Retreat Into Darkness E-Book

Saskia John

• Herausgeber: Kamphausen Media GmbH
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 402

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

In 2003 and 2005, the author experienced two dark therapy retreats. For a period of 12 and 24 days, respectively, in the confines of a completely darkened room, and in the absence of any external distractions, Saskia John was confronted exclusively with herself for 24 hours of every day. The only interruption was a one-hour daily debriefing session with her facilitator. Both journeys into the depths of her soul served to expand her consciousness, as well as presenting experiences of an exploratory, integrational and adventurous nature. She was able to investigate hitherto unknown territory, which often took her to her personal limits, and at times, even beyond. The account presents a cross section of the experiential spectrum of the human psyche and is aimed at readers interested in the subject areas of psychology, transformation, spirituality, mysticism, healing of the Inner Child, lucid dreaming, dream analysis, deep meditation, Tai Chi, fasting and Beingness experiences.

Leseprobe

To my Parents

in Love and Gratitude

Saskia John

Retreat Into Darkness

A Path To Light

This publication is based on the German title”In den Tiefen meiner Seele. Erfahrungen in völliger Dunkelheit” by Saskia John, Wagner-Verlag, first edition, 2012.

© tao.de in J. Kamphausen Mediengruppe GmbH, Bielefeld, Germany

English Short Version

Author: Saskia John

Short version created and translated by: Gabriele Fröhlich Editorial by: Fran Pickering, Gabriele Fröhlich Cover design: WerbeFactory Luckenwalde, Germany

First Edition 2013

Published by tao.de in J. Kamphausen Mediengruppe GmbH, Bielefeld www.tao.de, e-Mail: [email protected]

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISBN 978-3-95529-298-0

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission. All images are © the artists, reproduced with the kind permission of the artists and/or their representatives.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

THE FIRST DARK RETREAT

THE TIME IN-BETWEEN

THE SECOND DARK RETREAT

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Preface

Nepal 1968. Hippy era. A horse caravan negotiates its way over winding, narrow, moonlit mountain pathways towards the Tibetan border; the destination is Lo Mustang, a tiny, independent kingdom within the nation of Nepal. A friend, who is a lama, and myself, aged eighteen, long hair, beads around our necks, in Indian clothes and full of naive dreams, are part of a group of kampas: Tibetan guerrillas, who organize their resistance against the Chinese occupation from Nepalese territory.

After a march lasting several weeks, we arrive in Lo Mustang. This tiny kingdom of Lo Mustang is completely unknown in the West at this time; never had a Western person set foot there until that day. I am stared at and touched with a great sense of curiosity. Cymbal and drum sounds emanate from inside a house and when I inquire about their origin, I am guided to a dark cellar, to meet a man who has lived here for a long time, in complete darkness. His aspiration is the dissolution of the limiting I-consciousness.

This was to be my first encounter with Yangtik, or Dark Therapy, as I refer to it today. I learned that Yangtik was the final phase to conclude the monks’ training in some Buddhist training centers. Since my stay in this region is both dangerous and illegal, I look for accommodation with a local farmer, ensure that my environment is completely darkened and begin my first dark therapy experience: seven weeks in complete solitude with yoga, meditation, and a daily debriefing with a lama.

Nothing dramatic happens in the first few days. I sleep or doze alternately; thoughts race through my head. I live through entrenched thought patterns. At other times, I am ‘gone’ for a time; feeling protected one moment, then suddenly very alone. The next moment I am bored, dreamlike thoughts floating by. I perceive symbolic, threedimensional, hyper-real images or film-like projections on the walls. I experience deep states of self-knowing and, in the background, there is a simultaneous, imperceptible process of an inner emptying underway. I am becoming more purified; only beingness, eternal Now; beingness focused on a single point, a kind of energy pulsating, feeling alternately hot and cold.

The central process in the dark is characterized by an increase in clarity of consciousness. In general, my consciousness tends to be obscured and burdened with mental activities. During this emptying, there is a simultaneous sharpening in experiencing the soul’s processes taking place. In Tibet, it is said that the clarity of consciousness is enhanced seven-fold in the dark.

Darkness for me causes emptiness: that is, the absence of thoughts and feelings. In the more advanced stages, this expresses itself as the experience of en-light-enment: hence, light and emptiness are essentially two words for the same thing.

In this state, I experience the world as true, beautiful, and good. My body goes to sleep but my spirit stays awake. As a result, clarity develops, in both the waking and the dreaming state. The clarity from the waking state carries over into the dreaming state; the dream becomes something like a daydream. I experience my dreams with greater clarity.

Soon, beings that originate in my imagination begin to appear and can initially only be seen with closed eyes, but increasingly, they can also be clearly seen with open eyes.

