How do you put into words something that is wholly beyond the limited concept of the human language?
Simply put, you can’t, it is a total abstraction of the actual experience. Yet, as this is a blog post about dark retreats, I can only do my best.
I will break everything you need to know about a dark retreat down into a few segments:
The overall experience
A brief recap video of my experience and walk-through of the dark room
A brief interview with the co-founder of The Hermitage explaining what dark retreats are from his over 10 years of experience
My spiritual experience
The location and full walk-through video of The Hermitage retreat center on Lake Atitlán, Guatemala
Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about my experience (aka a TL;DR)
I. The Experience
I came into the dark retreat with the intention to completely let go. If you haven’t read my intro post about the dark retreat, I suggest you do so here, as it will provide context for the rest of what I’m about to go into.
I flew into Guatemala City and had a private transfer arranged with the retreat center’s driver, Tony, who drove me four hours from the city to the lake. He is an incredibly genuine guy. We immediately clicked and had a deep conversation about spirituality, allowing me to put my 10 years of Spanish classes to use.
I arrived on the property and was immediately told to turn off my phone, put it away, and begin to internalize and slow down.
The retreat starts with 3 nights in one of their private rooms before going into the dark room. During this time, I followed my usual morning practice, meditated multiple times a day, did a brief bodyweight workout (squats, push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, crunches), ate the two wonderfully cooked vegetarian meals provided daily (9:30am and 4:30pm), used their wood-burning temescal (sauna), had the opportunity to go paddle boarding on the lake, journal, and simply allow my nervous system to drop into parasympathetic mode ahead of 6 nights in the dark.
On the fourth day at sunset, was guided into the darkness by Katrin, one of the lead facilitators at the center along with the co-founder, Severin.
I was given a candle light and incense stick, and told to blow out the candle when I was ready for my experience to start. I meditated, blew out the candle, entered complete darkness, and went to bed.
The experience was intense. You cannot see where you’re walking or what you’re eating, and you’re feeling around for everything.
Food and herbal tea is delivered twice a day through a double-doored window. In the dark there are no substances, no plant medicine, no tobacco, no drugs, and no coffee allowed to reveal the inner light.
Contrary to what some have gone through, I experienced no intense sleepiness. In fact, it was much the opposite for me. I would sleep very little, restlessly up for what felt like over five hours each night until the birds started chirping in the morning.
One of the hardest parts of the entire experience for me personally was the smell of the compost toilet in the room. It was genuinely so bad that I felt like I was living a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles experience in a sewer, getting the full Master Splinter experience.
I wrote notes to the facilitators through the food delivery window for them to help provide me with a solution. Through the window, they gave me a blanket to cover the compost toilet and some lavender essential oils to rub on my hands and smell to mask the scent.
With no external stimulation meeting the eyes, it is simply you and your thoughts for a week (they offer varying lengths in the dark from 3-nights up to months – my facilitator did a 49 day dark retreat).
My daily schedule in the dark would usually look like this: wake up, meditate, workout or yoga, eat breakfast, think and contemplate, meditate, shower, eat lunch, rest and contemplate, meditate, eat dinner, meditate, and (attempt) sleep.
I meditated and practiced forms of pranayama for hours and hours a day over the course of the 132 hour experience. At times there was mild boredom, but I would always come back to meditation if I was ever feeling that way.
My experience had different daily themes associated with them. Based on visions I had, downloads that came through, or where my mind decided to go, I classify each day as follows:
Dark Retreat Daily Themes:
Day 1: Enter Dark Room
I entered the dark room, meditated, and went to bed.
Day 2: My Journey, 2023 Year in Review, Mom
This day was highlighted by deep contemplation about my life, definition of success, fear of failure/not living up to my potential, reviewing my entire year in great detail, and a profoundly healing moment with my mom coming through in mediumship to deliver me a message which left me sobbing for 20 minutes. Aside from the experience with my mom, my other highlight was realizing that people and places are what bring me the most joy – and to continue to make those cornerstones of every year of my life.
