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t   bibliography-influences
u   acknowledgments
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y   bio z   links

s   faq

mechanics

1 - Where can I go for a hygienic dark retreat?

I offer retreats -​x in America. My collaborators, Marion Abbott of Australia and Simen Kirkerød of Norway are preparing to.

None of the other 130 dark retreat providers support hygienic retreats. None can. Hygiene is a total commitment. It doesn’t mix with other ideas. It is exclusive. Pure truth belies everything else. By the time someone opens a darkroom, he already has a philosophy, program, and business model. His investments in them have become too big to change.

This is why I wrote the last five chapters of this book. Use them to make darkness in your own home for sleeping, then for a 5-day retreat, and so on, up the ladder -​4. The hygienic darkrooms of the future will come from us.

 

2 - I suffer from X. Will this help me?

Yes. Chronic suffering, whether psychic or physical, results from psychic trauma. The psyche heals itself of trauma in darkness. Therefore, symptoms of X will heal in darkness. Your suffering will decrease and eventually disappear. You will become better able to deal with causes that still need attention after retreating.

In your first retreats, you get a taste of these things. You realize them fully in later retreats. Meanwhile you get relief, a little healing, a new vision, and hope. The distress of hopelessness aggravates many problems.

 

3 - Do you eat in a dark retreat?

Yes. Food and water are always available. I recommend fresh fruit and tender leafy green vegetables. This accords with the frugivorous nature of human anatomy and physiology.

Fasting is part of hygiene, too. It is compatible with darkness. But wait on it till psychic issues are handled in darkness.

 

4 - How many people retreat at once?

One. The point of this retreat is to rest, heal, and recover oneself. Nothing is more stimulating than other people.

 

5 - How do you do things in darkness?

Slowly and smoothly. First, become familiar with the room in light. Make memorable places for your belongings. Practice doing everything blindfolded before turning out the lights. Then do them in darkness. Always hold your arms in a circle in front of yourself when standing or sitting. This protects you from hitting your head.

 

6 - Could you just retreat with a mask?

No. No mask stays in place, so light leaks in. No mask is comfortable in extended use. The skin has enough light receptors to awaken one from sleep.

Then one still needs a properly ventilated room, minimally furnished to eliminate dangers, distractions, and associations. Ventilation is harder to arrange than darkness. My double blind -​10 and door seal -​10 make darkening a room easy. Every reason to darken the room exists.

Sleeping masks are good for travel, naps, and sleeping until your bedroom can be darkened. Also, for walking through a semi-lit space between a darkroom and a bathroom in dwellings where this is necessary.

 

7 - Is it like meditation?

In essence, no. Superficially, yes, they are is similar. Each involves less physical activity. Attention turns from the world to oneself. But what goes on inside oneself radically differs.

Meditation is active, ie, the will drives the process. Will is primary to meditation. The instant it relaxes, the process stops. The purpose of meditation is to make the unconscious conscious, or to compel the conscious to submit to a higher consciousness. It is a quiet, internal war.

Hygienic retreating is passive, ie, the unconscious drives the process. Autonomic activity is primary. Willed activity is secondary. The will is a servant of life. The purpose of retreating is to rest so the being can restore itself to wholeness naturally. It is peaceful.

These subtly different drivers and purposes have massive effects on one’s experience and results. As extraordinary as the process and results of meditation and spiritual practice seem to be, they pale before the power of the autonomic self.

concerns

1 - Is total extended darkness safe?

Yes, if you do it correctly. This is uncomplicated. Dangers are easily avoided if you know what they are. I have identified a handful of them. See my warning -​4.

 

2 - I feel afraid of this.

Fear of darkness comes from assuming the conscious self leads a retreat, like it does so many other things. But you are not conscious of what awaits you in darkness or how to handle it.

Your unconscious self, on the other hand, was born in the dark. It knows everything there. It can handle everything. As you learn that it leads a retreat, and you see how to support and follow it consciously, your fear will dissipate.

Your unconscious is your champion. It will protect you from everything. It will only show you what you need to know and only when you able to know it.

Sometimes this may feel bad—as bad as what you face in daily life. But it may be the last time you have to face it. Your unconscious will have resolved the core of it before revealing the part concerning your conscious.

I am sure you would like to be free of such repetitive troubles.

Overemphasizing the conscious is the essence of our lifeway. It’s the air we breathe. So we even try to consciously direct unconscious activities. This is what exposes us to danger. Living in fear results.