They flap like clothes and shape-shift quickly into other types of beings and scenes. Soon, stabilization in the flow of images ensues and I am able to hold on to an internal image for a longer time.

Repeatedly, I experience flashes of beingness; recognize the meaning and essence of all Beingness. I learn that a being is only able to live if it manages to capture an unconscious snapshot of the pure state of Beingness every few seconds. In everyday human life, states of beingness have been reduced to short flashes of being that surface imperceptibly between two individual moments. In the same way that we require deep sleep states for our brains to recover, we are equally in need of experiencing flashes of beingness in order to recover from the chronic battles of everyday existence.

Later on, this pure beingness-state tears, as though through a curtain, and for a few seconds, I experience the indescribable, primordial nature of the world. After this happens, all knowledge and wisdom of the human world are annihilated and appear merely as in a vague dream.

After a period in the darkness, I get a sense of being able to see. Initially, it looks like the nebulous illumination akin to the light of dawn. There is an occasional bluish hue of light emerging. My perception has become refined and can now appreciate pure energy, which is distinct from the clear inner light of the spirit. The latter started to appear after about four weeks, after my losing all concepts of things, and after no longer experiencing myself as an individual I, except on rare occasions. This light is everything; everything is this light - it is within me and everywhere around me.

When I step out into daylight after forty-nine days, I experience the sunlight as the spiritual light; nature exposes the entire world, in the shape of every leaf and rock, as a miniature cosmos. A world in which every thing is everything. After a few days, I take my bundle and look into the eyes of my lama, the eternal wanderer through the Himalayas, before we wordlessly continue on our individual paths. We have never met again. What has remained? Well, the nature of Spirit has stayed within me!

Many years later, and after two further retreats in darkness in Kinnauer (Northern India) and Tibet, a journalist asked me if he would be able to undergo a dark therapy under my supervision. I told him that the retreats in darkness were no therapy and that, also, I had no space in my house for him. As he was a friend, I set up a room for him anyway and so the first dark therapy retreat effectively began. Later, I gave up my work as a psychotherapist, bought a larger house and began to take in people to do dark therapy retreats. This was how Saskia John found her way to me: the woman presenting, in the form of this book, her account of the extensive experiences she had in the course of her dark retreats.

Saskia has been here several times and her last stay goes back several years. She narrated her impressions while in darkness during her retreat and we recorded all that she said on to tape. This material which flowed out of her in a constant daily stream, and which we had debriefings about every evening, sheds a light on a new psychology, at least in the sense that it allows some insights into some hitherto little-explored territories of our souls. It has taken Saskia a certain amount of time to prepare her experiences for publication but now the oeuvre is out. Anyone wishing to open up any hidden back doors to their spirit will find, in these very personal experiences, a golden thread through the labyrinth that is their soul.

For a long time, Saskia experienced a good dose of embarrassment at the notion of revealing some of her more intimate soul states, but at the end of the day, the truth is simply true – and all darkness ultimately leads towards the light, whichever way.

Holger Kalweit

January 2011

Introduction

Iwas born in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany), in the year that they built the Berlin Wall. Both my parents were war children, and both were teachers. I grew up surrounded by walls that defined a world of materialism, obedience, atheism and an atmosphere of ‘do as you are told.’

My path was always predetermined, and I pursued the anticipated stages diligently, one after the other, as was expected of me: completing secondary school, an apprenticeship, qualifying for university entrance, enrolling for tertiary studies, getting married, having children, carrying on my profession. Up until the time that the Wall came down, I worked as a veterinarian, and as far as I was concerned, my world was an ordered one. I never questioned that world.

The year the wall came down did not just have a profoundly transformative effect on Germany and on the world, it also became the year that marked a major turning point in my personal life, as I began to turn my gaze towards my inner life. Little did I know at that time how greatly my life would eventually become transformed in the years to come.

As you can see, the theme of the ‘wall’ has accompanied me since the time of my birth - perhaps it is for this reason that I have invested so much energy in allowing any walls within myself to also fall, as well as expanding my internal boundaries at the same time.

All my aspirations focus on the inner values of life: towards prosperity on an inner level, individual sovereignty, compassion and unconditional love. I experience a profound longing for freedom and awakening; an impulse that has at times urged me to explore some things in life that others may choose not to.

Throughout many years, I have been exploring the inner universe of my soul, through experiences such as meditation, Tai Chi, traveling, personal development workshops, therapy sessions and two retreats in darkness, and have ended up with a treasure trove of my own experiential knowledge.

In my own explorations, I have found confirmation for many of the wisdoms imparted by different elders, as well as those that I have come across in the corresponding literature. In the process, I have put to rest any serious doubts regarding the realness of my experiences and ultimately, have found my personal truth.

