Hello Darkness…

… my old friend.

As I began to love myself, I understood that in any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at exactly the right moment. So I could be calm. Today, I call it “self-confidence”.

— Charlie Chaplin

The door closed with a hollow thud, and the world vanished.

No light, no outlines, not even the faintest shadow. Just thick, absolute, infinite blackness. I lifted my hand to my face and waved. I saw nothing. Not even a vague outline. I was alone in the void.

And the very first thought I had was: So it has begun.

Entering the Womb

The room was no bigger than a hut, a dome carved into the earth, ten or twelve feet in diameter. The ceiling rose just enough that I could stand in the middle, though the edges pressed down low, womb-like. Before shutting the door, I had unpacked my few belongings and placed them neatly.

There was a mattress on the floor, a natural toilet (a plastic bag in a bucket) with wood chips to the side, a meditation cushion, a small wooden roller massage stick, a tennis ball, a tealight and a lighter if required, and nothing else. No window. No flicker of light. Even the food would arrive through a double-portal system; one hatch closing before the other opened, ensuring no outside light ever entered.

I crouched down on my hands and knees and explored like an animal, mapping out the territory by touch. Mattress here. Toilet there. Stick against the wall. I sat cross-legged on the meditation cushion in the center and waited for fear to arrive. It never did. Instead, the darkness and silence said, Welcome home.

When Time Dissolves

The first casualty of darkness is time.

I sat in meditation, back straight, heart open. Was it five minutes? Five hours? I had no way of knowing. Later, I lay down, drifted into a dream, woke again. Was it night? Was it morning? There was no distinction.

Einstein was right: time is a stubbornly persistent illusion. And in darkness, the illusion shatters.

Only two faint clues tethered me to any rhythm: once a day, food slid silently through the hatch. And on some nights, or what I believed were nights, I heard the faintest sounds of crickets. Beyond that, nothing.

Chronos time, the time of clocks, was obliterated. In its place was Kairos time, an obliteration into presence. Each breath is NOW, each moment is all there is. It was not just theory. It was a lived reality.

The Body’s Secrets

When the mind grows quiet, the body begins to speak.

I pressed the tennis ball into my left hamstring, and a knot I had carried for years screamed back at me, then softened under patient loving awareness. I rolled the wooden massage stick along my right knee, breathing into the dull ache until it melted. The resistance band I brought with me became my gym: chest presses, bicep curls, hip openers. Some hours, I became the warrior, sweat dripping, heart pounding. Other hours, I became the sage, folded into long yin postures, melting into the floor.

My body felt heard, for once. Not rushed, not distracted. Every knot, every ache was given full attention. In the release, my body felt reborn. It was as though the darkness had handed me back my younger body.

Eating in the Dark

Vegan, organic, absolutely delicious food arrived once a day at an unknown time.

In darkness, I groped for the latch to open the panel and felt around for the fresh supply of food in a heavy bag. I then carefully removed every item and placed them in a semi-circle around me. Next, I opened each flask or Tupperware one by one, and with a scent or taste, placed it in a category of beverage, soup, main course, vegetables, fruits, or dessert.

I lifted a strawberry to my lips. Without sight, there was only taste. It burst open like fireworks of sensations inside my mouth with sweetness, acidity, texture, and delicious juiciness. My entire being was consumed by it. There was nothing else. Just me, in total darkness, eating fruit.

Food in darkness is not just food. It is a teacher. It showed me how little I needed. Unhealthy eating habits dissolved. Cravings evaporated. The small addictions of daily life, like scroll-eating and binge snacking, had no foothold here. For the first time in years, I was not consuming out of a distracted need. I was tasting out of choice.

The Roommate

The voice.

You know the one. The constant roommate in the head. The commentator, the judge, the jury, the executioner. It sounds like me, pretty good at impersonations, so convincing that I often mistake it for me.

In darkness, there was no escape from it. I sat and listened as it yammered. At times it produced emotions like irritation, sadness and longing that spread through my body. I did not fight them. I surrendered, not as in waving the white flag of defeat. Surrender as in going ‘all in’ with the experience of life, regardless of my preferences, and without interfering or influencing in any way.

Old memories surfaced: arguments unresolved, misunderstandings from decades ago, disappointments that still clung. They replayed themselves, one after another, and dissolved. From the dissolution came clarity. From the clarity came compassion.

I realized the roommate was not me, just like the sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and touch are not me. There are all passing phenomena. I was the witness, or the awareness of the roommate.

This is freedom.

Into-Me-See

I began to summon people into my awareness.