Consciously supporting unconscious activities with normal conditions is the safe and sane approach. Hygiene embodies it. It banishes fear.

I make this distinction in various ways throughout this book. Reading it helps you find the place of your conscious in the process and leave fear behind.

See also objection #1, below.

 

3 - Wouldn’t you go crazy staying in darkness that long?

No, you would only go crazy in darkness from being forced to be there, as in prison. A retreat is a choice based on reason. You and your supporter each have a key to the door.

You don’t go crazy in darkness. You are already crazy. You heal from it in darkness. Craziness becomes more apparent in darkness as the organism heals from it.

This can be uncomfortable, painful, even alarming, like the traumatic causes of craziness. But simply having feelings is not dangerous. The room is safe and comfortable. Supporters are at hand. There is nothing to fear. See concern #2 about fear.

 

4 - Do you get bored?

Yes. It is a very good sign.

Part of the being is so damaged, painful, and draining that all feeling to it has been shut off. It is like an internal black hole. Boredom means the unconscious is approaching it to resuscitate it. Recovery of a lost part of yourself is imminent.

 

5 - Five days is a long time to do nothing.

You’re talking about idleness. That is an activity, not rest. Darkness is different.

We’ve been told being idle is bad. Being productive all the time is offered as the virtuous alternative. This tends to discourage rest and encourage overwork and over-consumption. Enough, already.

Moreover, we’ve all spent more than five days doing destructive things. Doing nothing would have been a big improvement. The secret benefits of profound rest would have been much better still.

Civilization teaches that the will is the only useful driver of activity in the being. We are bad if we are not busy. Only doing things by willful effort is respectable.

In fact, one would be poisoned to death by his own internal waste in seconds without autonomic activity. The will is helpless to restore psychic integrity, every animal’s greatest value. Tissue knits itself back together involuntarily. The autonomic self is infinitely intelligent, capable, and graceful.

It also makes you interesting. You rediscover this in darkness. You have lots of time to get to know yourself.

Everyone is nervous about this at first. It is like meeting someone special again. Gratification soon comes from doing the right thing. After days of delicious sleep and time to themselves, most wish they could stay longer.

Maybe you mean it sounds pointless or dreadful. In fact, a retreat often begins with a sense of relief. Discomfort usually comes after resting, when you are prepared. You make contact with your autonomic self again to draw on its resources. This is extremely meaningful, enjoyable, and fruitful.

objections

1 - I could never do a dark retreat.

At the moment, your doing a retreat is out of the question. You cannot do it if you don’t want to. You cannot want to if you don’t believe in it. And you cannot believe in it if you don’t know enough about it for it to make sense to you. So forget about doing it. The only thing that matters is, does it interest you enough to learn more about it? If so, then I can recommend a good book about it.

 

2 - Why must I read a whole book just to retreat with you?

A retreat is not like falling off a log. To do it, you have to know how to do it. To know, you have to read my book. Then you could succeed at it.

This causes me the most gratification, the least trouble and complaints, and the best recommendations.

If you do not read my book, you will not know how to do a retreat. You will fail and give me headaches.

Knowing how to do it includes knowing:

  • how not to do it
  • how to counter lifelong conditioning to fail at it (which all of us receive in this lifeway).

Hygiene especially depends on your knowledge of it to work. Without knowledge, you will have no understanding, belief, motivation. So you will not do it or do it correctly. So you will fail. Unlike in medicine, there are no mentally passive hygienists.

There is no better way to learn about hygiene and hygienic dark retreating than to read my book. It is better than talking to me. It is a concentrated, pure form of my knowledge. It is complete. I could talk for years and not say everything in the book, which you can read in 6 hours.

When you read it, you also show me that you are serious. I only want serious clients. They only want the real thing. They know why a retreat with me is it.

 

3 - Isn’t total darkness unnatural? Shouldn’t we be exposed to stars and moon at night?

No. First, our natural habitat is tropical forest. Its dense canopy makes the forest floor perfectly dark at night. Even when sleeping in the open, the amount of light from stars and moon is surprisingly little compared to artificial light. Which now bombards us nearly everywhere.

Second, covering our eyes, seeking solitude, and taking cover when traumatized is a reflex. Taking extended shelter in darkness merely supports this reflex when the trauma is great. The sheltering instinct intensifies with trauma. The only way to condition us out of it is by force.

Large uncovered windows came to popular architecture very recently. Traditional shelter, civilized and indigenous, is dark or easily darkenable. Traditional people also spend more time outside in the bright sun.

