Common Thoughts You’ll Encounter During Your Darkness Retreat
At PeaceWithin Darkness Retreats, you’ll spend an extended amount of time in one of our small cabin-like enclosures in complete darkness. In a world of distractions and constant stimuli, a darkness retreat truly unplugs you from the world and provides inner peace and reflection.
Though ultimately a calming experience, hours and days of pitch black darkness can bring on the following thoughts for anyone new to a darkness retreat:
Where did my body go?
It’s still there! It’s just really dark in the darkness cabin, so you can’t see it. But you can still touch your body and sense that you have a body.
Dahh! I’ve been swallowed!
Swallowed by overwhelming sensations of peace and profound personal breakthroughs? We hope so! Swallowed by a big monster or large whale, or the jaws of time and space? No.
I hear screaming.
Most likely, it is your screaming: this is a natural reaction that the body and mind have after existing in a complete void for longer than five minutes.
I can’t get this foot off.
No need to: it is your foot, and should stay attached to you, as should all other body parts and limbs that you’ve disassociated from while in the darkness.
Is the room growing?
No: it is a 250 square foot room, with a 12 foot ceiling — those dimensions are stable. Do not break out into a run while in the cabin.
Am I a ghost now?
Good news: you are not dead! Just shrouded in a darkness normally only seen in death, and within an enclosure the size of a freshly dug grave.
I can hear my ears and they are too loud.
It’s amazing how heightened the other senses can get when you take your vision away! But if this happens, your senses are too heightened, and you need to exit the retreat to prevent bringing on psychosomatic deafness.
I think there’s a bird in here.
It’s normal to have visions of symbolic animals and the natural world. But if you feel wings flapping across your face, then a bird probably did get in, and you should open the door to let it out.
I am getting longer and won’t fit in here soon.
Another instance of dissociation from the body. Should you face further dissociations, we recommend you use the two and a half foot long wooden dowel in your room that we call “The Reality Rod” to smack your hand, which will recenter yourself in your body.
I’ve poked through the darkness, revealing a new layer of darkness underneath.
It’s all the same darkness: this is just the mind creating order where there is none.
My darkness is blindingly white.
The retinas of your eyes have collapsed from a lack of exposure to light — leave the enclosure at once so that your vision can be saved.
Must I fight the sickle-wielding horseman called Magnus?
Magnus is a manifestation of your trauma and toxic past, and it is your choice whether or not to engage him in battle. We only ask that you refrain from destroying the retreat space in the process.
I popped.
You didn’t pop. You are still there. A good ol’ hand smack with the Reality Rod should set you right again.
I am stuck in the fifth layer of darkness that I poked through.
You’re in pretty deep now: we’ll need to keep you in a few extra days because reentering the daylight prematurely will break your mind.
The Reality Rod is no match for Magnus’ sickle.
The Reality Rod is not a weapon. Please manifest your own instrument of battle to defeat your inner demons.
If I leave here, the darkness will escape and engulf the earth.
If only! For all of humanity to benefit from endless darkness would be our dream, but until then, it’s $350 per day at our retreat.
