Tomb to Womb: The Nurture in Darkness

I know very little about this yet — only what my higher self seems to remember and yearn for again, what research has taught me, and what I've begun to experience through my newly budding practice.

When, at the International Consciousness Forum, friends and colleagues heard Andrew Holecek describe his multi-annual tradition of retreating into isolation and total darkness (for lengths ranging 3-49 days) all were intrigued. Myself and one other were more than intrigued, we felt pulled toward the retreat.

Imagine shutting the world out for an entire week. No noise, no hustle, no demands, no distractions…just your mind, your heart, and three hot meals a day. What's not to love about this idea? Well, the total deprivation of light seems to be the turn off for some. In isolated cabins designed to be 100% devoid of light, 8,000 feet up in the mountains of Crestone, Colorado, students and practitioners of the Dzogchen tradition of meditation take their retreat into total darkness to deepen their contemplative practice. This November my friend and I will too.

He in cabin 4, myself just across the foot path in cabin 3, both isolated by choice for inner exploration and spiritual growth over the course of ten days. On the grounds of the Chamma Ling Tibetan Buddhist facility with a local chef delivering all three meals once a day, we'll be learning what it means to work with our minds when there's nothing to do but wrestle with one's own ego, and feel deeply into one's own heart. A day to settle in, 7 days in dark and stillness, 2 days to integrate our experiences after Chamma Ling's Director gives a little knock on our doors to bring us out of darkness and into the mountain sunrise.

As we spend the summer in preparation for our fall retreats, my friend deepening his longstanding practice of the Bon tradition of meditation, myself working for up to 3 hours a day with the experience of visual sense deprivation, the essence of what dark retreats will require of us begins to reveal itself as nurture.

A trending topic in "spiritual social media" is self love. While essential and wise, the concept of what it means to truly love one's self is as elusive to many clients I work with each week as it has always been to me. But what the dark has already begun to teach me is that nurture is a beautiful opening towards understanding how to love ourselves. Sitting in stillness, in the silence of a room in my home, a blackout mask removing any distractions from the world around me, I find that the mind wants to go first to fear, then to wandering, sometimes frustration, then boredom, then nurture. I think (and I've heard from past retreatants) after a constant 7 days of this it will land on love.

What nurture has taught me thus far is that it's an easily accessible instinct that feels very loving to all parts of ourselves. We're all instinctively driven to nurture ourselves — think of a time you had the stomach flu and there was no temptation whatsoever to eat something that isn't healthy, palatable and soothing. Junk food or cravings or quick fixes don't even occur to us. We are sick so we instinctively nurture ourselves to heal. Think of a time you "hit the wall" and were completely exhausted. There was no temptation to reply to more emails or keep the social plan you'd put on your calendar weeks before. You were spent so your instincts to nurture yourself prevailed over outside pressures or obligations. We are tired so we nurture ourselves to recover.

Nurture is instinctive self love and it comes quite naturally to us but how often do we have to be struck down before we allow the instinct to drive us?

What I've come to call "my dark hours practice" is teaching me that by simply choosing periods of stillness our instincts for self-nurturing don't require any thought or understanding about "how" to love ourselves. Instincts are hardwired, easily accessible, and are not far beneath the surface of our regular mode of operation. They aren't accompanied by conditioning, temperament, tendencies, or questions like, "is loving myself selfish?". Or worries like, "I feel guilty taking care of myself because I was raised to take care of everyone else".

What begins with choice; I choose to dedicate 10 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour to sitting in stillness (perhaps in darkness too), becomes instinct; I nurture and love myself without question because that is what's left when all else is removed. This is important! We do not have to learn how to love ourselves - do more, know more, understand more - we just have to remove everything that is not love. 

Stillness and dark-hour practices thoroughly reveal the temptations of our minds. The stories we tell ourselves, the ruminations we perpetuate, the false urgencies and pressures we put on ourselves, the distractions we reach for (obligations, other people's attention, addictions and vices like iPhone, caffeine, sugar…what else would you add to this list?). As we begin to learn how to work with our minds (no experience required) these self-imposed mental tangles begin to soften and get quieter. Glimpses of peace peek through. Nurture comes in. The mind settles then drifts then self soothes.

One reason I've found the conceptualization of self love to be so elusive is that the feeling of being loved is tailored specifically to each of us. No one can explain what it really means to love ourselves, nor can they help us understand how to do it, because no one knows what each unique person needs to start doing, stop doing, think, feel or become to be more loving to themselves. Only I can discover this for myself. Only you can discover this for yourself. Only we can unearth what truly loving ourselves means to each and every one of us, uniquely.

So, cover your eyes for a big surprise! Enter the darkness, into the tomb-like depths of your own mind, uncover where nurture lives in you, and feel the warmth of the womb your own love will become for you.

For more on what I’m calling “dark hours practice”, check out Andrew Holecek’s Beginners Guide to Dark Retreat on Tricycle Talks Podcast.