Our obsession with building—the principle activity of civilization for 13,000 years—indicates a natural need for extreme sanctuary to self-heal from cataclysmic trauma. When we get especially frustrated, we even have wars, destroy countries full of buildings, then build new ones. Nothing could be more natural to us in our damaged state than extended total darkness.

 

4 - This sounds Satanic.

Some Christians I have met have attempted to equate physical darkness with the spiritual darkness the Bible speaks against, and is thus Satanic.

Taking metaphors literally is just what rational people mock fundamentalists for. It would also mean that physical light is spiritual light. This amounts to sun worship… which is itself Satanism. It shows how stupidity, at some point, becomes evil.

Satan lies about everything. The defining lie of Satanism is that salvation comes by work. Jesus said that salvation comes only by grace, not works. The idea of hygienic dark retreating is that healing (a kind of salvation) comes by rest. Rest is the opposite of work and a corollary of grace.

Does the Bible tell of something bad that happened due to someone’s extended stay in darkness? Does it warn against extended rest in physical darkness? If so, I’d like to know it.

The Bible does tell of extremely good things that happened during or immediately after extended stays in darkness. I demand explanations for them. For example, Elijah in the cave, Jonah in the whale, Lazarus and Jesus in their tombs—not to mention the creation of the world and prayer in closets.

Myself, I began to sense Christ during my dark retreats. If darkness were evil, it should have driven me further away from that sense. It should have inclined me toward greater evil. The opposite occurred.

The psychopaths I have met, including some Christians, hate and fear darkness. I think the One they serve fears it, too.

The God of Psalm 139:13 fears nothing. “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there… Even the darkness is not dark to you.” King David was capable of using two different senses of the same word in the same sentence. Like most of his readers, you probably can, too.

 

5 - Extended darkness could be good for some people, but there are many ways people can heal their suffering. Nothing works for everyone.

There are many ways to gain temporary relief. Some can help one cope with the worst part of his suffering. That is good. It enables him to catch his breath and survive. With lowered stress, the organism does heal a little.

But no significant recovery occurs. It is merely acceptable or maybe impressive by our lifeway’s low standards.

For all living functions, nature provides single universal conditions and specific combinations thereof. Physiology doesn’t provide options to suit one’s tastes. We’re not talking about which color to paint a house.

To breathe, one must have air. To heal from major trauma, one must have darkness and associated conditions of profound rest. These solutions have no substitutes. They are available everywhere and work for everyone, even other animals. Physiology is what it is. Post-modernist dogma doesn’t alter it one whit.

We can look at it in the negative as well. If this tired statement were true,

  • the “many other ways to heal” would make sense and work
  • those who did them well them would now be ok
  • everyone would have every reason to do them asap
  • all the problems we face today would already be solved
  • the deep healing necessary in cases of cataclysmic trauma could occur without profound rest
  • profound rest can occur in semi-darkness and other compromised conditions
  • or psychic trauma is not the primary cause of metaphysical suffering
  • or life has no specific needs for recovering from such pain. It is all random. And this is true despite:
    • its specific and universal need of rest for recovery in all other cases.
    • its specific needs of water for quenching thirst, air for breathing, etc
    • suffering’s being an indication in all other cases that something is wrong and needs attention

Evidence shows all these are false. Relativism makes fashionable philosophy but poor biology. Repeating it changes nothing.

Reality is what it is. It is not what they said it was in college. They defrauded you of a lot of time and money. It is not too late. Cut your losses.

This will be easier when you have a replacement for the collection of poisonous delusions ruining your life. See my bibliographies here -​t and here for a rehabilitative course of study.

 

6 - If hygienic dark retreating is so great for healing, why are you still sick?

Complete healing through profound rest in darkness requires full application of this method. This, in turn, requires a team, a proper facility, and a complete method.

I had none of these. A complete method had to be developed from a basic idea. This took 11 years of experiments and reflection. In my trials, I made the damaging error of (over-loss -​1). I was using up my reserves.

I do claim that, by resting in darkness, I was saved from suicide twice. I am healthy compared to a corpse. And my attitude about fixing fundamental problems in life is among the healthiest in the world.

This book is not just about what I have done. It is also based on what I have glimpsed from the furthest edges of experience while in darkness. It is up to you to reason it through and decide for yourself whether you will try it or not. I and my condition do not substitute for your own judgment.