My wife appeared first. In the blackness, I saw her more clearly than ever. Her strength, her love, her trust shone bright. I also saw her struggles and the brave smile she wore while holding it all together, and felt deep compassion.

I called forth my children. Other family members. Friends. Clients. Each time, I entered what I call into-me-see. True intimacy. Looking straight into their essence. Feeling not just who they were with me, but who they were with themselves.

This practice gave me insights more profound than years of conversation. Leaders should know this. To sit in silence, summon your people into your heart, and truly see them. How much suffering and conflict could be dissolved if we were taught this right from early education?

The Visions

Darkness does not stay dark.

Deep into this dark womb experience, I started to see beams of white, then blue, then red light. I moved my hand in front and saw it, though it did not make any sense. There was no plant medicine or any other external influence involved.

Upon waking up from deep sleep, I saw the walls light up like a cinema screen with silhouettes of plants and a window frame. In the frame were faces of shiny, happy people that I had no recollection of ever meeting. They looked real, but something was off. Their smiles were fake, their eyes were empty, their faces too perfect. The streets were sterile-flawless, like an AI-generated Logoland. It was as though the darkness was showing me a potential scenario for humanity. Bio-technology secreting feel-good hormones into the bloodstream, lost in a technology-created cyber-reality, plasticky, hollow, artificial.

And I knew: this is a warning.

We are at a crossroads. We can build an AI dystopia, where humans escape into virtual pleasures, completely disconnected from Mother Earth, Father Sky, and all sentient beings. Or we can build AI-enhanced humanity, where technology amplifies our wisdom, not our addictions.

The vision was not a metaphor. It felt like a prophecy. And it burned itself into me: Do what is yours to do.

God in the Silence

And then, beyond the visions, beyond the roommate, beyond the memories, silence opened into divinity.

Call it God, Christ, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Sophia, Pachamama, The Great One, The Unified Conscious Field. The names don’t matter. What matters is the direct experience of the field from which everything arises. I call it Loving Awareness.

I did not pray to it. I did not imagine it. ‘I’ dissolved in ‘It’. I was It.

Rebirth

The host knocked softly: There is one hour left.

I lit the tealight. Its flame danced in the darkness. I packed my things with reverence. Gratitude flooded me.

When I stepped outside, rain was falling. The world was gray, the clouds thick. The light was gentle. I had kept sunglasses close, expecting the jolt. I did not need them. Nature had conspired to ease me back into sight.

The Rite of Passage

This is not a retreat. It is a rite of passage.

It ignites the noble masculine: the warrior, sage, lover, and builder in their highest expression. It awakens the divine feminine in her purest form: radiant, fierce, nurturing, wise.

This is not about gender. It is about energy.

Darkness strips you bare. It cleanses the gross and the subtle, the physical knots and the psychic ones. It returns you to alignment and attunement to truth, to beauty, to goodness; what the yogis call Satyam Shivam Sundaram.

Experiencing the depths of darkness like this is not for the uninitiated. It is not a place for people with unhealed traumas, any mental challenges, or strong reactive patterns. It is for people who already have a strong foundation in deep inner work.

However, if the willingness and capacity are there, this is the most powerful preparation for life, and for death, that I have ever experienced. To sit in darkness until you realize that you are the light.

The darkness is not something to fear. It is a womb. It is a teacher. It is a healer.

It is an old friend.

Key Insights from the Dark Womb

• Darkness is not deprivation; it is revelation. It strips away illusions and reveals deeper layers of reality through direct experience.

• Time dissolves in silence. Chronos (linear time) collapses, and you enter Kairos, the timeless now, where every moment becomes eternal.

• The body heals when given attention. With simple tools and an undistracted, loving presence, long-held pain, tension, and knots can finally release through movement guided by the body’s intelligence.

• Food becomes holy. Eating in darkness heightens taste and resets your relationship to habits. What you thought you needed often turns out to be optional.

• The inner roommate is not you. The constant voice in the head reveals itself as separate from your essence when you simply witness it.

• Intimacy means into-me-see. Bringing loved ones into awareness in silence allows you to meet them at the soul level, with compassion and clarity.

• Visions reveal crossroads. Darkness can open inner sight, showing both personal truths and collective signs beyond linear time.

• The divine is direct experience. Beyond belief, you can sit in Loving Awareness itself, remembering the divinity that is always there.

• Darkness is the ultimate cleanser. It clears physical, emotional, and mental clutter, returning you to truth, goodness, and beauty.

• This is a rite of passage. For those ready, the dark womb is a threshold into noble masculinity, divine femininity, and the highest expression of what it means to be human.