This exploration of the psychical landscape continues to involve deep-level learning, accompanied by processes of letting go, of inner growth and an expansion of consciousness that have been ongoing for a long time. They are part of a cleansing process on an inner level that, for me, has been at times an extremely difficult and painful one. It has involved the surrender of my former comfort zones and required me to trust in something that was completely unknown to me.

In the process of these explorations, I have received deep insights into the psychical universe, into the way the human psyche functions: the interrelated nature between spirit, soul and the physical body and its effects on physical health. This in turn has opened up new possibilities for me from a healing practitioner’s perspective, as I am able to see things with greater clarity and within a larger context.

For now, let me go back to the year when my life turned yet again in a different direction - the year of the millennial turn. In the summer of 2000, I met Gabriele Fröhlich for the first time; an encounter that has often struck me as a case of preordained destiny. The inner work that I undertook with her help so captured me that an intense working relationship developed, that continues to this day. I learned about her model for The Intelligent Heart and its application for my own inner processes, and have been applying it in my therapeutic work with the clients in my practice for some time now.

It became evident to me that the deep-level growth and transformational processes that I had experienced for myself were no exception, but were experienced in similar ways by individuals who were committed to their own inner process for an extended period. While already engaged in my inner work with Gabriele, I also experienced the family constellation concept for the first time, through another teacher. I found my early experiences with that approach, as well as those gained throughout my later training in Systemic-Phenomenological Family Constellation work with Bert and Sophie Hellinger, to be wonderfully enhancing of my work with Gabriele.

In the course of my inner growth process, I came across an article on Dark Therapy in a professional journal published in 2002, which immediately captured my imagination, and which I was unable to get out of my mind.

I was curious, not knowing what this might entail, and at the same time, the article instilled some fear in me: the thought of spending an extended period in absolute darkness in complete solitude! Hence, it took me almost a year before I worked up the courage to contact Holger Kalweit, the author of the article, and ask him for an appointment.

In the summer of 2003, I went into my first dark retreat adventure, for a period of twelve days. During that time, I recorded the narration of all my experiences to a Dictaphone, in order to process them for myself in an in-depth way later.

At one point during that phase, I went into a deep crisis and at one of Holger’s visits, I just handed him the Dictaphone, in order to alert him to what was going on inside me.

He recognized the value of the recordings and encouraged me to publish my experiences in a book. Initially, I was very enthusiastic about the idea and started transcribing the recorded texts from the cassettes immediately following the dark retreat. While transcribing the text, I often found myself entering into further deep inner processes and gaining valuable insights about myself. I added them to the corresponding transcript sections in italics as I went along.

This process took a total of two years. During that time, I decided to undergo a second dark retreat, this time for a twenty-five-day period. I assumed that I would just be able to follow on from the experiences that I had left off with at the end of my previous dark retreat, and to expand on them in a more in-depth process. I did not even consider the possibility that things might turn out in a completely different way.

Following the completion of my second dark retreat, I again embarked on the transcription of the many newly-recorded cassettes, which took me approximately one year.

While still busily attending to that task, I was repeatedly plagued by fear at the prospect of publishing my experiences, including all my corresponding thoughts and feelings. I felt like I was about to bare myself and expose myself nakedly to the world with my whole being. Besides, so many incidents were associated with a considerable amount of pain, and these I had no desire to share with the world.

I braved the fears and the pain and eventually dissolved them throughout many individual sessions. After another three years, with some interruptions, and another three revisions of both manuscripts, I finally considered them ready for publication.

During the dark retreats, I used Gabriele’s Intelligent Heart model as a frame of reference for the integration of my experiences. Thus, in the summer of 2008, I naturally asked Gabriele for her feedback on both manuscripts, to ensure that I had been applying her model in the correct way concerning any interpretations and explanations of my experiences and dreams. Her feedback motivated me to go through my experiences yet again and to add, from my current perspective, other experiences and insights that followed on from the earlier ones.

In parallel to these developments, I met Thomas Hübl, another spiritual teacher, in spring 2008, and enrolled in his three-year Timeless-Wisdom-Training (TWT) program. The work with Thomas blended seamlessly into my ongoing inner work and further helped to support my entire process in a wonderful way. Part of the second-year course requirement was to carry out a project around something that was close to our heart and would serve as a positive contribution to the world at the same time. I decided on the book project as a way of fulfilling this course requirement. The result was the long version of this book, titled “In the Depths of my Soul – Experiences in Complete Darkness”. It contains almost all transcripts of the recordings from my two retreat experiences and also a chapter by Gabriele Fröhlich with her model on The Intelligent Heart as the frame of reference for the psycho-dynamic evaluation of my dark retreat experiences. In addition, the long version includes a large volume of retrospectively added recognitions, insights and psychodynamic evaluations from an updated perspective. These additions were the results of my repeated reworking of the scripts in the course of several years. In this way, the long version is designed to provide readers with an interest in the more in-depth psychodynamic background, with additional insights on these experiences, from a personal development perspective.