Day 3: Love & Relationships – Forgiveness and Personal Responsibility
The primary experience of this day was going through all of my romantic relationships and partnerships. I saw where I went wrong in each relationship, and took the blame for how I behaved and how things ended. After all, everyone is simply a mirror reflection of ourselves. I practiced self-forgiveness, ho’oponopono, and took personal responsibility for where I went wrong. I ultimately practiced the Light of God protocol to cut energetic cords with my former partners and allow myself (and them) to move on energetically – fully and completely. As I prepared for bed, flashing lights in my eyes started to come up for me, which perpetuated at random points throughout the experience from here on out, likely the result of the mind trying to perceive any form of depth or light to create images externally.
Day 4: Nothingness and The Light Within
This day was punctuated with a profound experience of who and what I am. The true essence of source light energy. It was a felt-experience of the singularity of nothingness and simultaneously everything that we all are and are created of. I dove deep into the spiritual paradox of our existence and received life-changing insights into the nature of consciousness beyond all intellectual understanding. You can read more about this below in “The Spiritual Experience” section.
Day 5: Business & Career Direction – Empowerment and Vision + God-connection Part 2
At this point, I was 66.6% through my experience. Here, I received unbelievable insights into the direction of my life – on a personal level as well as on an entrepreneurial level. Specific dates I need to do things, people I need to partner and collaborate with, retreats and events I’m going to create, and so much more. I felt beyond energized as a result and highly excited to get back into the world to start doing some of these things in my life and for the world. I continued to have deep felt-experiences of a higher divine energy completely flowing through me, as all of these insights were inspired in loving service by a higher force – outside of the simply egoic “wants” of Neal.
Day 6: Soul Mission Activation – Visions & Insights
The last day was the most profound when it came to visions. Full-on eyes open, looking around the room, vivid visions of being transported to specific locations. My mom came through for a highly powerful message, and I received the single most profound channeled guidance in my life – directly from the God-source. I felt fully activated on my soul mission, and received highly detailed insights and visions into where our earth is headed in the near-term (much of it filled with less than rosy pictures to say the least). I believe this was when the endogenous DMT in my body began to be released to allow for these profound experiences.
Day 7: Rebirthday
At sunrise, I was told to come out of the darkness slowly. I watched sunrise with Katrin and the colors were like nothing I’d seen before. I was more nervous coming out than I was going in. It was overwhelming for my eyes to adjust, and I could not focus on one thing for more than a few seconds. My mind, coming out of its DMT-heightened state, was trying to recreate the material frame of existence it knew before. The first 1-2 hours were most intense, and it felt like landing from a psychedelic experience. I was told to take it easy over the course of the day and allow my nervous system to re-regulate to the world. The sun was bright on the eyes, but I spent time in nature around the lake grounding myself.
The retreat ends with 3 nights back in the room which I started in, to integrate the experience, journal, reflect, meditate, and slowly readjust.
All in all, I was a completely open channel this entire week. In total I wrote 104 pages in my notebook while inside the dark room. The topics ranged from spiritual downloads in meditation, insights into the nature of reality and consciousness, practical next steps for my businesses, and poems about life.
The experience for me was genuinely life-enhancing on the deepest emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. Although it was certainly not easy, the juice was absolutely worth the squeeze.
See a brief recap video of my experience and a walk-through of the dark room below.
II. The Experience & Walk-through Video
III. What is a Dark Retreat?
5 Good Questions Interview with Severin, Co-Founder of The Hermitage
IV. The Spiritual Experience
The below was predominantly written in the dark room. It explains my experience on the deeper spiritual levels, and what I feel I most walked away with from the retreat.
“So what was your experience like?!”
It was nothing. It never happened. And simultaneously, it was everything.
A fire cannot burn itself and a knife cannot cut itself. Then how do these things understand what they are?
They need the world of duality.
For light does not know itself to be light. It must illuminate the darkness to understand what it is. Just as all the water in the ocean does not know itself to be wet. It must be taken out in a bucket and spread on dry land to know that it is wet.
