Benefits of Dark Retreat: Sleep
Most people don’t go into dark retreat to catch up on sleep, but relieving sleep deficits is a healthy byproduct of spending time in darkness. I always spend the first few days catching up on lost sleep and allowing myself to luxuriate in bed for the duration of the retreat. It’s not like I have to leap out of bed to do something! Sleeping in is a delicious indulgence that allows you to explore liminal states of mind as you drift in and out of sleep for inordinate periods of time.
Benefits of Dark Retreat: Exploring the Boundaries Between Awake and Asleep
I’ve had some of the most interesting experiences in the boundaries between awake and asleep as these borders become porous and eventually dissolve in dark retreat. There have been times when dreams continued upon awakening, and other times when waking thoughts morphed into dreams. After a few days in the dark, there are times when I can’t tell if I am dreaming or awake. On rare occasion, when jolted awake in the dead of night, I couldn’t even tell if I was dead or alive. I had to touch my body to assess that I was in fact still very much alive.
It’s akin to the experience of waking up in the middle of the night with jet lag, not knowing where you are, or even who you are. At first, this porosity was unsettling as I struggled to find my footing in reality. But as I surrendered to this plasma of mind – not knowing what’s real or not real – I found the experience spellbinding. Curiosity replaced anxiety as I learned to watch my mind transition between these previously separate states of consciousness.
Benefits of Dark Retreat: Shifting Your Attention to Sleep and Dreams
By spending more time investing in sleep you may find yourself withdrawing your accounts from waking consciousness. This “transfer of funds” serves the dual purpose of dereifying or liquefying the waking state as you disinvest time in that state. At the same time, you reify or solidify the other two states as you invest more time in sleeping and dreaming. Spend less time attending to the waking state and it becomes less real; spend more time attending to the dream and sleep states and they become more real. You’re diversifying your portfolio of consciousness, which allows you to gain deeper respect for the dividends of the other two states.
“Reality is what you attend to.” – William James
All three states now have equal footing. Having the opportunity to sleep so much allows you to dream more, and opens your “accounts” of reality to include all three states. This not only restores you physically, it also restores the way you perceive reality. Dark retreat doesn’t merely show you what darkness has to offer, but also reveals what the previously dismissed states of dreaming and sleeping consciousness have to offer.
Mixing metaphors, dark retreat invites the democratization of consciousness. Darkness overthrows the imperialism of wake-centricity and empowers the usually oppressed states of dreaming and sleeping consciousness into the governance of our lives. We become more aware of these subtle states in daily life, and the insights they provide inform and transform how we live. A brief excursion into this deeper perceptual and cognitive restoration is in order, so that we can give ourselves permission to sleep away in the dark.
“While the ego sleeps, the mind plays, proposing unexpected patterns of thoughts and new rays of relation. The gulf between self and world, that no-man’s-land which in ordinary hours the ego so vigilantly patrols, closes down, allowing us to feel less separate and more connected, “part and particle” of some larger entity. Whether we call that entity Nature, the Mind at Large, or God hardly matters.” – Michael Pollan
Benefits of Dark Retreat: Preparing for Advanced Dark Retreat & Opening the Third Eye
The following is another dip into the depths of tantric-level or advanced dark retreat. With the right view, sleeping so much is not a waste of time at all. It’s a healthy reallocation of resources to balance the books, to equilibrate our view of reality. Falling asleep at these extended levels can truly wake us up. Here’s how it works.
The West offers a gross and limited view of consciousness. It’s a binary yes/no, on/off, awake/asleep, dead/alive model represented by a light switch. Dark retreat alone, or in concert with the nocturnal meditations, replaces this light switch with an Eastern dimmer. Instead of awake/asleep, you’re now transitioning in a more refined way from gross to subtle to very subtle states of consciousness, leaving a few “photons” of awareness on.
Spending so much time in bed allows you to play with this dimmer; turning on a nightlight usually drowns out in the full light of day. You discover a granularity of consciousness usually blotted out by excessive light and our capitulation to wake-centricity.
In New Age language, by closing our two wake-centric eyes, dark retreat gives us the opportunity to open the “third eye,” which is a portal to the inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness. This extremely sensitive eye is associated with insight and intuition, so it’s no surprise that a much higher level of insight occurs when all “outsight” is curtailed.
The third eye has the ability to see beyond normal perception, to literally perceive things in a new multi-perspectival or multi-dimensional light. In integral theory, evolution is marked by an increase in perspective. You can triple your perspective of reality in the dark, and therefore markedly accelerate your evolution.