The present short version includes a limited selection of the transcripts of the recordings from my two retreat experiences in complete darkness, of twelve and twenty-four days, respectively. It is intended for readers with an interest in personal development and consciousness related matters.

The accounts comprise both my confrontation with the dark unconscious realm (the ‘shadow’ aspects in C. G. Jung’s terminology), as well as any experiences of a more transpersonal nature.

This is a very personal book. In it, I am exposing many intimate details about my life, and in so doing, I am essentially offering insights into my entire being.

In publishing this book, it is my hope and deep desire that the information imparted here may assist those people who are already well on their path of sincere self-exploration. I would like to offer them some inspirations and opportunities for recognizing some of the involved dangers and the risks of being led astray.

If this book evokes any deep feelings within you, it may be appropriate to check with yourself whether it seems a good time for you to be reading it or if continuing reading is the right thing for you to do at that time. Remember, you always have the choice; it is up to you to decide responsibly.

I sincerely hope that reading this book will provide you with much suspense, many insights and perhaps even some deep-level experiences of your own - or just a lot of fun!

Saskia John

March 2011

The First Dark Retreat

Day One

Iwas so excited in anticipation of what lay ahead. I had just put the seven-and-a-half-hour drive, from my home base near Berlin to the Black Forest, behind me. In my excitement, I was barely able to take in the visual delights of the magnificent landscape around me, and this was not going to change for the next few days. I had come here to explore darkness.

I was scared. Particularly of the things that I might see or experience that, according to normal human perception, were not supposed to exist; ghosts, for example. I was terrified about the possibility that my mind could blow a fuse and become unhinged, or that I could just drop dead in a sudden state of shock.

Eventually it was late afternoon, my heart was beating frantically and, after exchanging a short first ‘hello’ with Holger, my facilitator, it was with very mixed feelings that I reluctantly followed him to my assigned apartment. Holger would be guiding me through these twelve days. He would bring me teas and be available for a debriefing about my experiences for an hour every day. For the remaining twenty-three hours, I would be alone with the darkness and myself.

I gazed into a tiny, very simply furnished room that featured a cozily-sloping roof. On the right side, against the wall, there was the bed, a small coffee table against the left wall and a mattress on the floor, about two meters in front of me. That was all. I felt intimidated by the simplicity and found the cramped surroundings rather overwhelming. I could not yet appreciate the advantage of these simple furnishings for my sojourn in the darkness at that stage.

Holger pointed me to the bathroom, which struck me as rather generous in its proportions, in contrast to the room itself. Bathtub, toilet and washbasin; all I needed was there. Every window and even the tiniest openings to the rooms and hallway had been carefully darkened. Before leaving, Holger announced that he would be back fifteen to thirty minutes later to turn off the lights.

The thought of the darkness made me swallow, but there was no time to surrender to such sentiments. I unpacked my toiletries, changed into comfortable clothes and tried to remember where I put everything. I also got my mineral supplements, juices and vegetable broth powder ready, as I was going to fast for the next twelve days. Fortunately, there was not much to remember as the room was so tiny, and I had only brought the essentials.

Soon I could see Holger back in the doorway and thought to myself, “Oh my God! This is when things are going to get serious!”

He explained that he would take out the fuses for all the lights in case I accidentally knocked any light switches in the dark. I felt very uneasy, no chance of tricking my way around this! Before Holger left, I again mentioned my fear to him. What I did not tell him was that I was so scared, I felt like clutching on to him, keeping him from leaving, and in that moment I felt like a small child who was looking to daddy for protection and comfort. Obviously, it would have been far too ridiculous to say this to him though.

He assured me that everybody reacted by being scared at this stage, but that once in the darkness people did not want to come out again.

I took it all in, as outwardly calmly as I could muster, but not believing it within myself, struggling against the fear and with tears welling up. I would happily have instantly disappeared into a mouse hole for good. I was in an inner conflict between wanting to leave immediately, forgetting about the whole affair on the one hand, and on the other, being full of suspense about what to expect.

As it would have felt very silly crying in front of Holger, I bravely swallowed my tears and said nothing. He finally took his leave and turned the lights off. In that moment, something inside of me surrendered, and I resigned myself to my self-chosen destiny.

I immediately proceeded to examine my surroundings in a rather hectic manner, tried to recall everything that I hoped to remember and checked if I could find everything. After that, I calmed down somewhat, everything in its place. I was thoroughly exhausted and, before long, I fell asleep.

Day Two

On waking up after my first night in the darkness my heart was beating wildly and audibly against the wall of my chest. My head felt contracted and painful; my mind was hyperactive. My eyes were hurting and I had not been to the toilet yet, despite the laxative. I felt icy-cold. The fear was gone, or was I just suppressing it? I did not care, but was just glad that I did not feel it anymore.

