Love in the Dark

Inspired by the anticipation of a visit with my friend and brother, Ken

Photo: Sky Cave Retreats

A couple of years ago, I did an online retreat with Andrew Holocek and Robert Thurman, “Dark Retreat, Psychedelics, and Virtual Reality: Peril or Promise.” We experienced darkness in a non-traditional way, by using light-blocking eye masks that allowed the eyes to remain open.

Because this retreat was offered based on the practices of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which places more emphasis than other Buddhist traditions on listening to teachings, music, chanting, etc., there was a lot of teaching. Putting the mask on was entering not only into darkness but into silence. Ah…

There was some guided practice, but often we simply sat. There may have been suggested practices, but when people meditate, you never really know what they’re doing. You only know what you’re doing. And mostly what I did was simply sit.

I went into this retreat with no expectation, only interest and curiosity. I knew that the retreat format probably wouldn’t allow access to deep states, due to the amount of teaching content, so what arose for me took me entirely by surprise.

Sitting with eyes open in the dark, I felt my heart come online. Softening, opening, warming. Oh, so interesting. Let’s find out more. I breathed into the heart center (the center of the chest, not the physical heart), gently, wanting to support but not disturb the process.

My body started to tingle, oh so pleasantly. And I saw in my inner sight the objects in the room…the furniture, the objets d’art, the walls. More tingling. Then I felt that everything in the room was love, but not only that.

Folks who are familiar with nondual experience will probably expect that that was the culmination, but it wasn’t. In fact, what happened surprised me so much that I couldn’t even place the experience. It was nothing I had read about or been taught or heard others describe. It was entirely fresh to me and clearly needed by my Soul—a homeopathic remedy to a condition I didn’t know I had.

I saw, understood, that at the origin of every material object was love. And that love could be seen at every point in its trajectory—its creation, its path of ownership, its placement in various spaces. Now, I will warn you that the mind may want to embellish this, to explain it, to place it in some category. I invite you, if this happens to you, to place all that to the side for the moment. Simply feel what follows.

Someone made everything in my room, even the objects that were fashioned by machine or technology. Someone created the technology. I could feel the movement back to the origin, like riding in a time machine. And creation comes from love. Perhaps it’s love of the process of creating, perhaps it’s love of money, love of family, love of the feeling of accomplishment. I saw no separation among these different manifestations of love.

Once created, the object is purchased or given or found. The person who selects the object loves it. Perhaps it simply fits a particular need and is mostly functional. Still, we love objects that work for us, that fill a niche in our lives. I may not say outright that I love my microwave oven, but in this state of understanding, I could feel that it was love that selected it, that chose its spot. And I love the contractor who installed it, who built the cabinetry that surrounds it.

And how about that antique cabinet? Oh, now that is overflowing with love! The cabinet belonged to my parents, who loved me and whom I loved. My father bought the cabinet in his home state of West Virginia. More love. It’s huge, so he needed a truck to transport it home to South Carolina, but he didn’t own a truck. So, my parents’ mail carrier lent them his truck. Yes, you read that correctly: their mail carrier. They had a warm relationship with the man who brought the mail to their door every day. I could go on, but I think by now you have a sense of what I am pointing to.

I don’t believe you need to sit in the dark to experience this. The dark simply allowed the filters that prevented me seeing all this to drop away. The dark will do that.

You are welcome now to take off your light-blocking mask and rejoin the world of light. Let your mind do whatever it wants to do with this. I only encourage you to let your heart step forward and have its moment in the sun. Ask your heart—gently, not insistently—how it feels about this. If it opens and says, “Yes!”, that’s great. If it says, “Love is a form of wealth that is rationed, not freely distributed like this,” that’s great, too. Perhaps this experience I have shared with you, my friend, challenges your experience and understanding of love. (Love of a microwave oven? That’s spiritual??) Whichever it is—whatever it is—it is YOUR response. And that, my beloved, marks the entrance of a treasure trail that will lead you home.