“What you are looking for is what is looking.”
– St. Francis of Assisi
However, “light” does not begin to explain what we are. For it is but a concept of words. How can you intellectually explain through limited human vernacular, that which is wholly indescribable by our limited form of human communication. You cannot begin to.
It is like going to two hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule in the ocean and telling them that they are wet. It does not compute. You are not in congruence with the frequency of their language.
“Where learning ends there God begins, for learning ends before Him Who is complete where He begins, and where there is no end…. Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is not.”
– A Course in Miracles
When you play a video game, you see the characters all playing out their roles on the screen. Yet, when you turn off the console, where do the characters go?
Do they go back into the console?
If I open it up, will I find all the characters?
No, I will find a complex concoction of circuit boards, wires, and intelligent technology which is then projected through a TV screen.
When the console is off, it is as if the characters never were. The drama they were playing never happened.
Yet it did – because we saw it – we experienced it.
Or did we?
Like a mirage oasis in a desert that was once real from far away…
So what was my experience in the dark room like?
It was nothing, but simultaneously everything.
How can that be so?
For it was within an experience that we are all living in that has no beginning and no end.
If I put a massive circle in front of you and asked you to step inside of it, did you step in it from the beginning or the end?
It is an infinite experience with no beginning and no end.
That is what I experienced. A zero-point of nothingness made of “light,” but simultaneously within it containing everything that ever was, is, and will be.
From planets, to stars, to galaxies, and universes. Including infinite timelines of every aspect of consciousness from the most basic elementals (fire, earth, water, etc) to the most advanced multiverse realities we cannot even fathom.
This is why it is beyond our intellectual comprehension. It must be felt and experienced to be Known — and meditation is the key that opens the doorway.
Once experienced, it is then completely let go – into the nothingness that it is.
Like a wave cresting and falling back into the ocean from whence it came.
—————
Nothing is Everything
Nothing, is by definition, nothing – and is therefore nowhere.
Everything, must then be somewhere.
If somewhere, there is everything, everything must therefore be everywhere.
If everything is everywhere, nothing must be somewhere.
If nothing is somewhere, and everything is somewhere, everything must also be nothing.
V. The Location
The Hermitage is located on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala.
The lake is the result of a volcanic eruption ~84,000 years ago and sits 1,500 meters above sea level. There are three volcanoes surrounding the lake, one of which is still very active and erupted numerous times throughout my stay there.
The villages surrounding the lake to this day are deeply entrenched in Mayan history and culture, and the lake is believed to be a powerful energetic point in Central America.
The location itself is an ancient Mayan ceremonial space, with a large rock on one corner of the property, which locals say was used for ceremonies dating back thousands of years.
The energy is highly palpable and can result in your body feeling extremely energized, tired, or any number of other things depending on your own energetic frequency and how it coheres to the energy of the land.
For me personally, the energy was so strong I had a tough time sleeping more than 4-5 hours a night.
The retreat center is completely off-grid and out in nature. There is an abundance of flora and fauna (birds, spiders, scorpion in my room), and I would classify the space as rustic, including using compost toilets.
Given the remote nature and underdevelopment of the area, local villages tend to dump waste in and around the lake, unfortunately polluting the outskirts of the sacred volcanic waters.
Walk-Through Video
VI. FAQs
- Was it completely dark the entire time?
Yes, it was entirely dark. There was no light. The room is designed to keep all light out, including having double doors for the entrance and food delivery windows.
2. Could you even see your hand in front of your face?
At times I thought I might be seeing my hand in front of my face and would play a game to see if I really was. Yet, as I walked around the room, and thought I could see objects in front of me, it became clear that my mind was trying to create some frame of reference for spacial awareness. Judging by walking into walls and shelves a couple of times, I have come to the realization that it was ignorance and I truly had no sight.