I found that being surrounded by the darkness was exciting. Even performing the simplest of tasks, like carefully feeling my way forward to reach for a juice, or walking, felt somehow new and different.

In time, I knew exactly where everything was. I walked extremely carefully and with supreme attention to avoid bumping into things. The pitch-black darkness required my full attention and aroused my curiosity and suspense in anticipation of any potentially bigger experiences. Being unable to see a thing, I quickly became aware of the degree to which I normally relied on my eyesight. This is what it must feel like to be blind and confronted with a completely different world. Your priorities change considerably and the other senses, particularly touch and hearing, take on a far more important role. My hands became replacement eyes and I wished that I had gigantic ears, to be able to hear even better; they felt too small!

My first attempts at my Tai Chi-practice in the dark proved to be incredibly difficult. I constantly felt as though I was standing in the wrong way; no monitoring was possible, since my eyes were missing. Tip-of-foot kick? Forget it! I was incapable of standing on one leg, constantly losing my balance.

It felt as though I had regressed straight back to my greenhorn days, eight years ago! I was slightly peeved. While continuing with very slow movements, to avoid knocking myself against anything, I could reach deeper into my body now. I could feel my body in a way that I had never before experienced.

Because of the small room size, my inability to see anything, and my altered sense of equilibrium and spatial orientation in the dark, I began to drift into a different state of attention that was much more concentrated and heightened. This allowed me to perceive the external space, and at the same time, the internal space of my body, with far greater precision.

I focused on my hip and could sense how every single movement originated in this point. I suddenly understood what my Chinese Tai Chi-teacher was referring to regarding the harmonic synergy between hip, arms and legs. I had always thought I had grasped the meaning of that, now I realized that I had grasped it as a mental concept at best, but not on a deep internal level. How interesting!

Only shortly afterwards, I mumbled to myself, “If only you had spent all that money on a trip to India, surely you would have experienced much bigger stuff.”

I began to realize the degree to which I had come here with an expectation of experiencing exciting things and I was struggling with letting go of this expectation, this anticipatory stance. I reminded myself of why I was here: to find out, in the darkness, who I was, where I came from and where I was going. I had a desire to submerge myself more deeply into Beingness.

The truth was that I felt as if I was left to stand in the rain, swamped by a sense of discontent and annoyance. I seemed unable to manage this thing about letting go! At the time, I thought to myself that if things continued like this for the rest of my time here I would have no deep-level experiences whatsoever!

Hmm. In my annoyance, I had regressed back to desiring, wanting, expecting, and standing in my own way again. So instead, I proceeded to whisper words of encouragement to myself: “That’s right, it’s only my first real day spent in the darkness; just try to simply be and make use of the time for resting. Just let the thoughts come. Everything goes.”

I found it hard to muster the concentration required for meditating and was unable to breathe deeply into my belly.

At that point, I was already heavily confronted with the two separate sides in me. On the one hand, I thought, “What crap to be hanging around here in the dark, spending all this money and not being able to do a thing!” On the other hand, there was also the awareness that anything that I could have been doing instead would merely have been a distraction from that which is, from the Now. Not wanting anything, not expecting, not desiring. Letting go! How does one do that?

At a time that I estimated to be in the afternoon, my heartbeat had started to calm down and my excitement had largely subsided. My head continued to feel contracted and seemed to be literally getting noisy when I wrapped the thick black cloth around it to protect my eyes against any daylight entering while I was airing the bathroom.

In my first debriefing session last night, Holger had asked me many questions, such as: “What is the I? What are thoughts? Where do they come from?”

Holger described our thoughts as originating from nothingness, as though they were jumping upwards like dolphins, and that the idea was to dive into that minuscule gap between two thoughts to make it into another dimension. He also explained that, in a very real sense, we exist in the soul realm, at the exact location to which we project ourselves in our imagination. We are what we think. As no location, space or time existed in the soul realm, it was particularly difficult to describe that realm in common words. Behind the soul realm is the spirit world, another reality in its own right. That makes it three planes: one: the body, two: the soul realm and three, the highest level: the spirit world.

Later, I allowed our conversation to pass through my mind once more and I realized that whatever Holger had told me about the I was no longer there. As I intended to go over my experiences and the conversations with Holger again at a later stage after the dark therapy retreat, I asked for his permission to record our conversations throughout the retreat. It did not take me long to work out the functions of my Dictaphone in the dark; it turned out to be much easier than I had expected.

Day Three

After what seemed like a thirty-six hour second day in the retreat, I woke up from a dream, went to the bathroom and noticed a series of tiny stripes of light, as though there was a soft light shining through the slits of an incompletely rolled-out blind.

