Into the Dark
Part II: The Descent
After driving for 30 minutes, we finally forked off the main road and onto a gravelly path which ushered us onto the retreat grounds. There was no sermon, sign, or sighting of any cave. The pickup’s engine roared louder as we began on a steep uneven path upward. By now, Scott and I had exhausted most conversation and settled into a quiet meditation. As we got to the top of the hill, I began to see one, two, then three Hobbit-like structure peering out of the ground - the three caves on the property.
We finally stopped, and Scott cut the engine. Once he did, it felt like switching to the nature channel on TV. A soft breeze now became audible as it meandered through the leaves, birds chiming with gentle conversation. After so much motion, it felt good to finally arrive, knowing this would be my resting place for a week. I stood still, feeling the ground beneath my feet. The vastness of the landscape lifted something in me. From my vantage point I could see the land fall away in a wide valley below, rising again into mountains beyond the creek.
Behind me, the cave sat in an open oak woodland, the kind that doesn’t try to impress. The grass had long turned gold, brittle underfoot, the earth dusty and warm. Nothing here was lush or dramatic. It felt seasoned. Patient. A landscape shaped by heat, fire, and time, one that had learned to endure without asking for much. In the distance, a deer paused and looked at me curiously. “You had to come all this way just to be with yourself”, it seemed to muse.
I followed Scott into the cave and down a few steps toward a second door. The space between both doors achieved the intended light seal. Next to the second door, stood a wooden cabinet, designed to open from both sides to allow for food but not light to enter the cave.
Once inside, Scott flicked on the light and shut the door behind us. I was relieved to find that it felt far more like a room than a cave. Straight ahead was an unexpectedly comfortable bed. To the right, a meditation corner with a lounge chair, a bathtub, and beyond that, a small bathroom. Simple. Thoughtfully arranged. Home for the next few days.
Scott briefly explained the program before taking his leave. Tonight was merely an initiation into the darkness. The real thing would begin tomorrow evening. Scott would visit twice a day to check in and replenish the food through the wooden contraption. I unpacked quietly, moving slowly, as if it were already dark. A short while later, I had a bite to eat, turned off the lights, and settled in for the night.
I got up the next morning feeling rested, though with the faint sense that jet lag might come knocking a few hours later. I got dressed and began exploring the surrounding area. There was a whiff of WiFi near the creek bed, so I made a few short phone calls with the strange awareness of someone who was about to be sent away.
I climbed back up to the cave to meet Adrienne, the somatic practitioner. She helped me settle into my body and shared a few practical tips for when things got hard in there. She was quietly reassuring, generous with her time and had a warmth about her. I felt a sense of excitement at finally being on the brink of the experience, tempered by a palpable fear of what I may have to endure given, my new life situation. When she eventually left, I hugged her goodbye and watched as she got into her car and drove off. I felt alone but resolute.
This was it. There was nothing left between me and the darkness. No weeks to wait. No conversations to be had. No questions to answer. No final call, message or voice note to send. Just me and a whole week of nothingness. As the finality of it sank in, I took one last stroll in front of the cave. I walked the path up and down a few times in quiet contemplation, savoring the last light before the inevitable. My mind and heart was racing.
When I finally turned back towards the cave for the last time, opening the door one last time, then the next, I could really feel how scared I was. I did a last sweep of the space to make sure I knew where everything was, underwear, toothbrush, dictaphone. The latter was the only piece of technology I allowed myself. I knew there would be thoughts I could not entrust to memory alone. More so, I wanted to capture my tone of voice, and my state of being.
With everything ready, I lit a single candle and turned off the lights. I stared at the flame for what felt like an hour before I could manage a blow. The attempt was so feeble that the flame merely flickered, then burned brighter as if to taunt me. I took a deep breath and tried again. And again. Fail. Fail.
The finality of fully entering the darkness terrified me. Eventually, with some self talk, and a few deep breaths, I took one long inhale through the nose and blew the candle out. There in total nothingness, there was nothing left but the fleeting smell of burnt wax and charred wick. It wasn’t unpleasant, just unmistakably final. Like the room had remembered the flame a second longer than it should.
You would think the very moment you enter the darkness everything begins to slow down. The opposite was true for me. After the initial shock of entering this seemingly eternal void then a brief attempt at reassuring myself that everything would be okay, my mind took over.
How do we structure our time in here it began to ask. How can this be the most productive, healthiest time ever known to man. I know! I will do 100 push ups every day, do all the stretching I never had time to do, meditate, percolate, and initiate all the ideas in the world. I might even emerge with a new business idea and a six pack, it will be glorious! The week will fly by, and the task will be accomplished!
Then something Scott had said came through, “In the dark, there is no aim, and nothing to overcome.”
Fuck. What am I doing? He’s right. I’ve been granted something special, and for an entire fucking week! A week with nothing to do but be. To feel whatever needed to be felt.
In my regular life, I only know what I’m meant to do next because it says so on my calendar. Not just work and meetings, but travel, socials, even rest. I began to wonder what it would be like if I allowed my body to decide what happens now. To move, lie down, eat, or speak only when it felt like it. To focus my full attention on little but the sensations in body.
A tightness around my throat.
A bubbling in my stomach.
A gentle weight on my chest.
To stay with each of them for as long as they needed me to, without trying to understand why they were there or what they were trying to tell me. To trust fully that my body carries infinite wisdom, deeply rooted in consciousness and already knowing exactly what it needs to heal, to feel safe, to belong.
