour of the property and facility by the retreat guides when I arrived. I eventually was shown the hallway where the retreat room was located. When we went behind the curtain and entered the hallway, I saw the pitch black darkness for the first time. “Oh God,” was something like my reaction. That was going to be my reality for the next 100 or so hours.

It was so special to spend that time in pure darkness. It showed me how capable the spirit is. It showed me the safety of the darkness. I feel like I’m in a deeper space of beingness as a result.

I can think back to that space – spending 100 straight hours in complete darkness – and immediately sense a profound depth within me. It was like I tapped into something that was hidden away, something very subtle, something not visible, something only behind the curtains of light, lying in the shadows. It was and is something fundamental to my being, and to yours.

Despite my fear of the darkness coming in, I remarked to myself multiple times while openly-blinded that I had never been safer. I was tucked away in a private room deep in the forests of Oregon, dearly cared for by two dear caretakers. I absolutely came out of the darkness with a much more relaxed nervous system. I also remarked to myself a handful of times that I eventually would make it out of the darkness, but each time that thought trickled across my awareness, I followed it up with the truth that the end wasn’t the point, at which point I returned to my presence in utter darkness, bored out of my mind, filled with everything I ever needed.

Interestingly, I didn’t have any hallucinations, although I did see a jaguar a few times in my mind’s eye, but that’s a story for another day.

I wrote songs in the dark (better classified as hymns), which I sang aloud as I played the hand drum that was offered to me by the retreat center. It was fascinatingly beautiful to watch the lyrics and the beat of the drum spawn into my being. The whole thing reminded me of the ayahuasca ceremonies I have been blessed to be a part of, something that continues to gain more reverence with my being as time passes. That it reminded me of those ceremonies is a hint to the frequency I was tapping into.

I came into this experience not seeking anything, more with an immense curiosity as to what would unfold, which was unlike most of my prior experiences with spiritual retreats, where I came in looking for the “fix” or the “solution” to my woes. It felt more pure and sacred, like I wasn’t grasping for something, like I was honoring the work for nothing more than what it was, even though I would assert that it all has been equally pure and sacred, because it has all been part of the journey.

Amongst my downloads in the dark was this absolute truth: “I am being Divinely guided.” To understand that at its deepest essence is to adopt the twins of surrender: Trust and Faith. I can have trust and faith in this present moment, as I understand at my core that I am being Divinely guided in this moment’s totality.

This Divine guidance is the only possible explanation for any and all of this. Everything is working in your favor, because the Divine would not express itself (that’s you) in an unintelligent, antagonizing way towards itself. That would be unintelligent. You may think or believe that you are being antagonized, but that is simply life presenting you with the people and circumstances to reveal where you are not free, such that you can transcend them and realize your freedom. This is “the work.” Great treasure lies beneath.

Being that this all exists, clearly an unintelligent force is not at play.

An intelligent force is working through you, as you, at all times, much like the river flows with a mystical guidance. Everything is working in your favor. Adopt Trust and Faith with the way.

It’s an incredible dance to be a human! What the f*ck is going on?! Who f*cking knows?! But see, needing to know is a constraint. Surrendering and knowing are antithetical to each other. Can you be at peace with not knowing? What if you already are?

I want to share some other downloads that came to me in the dark before I wrap things up with a truth bomb from a fellow awesome human being and a hint at the most profound realization of them all.

You have actual complete freedom.

Tao Te Ching Verse 71: “Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease.”

I don’t have the audacity so say how life should be.

If you would rather it be different, you are going to suffer.

The willingness to get utterly rekt.

Life is a massive sandbox, we are the kids (creators).

The bliss is the uncertainty (combine this with “I am being Divinely guided” and Trust and Faith)

Last but not least… God’s got it.

Onto the truth bomb from one Peter Crone:

“There are two fundamental journeys we go on as human beings.

There is the typical external world, which is focused on amassing; we want to amass more wealth, greater status, more possessions. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it tends to be quite exhausting and invariably unfulfilling.

The less typical path is discovering an internal world, which is about, ironically, discarding. It’s about discarding the constraints that hold us back. It’s about discarding our fears and limitations. It’s about discarding our woes and our worries. It’s about overcoming childhood traumas and certainly cleansing and letting go of the accumulation of toxins and disease in our bodies.”

Inspired by Mr. Peter Crone, I believe the purpose for us as human beings is to break free from the constraints we arrived with as a human being, so that we can be totally at peace, and love everybody and everything the way it is.

The darkness retreat was truly sacred. It was as inward as I had ever gone, particularly over that length of time. It was a grand opportunity to bump up against some of the constraints in my system, and transcend them.

To honor the beingness of your beingness is something I would recommend to all who feel called.

—

Ironically for me, the most significant realization I had in the container of the darkness retreat (I don’t believe the container closes until you get back to where you departed from) wasn’t in the darkness, it was in the last 30 minutes of my flight back home. It blew my mind, almost quite literally.

It directly relates to the “less typical path” Peter talks about, but more specifically, it relates to “how to” discard everything he mentioned. I would say it’s the most significant realization I’ve had in my lifetime.

See you next week.