On waking, my head felt clear again and I felt great, almost euphoric in anticipation of my third day in the dark ahead.

In my mind, I recycled the extreme tension that I had felt in my body during the first two days in the darkness. I had been unable to breathe deeply, there was an overall sense of tightness within me, and my heart was beating palpably against my chest wall at a fast rate. These were all physical indicators of anxiety, yet I had not been aware of any fear, at least not on a conscious level, but then my body seemed to tell me otherwise.

I wondered how the body must react when darkness is imposed as punishment. At least I was here in the darkness on a voluntary basis and knowing that I could call it off at any time. How then must people, and particularly children, fare, who are locked up in darkness against their choice, as a punitive measure? How extreme the physical reactions must be when, as well as being trapped in a confined space, there is also fear involved.

War images were appearing before my inner eye: people in bomb shelters, seeking protection from the air raids above. I began to appreciate that it is possible to die of fear!

I sat down to meditate, but it was just as yesterday: breathing deeply was impossible, I felt completely tense inside, my legs began to hurt instantly, my breathing became faster and shallower, my heart was becoming agitated and I began to sweat. Was this a fear reaction?

I tried to reassure myself and focused on my first and second chakras. “Wow, aren’t your reactions interesting? Just keep going, don’t worry about what the body does and let us see what happens.” As I was having these thoughts, I started to feel calmer inside.

I became aware of a flood of thoughts that were running through my mind incessantly, as though they were trying to keep me from achieving an inner state of calmness.

“OK,” I told myself, “all thoughts are permitted, they have their place, but I will continue regardless.”

The flood of thoughts continued unabated, as though they were determined to keep me from diving into the depth. I felt as if I had regressed to a beginner’s status, as if I had never meditated before! What was it about these unbelievable difficulties?

After stubbornly continuing to concentrate on the chakras, I finally arrived on the fourth chakra level, on the level of my heart. The notion of arriving in my heart space reminded me of a Bert Hellinger seminar, where the focus was on making space in our heart for our mother or other significant person.

This inspired the gathering of my core family before me on an inner level, and I guided my parents, and maternal and paternal grandparents, to a specially designated place of honor for them in my heart space. This was a very touching moment!

I introduced my family to my paternal grandparents, as I had never met either of them. How pleased they were to see us all. Waves of love and affection were flowing through me.

Once we had all become acquainted, I looked towards all my ancestors and asked them to be kindly disposed towards my family and myself. An affirmative nod from them filled my heart with warmth and made it feel like it was expanding.

I decided to include my deceased stepmother as well. This woman had given me so much and I had grown to love her very much as a second mother. I thanked her once again for the time we had had together and then returned to the large circle. I felt very much at peace with this, enriched and wonderfully complete in a touching and novel sense. My thoughts also went to my husband. He, too, was in my heart, even though we recently separated.

I then concentrated on my fifth chakra (the throat area) and found myself in my retreat space in the Himalayas, which I was familiar with from earlier meditations. I had set up a cave for myself at four-thousand-meter altitude. I sat outside the cave, my gaze sweeping across towering mountains and wide valleys. I enjoyed the stillness, the expansiveness and the refreshingly clear air.

Inside the cave, a tunnel took a right turn that continued in an upward direction. Soon I got to a hatch that blocked the path from that point on. I had been trying to open it for the last two years, but had never succeeded. I knew that if I succeeded in opening that hatch I would make it into the next chamber, the sixth chakra.

I examined the hatch. It looked different to the previous times; more like a heavy iron trap door that I should be able to move with some effort. I stared at the hatch in disbelief! I could barely believe it! Hurray! Yet before I even got a chance to open it, a thought pushed itself into the foreground, “What will I find behind this iron hatch?”

An uneasy feeling replaced my initial excitement. My heart immediately responded with several faster and more audible beats. Suddenly I realized that it had been my fear all along that had kept me from opening the hatch for the last two years. I was gobsmacked.

While slowly opening the hatch with clammy hands I spotted a staircase. Slowly and very cautiously, I climbed the stairs, my heart beating audibly all the while. At the top, I got to a hayloft of enormous proportions, walled-in by thick wooden planks. A pleasant scent of hay wafted through my nose; I could clearly smell it despite the considerable draft.

One and a half meters in front of me, a dark-brown mouse with a black mark on its back was nibbling on some grains. It looked well nourished. Very content. Very happy.

Some fifteen meters ahead of me were some bales of hay. On turning around, I noticed some big fat straw bales neatly piled against the wall up to ceiling level. The many particles of hay on the ground drifted back and forth in the wind. In the center of the hayloft, the draft was strongest. It could have been quite cozy in there if it had not been for the strong, cold draft.