3. Did you eat?
Yes – two meals were delivered each day. Breakfast/lunch was delivered at 9:30am, and dinner was delivered at 4:30pm. This is how I had any semblance of “time” while I was in the darkness. The first meal usually consisted of oatmeal and a veggie lunch component, while the dinner meal consisted of a larger dinner portion of veggies and rice, noodles, or something similar. A thermos of herbal tea was delivered with each meal.
The meals were delicious and varied. They always managed to come up with something new for the lunch and dinner portions over the 12 full days I was there.
4. How did you go to the bathroom?
Yes, there was a compost toilet in the room. Frankly, it smelled less-than-stellar, and was the hardest part of the dark retreat experience for me. It was so bad on day 3 before I covered it with two blankets, that I was close to leaving simply because the smell was nearly unbearable (and I tend to have a high tolerance for these things).
5. Did you shower?
Yes, there was a shower in the room that you can see in my walkthrough video. I would usually work out to get my body temperature up before hopping in, because it was a cold shower while inside the dark room. Outside in the center, they had solar-heated warm water for showers available as well.
6. Were you scared or worried you’d go “crazy”?
I wasn’t at all. I had no expectations of what to expect. I read very little about others’ experiences and my main purpose was to go in, slow down, meditate deeply, completely let go of the story of “Neal” to find the one who lies beyond the body. Severin, the co-founder of the center who has been doing this for over a decade also states that dark retreats aren’t for everyone. It is not simply something to be sought out for a thrill or rush, but is an ancient hermetic practice that typically calls to an individual to help advance them on their path at the right time. You can watch the brief interview with Severin here, where he delves into this topic.
7. What did you do all day?
Simply put, I meditated and contemplated for hours a day. I worked out a little, ate my meals, wrote in my journal, and meditated multiple times throughout the day.
8. How did you know what time it was?
I didn’t really. I had a sense of time based on the food deliveries, as well as the birds chirping loudly in the morning to alert me that the sun was rising. Other than that, I genuinely stepped outside of time for a week.
9. Did you get bored?
Of course! At times, I certainly did, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I used much of my time to meditate, which I believe truly alleviated the deep feeling of boredom. Sometimes I would even walk in place if I was feeling that way to at least move my body and somatically come back into myself from any disassociated feelings with lights flashing or visions.
10. How did you write in the dark?
I put my left thumb on the margin of the line where I started writing. As I got to the edge of the page, I would move my thumb down a reasonable amount to create line spacing and begin writing again from there. Using this technique I seldom wrote over my own writing, and it was some of the neatest handwriting I ever saw for myself when I looked in the light!
11. Was there anyone else at the retreat center?
I was the only one there for the first two days. A mom (72) and her son (40) joined for a hybrid-solitary retreat the day before I went into darkness. When I came out, I met two others who were there for dark retreats. All in all, it was a very quiet time at the retreat center which was perfect for going into silence and introspection.
12. What was the hardest part?
The compost toilet smell… hands down. That was the only reason I was considering leaving on the third day. I gave them a bunch of tips on how they can improve it to completely seal in the smell, and they will likely be implementing it going forward to make sure that isn’t a distraction to others for future dark retreat-goers.
13. Did you ever want to give up?
The only time was when the smell was so bad after a few days that I was like, “wow, can I do another 3 days of this?” Ultimately, I covered the compost toilet with two blankets instead of one, and that seemed to do the trick as it blocked out 95% of the smell thereafter.
14. What did you take away?
Nothing… and simultaneously everything.. If nothing mattered and you could never fail, what would you do? You’d do what you love and live fearlessly. That is one of the biggest takeaways I’m walking away with, as well as the deep spiritual experiences mentioned earlier.
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Neal Bakshi is an angel medium, certified spiritual life coach, reiki energy healer, breathwork instructor, and best-selling author. He grew up meditating since the age of five and is a former Goldman Sachs investment banking vice president. Neal now guides founders, executives, and professionals across Gen X, Y, and Z to embody and live their dream life through complete energetic shifts on the quantum and superconscious level.
Learn more at www.nealbakshi.com, on Instagram @neal.bakshi, LinkedIn, or via email [email protected].
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