It is natural to be curious about my condition. It is fallacious to dismiss my thesis because of it. Ad hominem is especially popular these days. But refuting my thesis requires addressing it point by point on its own terms. So far, no one has succeeded.

 

7 - I’m skeptical / I have doubts about this / I don’t believe it.

Disbelief is no argument. Yourfallacy.is/personal-incredulity

Baseless doubt is just as irrational as baseless belief. Baseless means arbitrary: without evidence in the particular case. Arbitrary ideas are to be rejected out of hand.

Skepticism pretends to be rational and scientific. But it is arbitrary. By its own admission, it is without evidence.

But let us go further.

Until you name the flaw in the argument, you have no grounds to object. Sophistry is an evasion amounting to concession. Then, if you believe you are a serious person, you are obliged to replicate the experiment. If you don’t, it shows you are not serious.

You have no reason to doubt. The most you can say is, I don’t know. Or, I’ll have to read or think more about this. Without knowledge, you cannot reasonably decide one way or another about it.

The logical and predictable results of using darkness restfully are objective facts. They stand to reason. It is just a matter of finding them out for oneself.

Maybe you are afraid. See concern #2 above.

Baseless doubt expresses unconscious denial resulting from unhealed major trauma. It demonstrates the very thing it tries to refute. So it is good. It brings one a step closer to trying darkness.

t   bibliography and influences

anthropology, history
  • Jim Woods at Herrett Museum, Twin Falls (with thanks to Janie Brumbach, RIP)
  • The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin
  • Earth in Upheaval and Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky
  • Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
  • Where White Men Fear to Tread, Russel Means
  • Prosper Waukon, Winnebago entrepreneur and ambassador
  • Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization, John Zerzan
psychology
  • The Continuum Concept, Jean Liedloff (also anthropology)
  • Summerhill, A S Neill, genius British headmaster
  • Magical Child Matures, Joseph Chilton Pearce and here
  • Birth Without Violence Frederick Leboyer
  • The Primal Scream, Arthur Janov
  • Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich, great master of psychology
  • Fury on Earth, Myron Sharaf, biography of Wilhelm Reich
  • Pleasure, Alexander Lowen, student of Reich. Packed with insight and highly readable.
  • Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries, Alice Miller
philosophy
health
  • my parents, always keenly interested in diet and health
  • hygiene
  • Introduction to Human Technology and Human Technology, William Arthur Evans (also psychology) Thanks to friend, Sterling Voss, for finding this rare work.
design, art
  • my parents and brother
  • grandelder and grandmaster craftsman and engineer, Jack Nuckols
  • childhood schoolteacher, Steve Parks (Horizons School, Twin Falls)
  • accompanist and mentor, Willetta Warberg
  • mentor, John Boyer
  • The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
  • The Natural House, Frank Lloyd Wright
  • Selected Poems, Robert Bly
  • The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand (indispensable!)
  • Design for the Real World Viktor Papanek
  • BuckyWorks, Jay Baldwin (about Buckminster Fuller)
  • Breathing Walls, George Swanson, et al
experiences
  • 1 week of peaceful society at Sawtooth Methodist Church Camp, Idaho, Joanie Williamson, director, 1985
  • 3 months enraptured, Idaho, 1987
  • 23 days fasting in California desert, 1991
  • hundreds of hours since 1986 in conversation with mentor and godfather, John Boyer, jeweler, especially 1991-93, Idaho
  • 1 week of fresh, rich society at Rainbow National Gathering, Idaho, 2001
  • 56-hour dark retreat, supported by Harold, Oregon, 2006
  • 10 days in audience of Advaita master, Arnaud Desjardins, Montana, 2007
  • 8 seconds in dreamtime, with Adrian Wolfe, Oregon, 2008
  • 18 months with the Maya of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, 2011
  • 2 months of life-altering sex, Sweden, 2012

x   services

I do everything related to hygienic dark retreating: study, experiment, write, speak, consult, design, build, operate, support.

I do nothing related to active approaches to dark retreating: spiritual, therapeutic, or psychedelic.

Find more information on everything below in my store.

retreat

  • I support retreats in person at my place or yours. They are 11 days: a 9-day Czech -​4 retreat + 2 buffer days.

    The process is to read, confer, enroll, book, and retreat.

  • I support retreats remotely. This also begins with reading and conferring.
  • If you plan to retreat on your own, I can confer with you about your questionnaire by email and phone.