I asked the tiny mouse why it ate so much. The reply was that it had to fatten up for winter, since there was hardly anything to feed on here in winter, and besides, it got terribly cold.

I looked around; to my right was a large sliding gate that was wide open. On the left wall was a gaping hole; one of the wooden planks was broken in several places; other planks had gaps in between and they were leaking. Now it was obvious to me where the draft was coming from.

I asked the mouse if it would be better off if I did some repairs on the loft. It said no. There still would not be enough to feed on here during winter; it still needed to fatten up now to make it through winter.

I spontaneously decided to put milk, grains and some cheese out and prepare some hay to make a warm and cozy place for the mouse. After I was done, I asked it, “Will this be OK for you, little mouse?”

The mouse gazed at me intensely for quite a while with its deeply black, large saucer eyes before it scuttled away. I interpreted this to mean that it felt safe now and no longer needed to gorge itself as a provision for difficult times.

I decided to give the hayloft a thorough spring clean as well as repair everything, create some order and make it nice and cozy. I liked it here.

After a short while, I had repaired the broken plank, and leaning against the timber wall, I looked across at the opened gate. It seemed to be quite high up there, as I could not see much, except for the gray sky. Besides, it was also rather hazy and stormy outside and my stomach went into contractions at the thought of my going up any closer to the gate. A mighty wind blew inside, which did not contribute to any coziness factor. I could feel the urge welling up to shut the gate.

I slowly walked up to the gate with some trepidation. From a distance of two meters, I risked a quick peek down there: dizzying! The wind was hitting hard against my face and body.

I was flooded with thoughts that made me even more scared: “If I move any closer I could lose my balance and fall, or I could be pulled up and swept outside by the wind.” I was conscious of these thoughts, but was unable to turn them off. I felt completely in the grip of the thoughts and the subsequent fear - that queasiness in the stomach.

I kept a safe distance from the opening, advanced towards the back section of the gate and pushed hard against it, trying to shut it. The wind was noisily whistling around. Brrrrr! Even with all my available strength, I could not get the gate to shut. I gave up at that point. It just had to stay open for the time being.

Yet I could not relax with the way it was and so I took another good look at it: a huge, heavy iron gate, pushed up towards the right side and sitting on completely rusty rollers.

Since I was unable to close the gate, the wind was very uncomfortable and the temperature much cooler by now, I decided to leave the loft at that point. I closed the hatch and walked back again, resuming my position on my quiet spot with its magnificent view across the mountains, and felt fantastic.

My bladder’s call to the bathroom required me to end my meditation.

I knew within myself that on a deeper level the image of the mouse metaphorically captured my unconscious fears, a more elaborate setting of the inner stage of my ‘wanting to hide in a mouse-hole’ when I had first arrived here. In the course of the dark therapy retreat the inner scenes increasingly captured elements relating to my infancy fears evoked by emotional nurturing deficits. They were at the same time unconscious attempts at remedying this situation in an ongoing right-brain, image generating inner process, like an ongoing film sequence, depicting the healing-stages- in- process of this emotional theme. In this sense, the mouse’s impulse towards fattening-up, so that it would make it through the winter of deprivation, was really a symbolic reflection of my existential fears, generated by what had at times felt like the emotionally cold winter of my childhood. Through lovingly attending to the mouse’s concerns it finally received the needed attention, warmth, closeness, love, security, and nurturing, so that its deep-level fears could over time be transformed towards a greater sense of internal security, symbolized by the mouse’s finally being able to leave the hayloft.

When I later decided to check the hayloft again and lifted the hatch up just enough to fit my head and upper body through, I could see with one glance towards the open gate that it was raining and storming outside. Still standing halfway up the staircase and holding the hatch up with my back, I refilled the food bowls for the little mouse, seeing that everything had long been devoured. I poured fresh milk into one of the bowls and cut an extra big chunk of cheese to put into the other one. Afterwards, I closed the hatch again, as it really was not very cozy out there.

On my way back from the bathroom to my room I lost my orientation; assuming that I needed to continue straight ahead I ran into the wall. I found the bathroom door at a forty-five-degree angle to my right; it took me a while to reorient myself. I found even the tiny hallway difficult to negotiate.

Settling down again, and after some time of intense concentration, I succeeded in focusing on some individual thoughts that seemed to enter my field of vision from the front. I clutched at the next upcoming thought, which, curiously, was in a bubble, and pinned it to the ceiling, to ensure that it would stay there without causing me any further distraction. I cracked up laughing a while later when I looked at the ceiling. It had taken on the appearance of a body covered in cupping glasses! There must have been at least fifty of them. Inside the bubbles, I recognized the thoughts, some of which were now complaining about being trapped at the ceiling! Some were furiously beating against the thick walls of the bubbles from the inside.