And so it went. Just like that. For seven days.
The more I surrendered to it, the more I began to feel the subtlest, most nuanced sensations. And for the most part, I let go of the exhausting insidious questioning of what, how and why. Then eventually everything began to slow down. Except the tears. It was like my body had begun flushing itself from the inside, out.
And after some initial clumsiness, I also developed a heightened sense of spatial awareness and began moving through the cave with confidence. When Scott would arrive, I noticed my voice had begun to mirror his; slow, articulate, almost melodic. Even eating no longer felt like a single activity. With everything slower, I chewed quietly, savored the food in my mouth, and swallowed. I took what felt like long pauses between bites, although time itself had begun to dissolve.
Scott delivered the food each morning and evening, which became my only way of roughly telling time. Before long, my inner dialogue moved quickly from how will I ever get through this week, to this is actually quite comfortable, to I may not want to ever leave.
My mattress felt like a cloud. Combined with the absolute darkness, it gave me the sense that I was suspended in a beautiful liminal space that is so hard to put into words. As the days passed, I began to experience a degree of felt-sense and embodiment I hadn’t known was possible. It was as if I had spent my entire life seeing the world through a thin veil, and the darkness - oddly enough - was allowing me to shine through.
With it came an incredible sense of clarity, but most notably a degree of softness and tenderness towards myself that I had never permitted before. It felt as though I had been carrying a very heavy load for as long as I could remember, and I was finally able to give myself permission to put it down. Realizing just how hard I’d been on myself brought waves of grief, but it was also cathartic, to understand all this, and finally be able to let it all go.
There are far too many experiences to recount in a single article. My hardest moment came on day four. That was when the full weight of what I had been facing in my relationship finally caught up with me. Anxiety, pain, and sadness arrived all at once. It was debilitating. And in the dark, there was nowhere to go. Nothing to distract myself with. No way to outrun or numb what was rising.
I don’t know how long it lasted. Time had already lost its meaning, but it felt endless. And yet, within that same difficult moment, my proudest one emerged. I remembered what I had learned. I asked myself what Scott had once asked me.
“Is it okay to feel this way?”
It was.
So I slowly brought my attention back into my body. I grounded myself in sensation. Breath. Weight. Contact. Slowly and deliberately I stayed with what was there instead of resisting it. And little by little, the alarm began to soften.
What struck me most wasn’t that the pain disappeared, it didn’t, not right away at least. But, that calm became accessible again. From that depth of distress, I was able to find steadiness without reaching for anything outside of myself. No tools. No substances. No reassurance. Just presence.
That moment in the cave quietly opened the door to something older. I found myself being pulled back to a scene from my childhood, one that replayed itself many times between the ages of seven and ten. I could see myself pacing back and forth outside my parents’ open bedroom door. All I wanted was for one of them to say, “Come here, Omar. What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I wanted a hug. Sometimes they invited me in. Often they didn’t.
When they didn’t, I would eventually wander out to the sitting area outside, sit on the floor in the dark with my back against the wall, and wait. Everything I needed was just one room away, so close and often available, yet I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Sometimes I’d dose off for a moment. Eventually, I’d give up and return to my room feeling empty, unseen, unheard, and deeply alone.
In the cave, this memory unfolded in front of me, as it had so many times before, but now it felt as though it were happening in real time. And this time, instinctively, I did something different. I sat down beside that younger version of myself and spoke to him. I told him the things a boy that age most needs to hear, that his sadness made sense, that he wasn’t weak for feeling it, that he didn’t need to earn love or ask for it perfectly to deserve it. That he was good. That he was safe. That he was not alone.
It was healing in the most immediate way. Simple, tender, and real. Before leaving, I told him I’d always be there, that he was never more than a moment away. I don’t share this with blame or judgment toward my parents. They did the best they could. But it showed me how easily a child can learn to brace himself against the world, and how simple it is, even decades later, to let the body soften, the breath deepen, and to no longer be alone in that moment.
The darkness experience was profound in so many ways. None more so than this realization. Many of us spend a lifetime trying to understand the meaning of life, why are we here, and what happens next. We chase peak spiritual experiences hoping to unlock some cosmic secret, or simply subscribe to a religion’s interpretation of it. Regardless of our belief system, what we’re in fact doing is spending a lifetime desperately trying to understand what most believe will be revealed to us the exact moment we die and go back to source. Which, when you think about it, sounds a little absurd. What if the point of being alive isn’t to decode the universe? What if it’s simply to have a body? To experience the things we won’t have access to in the eternal.
The darkness showed me how blessed we truly are, and how casually we overlook it. We’re here to love big, and experience great loss. To find incredible joy, and cry our hearts out. To know lightness of being, and indescribable pain. It’s all part of it. There is no love without hurt. No beauty without suffering.
And in the deepest dark, when everything was stripped away, I found something unexpected.
Wholeness.
I was finally enough.
What you said about “finally being enough” landed very deeply. I agree that this journey isn’t about decoding the universe but rather about living our true selves fully.. knowing that we chose this earth experience and that real authenticity and empowerment come from balancing spirituality with being human in a body.
Such a profound experience that opens another layer of oneself..
Thank you for sharing 🤍
What if it’s simply to have a body? To experience the things we won’t have access to in the eternal.
That's the whole point, I guess. Thank you for sharing this experience showing us both the vulnerability and strength can co-exist within us.