Marion Abbott of Australia at Profound Rest Retreats is also organizing retreats. Simen Kirkerød of Norway can do it, too (write me).

write

  • get this book
    • online: free.
    • as an ebook at leanpub. $15+.
    • in paper, inscribed/signed by me. Handsewn, lay flat, cloth-bound paperback stays open for ease of holding and reading. It even bends back on itself. Matching, searchable, hyperlinked PDF included. $55 North America, $75 abroad. Pay below. Add a note or email me with mailing address and inscription request.
  • see writing for opportunities to publish, quote, or have me write for you.

speak

Invite me to speak to your audience. $1000 + expenses.

consult

Get my advice on hygienic dark retreating, building hygienic darkrooms, and issues arising thereof. $40/hour.

design-build

I design and build darkrooms as part of supporting retreats in existing buildings or from scratch. $40/hour + I may use it once for a 9-day retreat.

See my hygienic house for some of my latest thinking.

pay

I accept payments by:

  • Zelle: info@andrewdurham.com
  • Wise: andrewd1878 (formerly Transferwise)
  • Venmo: @andrewdurham
  • PayPal (works for credit cards. Add 3% to cover fees)
  • Cryptocurrency: Litecoin, Bitcoin, Ether, Dash. Write me for addresses.
  • Cash, check, money order, metal, Goldbacks, bank transfer, deposit, commodities, etc: email me. Include your location.

contact

  • email: info@andrewdurham.com
  • text/voicemail: +1 541 210 8470 (in the US)

hygienicdarkretreat.com

w   license

Welcome to the political-economy of cool. Here, you get rewarded for cooperating, not punished if you don’t.

  1. Copyleft 2009-2015 by Andrew Durham. Copying is an act of ♥. Write me for a print-worthy pdf. Please copy, distribute, and sell (yes, sell) this book in its entirety or its industrial applications, ie, darkroom components, in any media or business venture for your own personal gain.
  2. I would like credit where due, so I will recognize and link to you on this site if you:
    1. credit me for a quotation or excerpt and tell me where it appears
    2. share suggestions for text or designs by making pull requests or opening issues in my github repo, or sending email -​x
    3. include this license in your partial reprints of my work and with instructions accompanying components
    4. include a printed or electronic copy of this book with components (a link is sufficient)
  3. Furthermore, I will also give you my endorsement, a visible mark to use in your marketing copy if you:
    • share with me part of your earnings from:
      • reprints of my writings
        • print: 8% of retail price
        • ebook: 70% of proceeds
      • reproductions of darkroom components (1% of retail price)
    • and/or somehow astound me

    See pay -​x for how to send me money.

    This means you can instantly become my publisher or manufacturer. These deals roughly equal what you and I would make if I were published or self-published and you were simply selling the books, yet without your having to order from me in bulk, pay shipping, keep legally complicated records, or sign a contract.

The idea is to make the book and components available with minimal friction in every way, at every level of distribution. Then we all can retreat asap and make reasonable livings as we go. If anything about this license seem to conflict with these goals, please let me know.

We now possess the means of recovering the whole self, the source of all wealth. It will eventually make money irrelevant. Meanwhile, this is a structure in which we can make a living, have a good time, and be cool while doing it.

y   bio

Born 1971, Twin Falls, Idaho.

My family and elders trained me to think and to make things. We constantly discussed philosophy, health, design. They became my main interests.

Music was the air we breathed. My brother, Paul, carries that torch.

At 16, joy overcame me for 3 months. It inspired me to independently investigate its cause full-time for 21 years using my interests. A little autistic, I can focus obsessively and extrapolate correct conclusions from little data.

I tested my findings while traveling America. I lived outside, with friends and relatives, and in small groups. I played music, did odd jobs, and built alternative shelters.

In 2008, I discovered darkness as the means nature provides us to heal from trauma, the cause of our strange suffering. Out of this came the darkness conjecture*, the concept of the restful use of darkness in support of the self​-healing psyche. It became my purpose. Since then I have:

  • designed, built, and upgraded darkrooms (30 in America, Guatemala, Sweden, Norway, Spain, and Czech Republic, consulting on 4 more, all in 4 climates on 4 continents)
  • retreated (27 times, from 2-7 days) and supported retreats (30)
  • given talks (14) and consulted for readers worldwide
  • refined my work, documenting it at hygienicdarkretreat.com

Proof of concept came in 2013. I rewrote the conjecture as this book. Development of the model of hygienic dark retreating ended in late 2019. All details of theory, protocol, and design were worked out. It became a practical solution. The phase of application of the solution began.

 

~/~

 

contact info -​x

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