I grinned triumphantly back at them, feeling certain that they would no longer have any chance to pester and distract me. Now the power to decide lay with me. I was the one who could decide if, and for how long, I wished to give them attention. When I focused my attention, I could see exactly which thought was trapped within each glass. I was amazed at the different themes that had gathered there within a short period.

However, as soon as I attached another thought to the ceiling, I was already caught up in the next one; it either appeared in front of me or I immediately found myself entangled in it, distracted and carried away by it, unable to see where it had come from.

More and more new thoughts were coming up; I could pin them to the ceiling and be rid of them for a short while, but only until the next appeared to distract me and carry me away. I felt harassed and encroached upon, and without the foggiest idea as to what I could do about it. They seemed never ending!

Later, out of nowhere, a three-dimensional dinosaur head with gigantic teeth suddenly appeared. I could clearly see its impressive teeth from close-up; they were big, sharp and pointy. I spontaneously addressed the dino head, “Look at those huge teeth you have!” It disappeared again, only to come back shortly afterwards, and later fade again. For me this conjured up fantasies about what it must feel like for Little Red Riding Hood to be conversing with the Big Bad Wolf without any fear. Except that I was unable to get any responses out of the dino.

Then a thought popped up about those bicycles that Holger had mentioned. One man, who did a dark retreat with him once, was repeatedly shown a scene of bicycles falling from the ceiling. Eventually, the entire room had filled with them, leaving him hardly any space for walking around. He had been at a loss what to make of that. I could hardly contain myself from laughing; the way Holger had told the story was just too comical.

My own situation with the bicycles now was akin to that of the man who was determined not to think of any camels while meditating, lest he would be unable to meditate.

In the same way as that man was obviously unable to think of anything but camels, so my head was inundated with bicycles. Initially, I found this quite amusing and could not stop laughing myself to tears. Later, when the bicycles had made a nice nest for themselves in my head and I could not get rid of them anymore, it became extremely irritating! Perhaps this was my punishment for having laughed so much about the ‘bicycle man.’

Eventually I got into a state of extreme laziness, just lying around, doing nothing. I did not recall ever having been this lazy in my life! All the while, my thoughts were moving here and there, without rhyme or reason: cutting my son’s hair, discussing school-related matters with another, philosophizing with a girlfriend, my parents and my daughter in America. Everything just popped up for a short moment and then disappeared again, only to give way to a new emerging thought. This went on for quite some time.

In between all these thoughts, a new three-dimensional dinosaur head popped up in front of me, even larger than the first one. Its teeth, too, were truly impressive and so close up and clearly visible, as though I was studying them in a museum. The moment I focused my attention on any particular tooth it seemed to come closer, as though I was zooming in on it to be able to examine it more easily. Cool! These teeth were imposing, awe-inspiring; they exuded strength, dignity, grandeur; or they could instill fear. I could not help respecting them for their power and might - yet I felt no fear. Despite its vivid, photorealistic appearance, I was fully aware that this was just a picture generated by my imagination.

A flower replaced the dino head. This was followed by starlets. It was a bit like at the movies. Once the feature movie had ended, more thoughts popped up again. Back and forth, devoid of any context; in the end I found this quite tiring.

To my surprise, I was still losing my balance easily during Tai Chi. It required complete focus on the center of my body to continue even standing upright. As a result, I was using vastly higher levels of concentration and attention than during normal practice.

Following Tai Chi, I treated myself to a wonderful chamomile tea. My body felt completely flexible now and I could feel a powerful, warm sensation streaming through me.

I thought I might try meditating for a change. I had to laugh at that thought, as it suddenly struck me that so far, I had been doing little else here than just that.

I settled into a half-lotus position, feeling very content within myself, and descending into my inner world with a sense of excitement, as if in anticipation of something. I went back to the hayloft, opened the hatch and looked directly at the little mouse. It was munching away on the thick piece of cheese between its little paws. It was clearly enjoying the taste; the milk was also gone except for a few drops.

Snow had been drifting inside through the open gate. I removed the sparkling snow with a broom. I shuddered as I heard it dropping into unknown depths.

I decided to work on the gate once more. I removed the rust from the rollers as much as possible and oiled them thoroughly. Then I removed the hook that held the gate in place and attempted once more to shut it. I decided to risk a peek outside.

I saw whiteness, like in a dense fog. Nothing else could be seen. I slowly pushed the gate shut with a loud screeching noise. Finally, I was standing in darkness and decided to reopen it slightly to check if there were any windows. To my left, I spotted two windows with their shutters down and cobwebs everywhere, as though the place had been uninhabited for centuries!

I decided to clean up for starters. The loft was some thirty meters long and about fifteen to twenty meters wide. I swept the loose hay into a pile, removed the cobwebs, opened the window shutters and pushed the gate completely shut. Finally, it felt so much cozier up here!