Benefits of Dark Retreat: Increases Creativity
More and more people are entering the dark to unleash the powers of creativity. I didn’t initially go into dark retreat for this purpose. However, after the volcanic eruption of creative forces in a recent retreat, I now have an even deeper appreciation for what darkness has to offer. My approach is to enter every retreat with a beginner’s mind, “What does the darkness have to teach me this time?” That open attitude allows for whatever is right at that time to emerge. But there is no reason you can’t go into the dark with the overt aspiration to receive creative insights.
When we relax and open, creative insights can finally surge up. If we’re looking for a solution to a problem, we say things like, “Let me sleep on it,” which means “let me open to it.” Let the deeper dimensions of my creative mind go to work on it. Creative impulses are always wanting to pop up, but because of all our daytime distractions we keep slamming them back down.
Waking consciousness is like a crude hammer that smacks down the subtle impulses of the unconscious mind, like a whack-a-mole strategy. What’s peculiar about this strategy is how we (the ego) fear these creative impulses, our own power, and reject the imaginative gifts constantly being sent up by the gods that lurk in the darkness of our own mind. In dark retreat you come face-to-face with these gods and unveil the creativity within you. You’re returning to the origin of things, so it’s no surprise that originality is a natural consequence of that retreat.
Benefits of Dark Retreat: Problem Solving
Some people enter the dark to answer a question or solve a specific problem. The questions can range from NFL superstar Aaron Rogers wanting to figure out if he should stay with the Green Bay Packers, all the way to solving the problem of samsara altogether (the Sanskrit word for the conditioned world of suffering). You can go into the dark to focus your mind, open your heart, or reflect deeply on your relationship (should I stay with him or leave?), your job (should I quit, or try for the promotion?), your career (should I get that degree, or move to that town for employment?) or life itself (what should I do with my life?). Any question is fair game.
You can set the intention before you even go into dark retreat (which could be part of the set and setting process), then restate it as often as you like while in retreat. This will perfume your mind before the retreat, and while you’re in it, creating the proper atmosphere for insights to arise.
Benefits of Dark Retreat: Exploring Subtle Dimensions of Mind
Dark retreat gets extraordinarily subtle, which invites the detection of extremely subtle energies and dimensions of being. Subtle doesn’t mean ineffectual. Everything in your gross life is driven by subtle thoughts and even more subtle unconscious processes. In Eastern karmic theory, a view echoed in the West by psychologist Carl Jung, karma first develops at the level of the unconscious mind before manifesting in life. Seeds germinate underground before popping up into the light of day. Karmic seeds (bijas in Sanskrit) germinate in the underground mind and can manifest for the diviner in the form of dreams, fleeting visions, or flashes of insight. Dark retreat makes the border between the conscious and unconscious mind more porous, allowing unconscious sprouts more opportunity to pop up between the cracks of the conscious and unconscious mind.
Benefits of Dark Retreat: To Experience Altered States
More and more people are exploring psychedelics, for as many reasons as people are exploring the dark. The parallels between the two journeys are remarkable. “Psychedelic” derives from the roots psyche, “mind, soul, spirit,” and delos, “to manifest, make clear, make visible, or reveal.” Dark retreat is all about the concentrated manifestations and revelations of mind, soul, and spirit. The notion of “set and setting” are critical for both journeys, along with the importance of preparation and integration. The promise and peril of psychedelics also applies to dark retreat. The scientists I’m working with, those who also study psychedelics, often comment how similar both journeys sound. Future studies will likely reveal deep connections.
While the similarities are striking, there are many important differences. In dark retreat you become the medicine. The only thing you’re ingesting is your experience, unmediated by any drug. Dark retreat is completely natural and utterly organic, with fewer side effects. You have much more control over your trip in the dark and can end it at any time. The onset of any altered state is easier in the dark, and coming out of the experience is gentler. You also have much more time to explore your mind in the dark. I don’t know of any psychedelic that lasts more than a day, while a dark retreat can last for weeks. You can also “micro-dose” dark retreat
in the blink of an eye, or when you sleep and dream (with the aid of the nocturnal meditations). Big pharma is not involved, legislation and governmental regulation isn’t needed, drug cartels will never be interested, and it’s legal around the world.
Excepted from my upcoming book on Dark Retreat. For more information on a dark retreat center, visit skycaveretreats.com