The next series of blog posts will all be directly pulled from the journal I kept during my 7 days in pitch darkness, silence and isolation.

You might be wondering, how did I write in the dark?

I used another straight edged notepad as a guide for my pen and moved it down a few inches after the words I wrote reached the end of the paper. Inevitably then, all my words were not within the lines, but they were for the most part legible.

Many of the passages I wrote in this darkness journal are scattered thoughts that came to me while I embraced the stillness and experienced magical “light shows.” As such, they are not always coherently structured in a way that you would find paragraphs that flow together inside of a book.

For better or worse, I am sharing everything I wrote with you without holding anything back. To be honest with you, I felt very nervous about sharing the entirety of my journal. Some parts reveal deep, personal struggles I was going through in a raw and real manner. But I am doing this because I believe there is some value to be found in these words for you. I myself was deeply moved by reading them once I returned into the light.

Surprisingly, I could not remember writing much of what I read…

When I wrote Fearvana, it was me writing that book. What I wrote in this journal, it seemed as if it wasn’t always me doing the writing. Even though I may have held the pen in my hand, what came out on paper felt like something coming through me. I was simply meant to be a messenger for something far more profound and meaningful than even I can fathom.

I hope the following words prove valuable to you and serve you in finding light within whatever darkness you might be experiencing at this point in time.

With great love and humility, I invite you to join me on this journey into the darkness…

This is part 1 of my Darkness Journal

First words in the dark – it’s fucking dark.

Can’t run away from this now. Remember that fear of sleep? Now you just have to face it all.

Are you really here? You are and you aren’t. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s like you’re one with all that is.

Our visual senses also separate us. Now I am not separate. Perhaps in the darkness is the deepest form of connection there is because you are one with all that is.

You said you didn’t want to stub your toe and then you did. What you focus on you get. The oneness with the darkness is fascinating. It’s like you’re here, but not. The nothingness really feels like a kind of death. A beautiful death. 

I felt really bad about not messaging Linda back. I don’t like hurting people or seeing people suffer, but sometimes to what cost? Perhaps if the darkness is going to teach you anything, remember you are nothing. You are part of the greater whole, meaning that your well being does not matter. Only the mission does. You must become so one with it, like the dark. That’s you and you are it. 

And you are to lose time in service of that mission. Here in the dark, time means nothing, it does not exist. Become one even with time and lose yourself to it for the mission. Give everything until you go into the final darkness. Everything… But do it with joy and play, they will only accelerate the mission.

The darkness is nothing and everything. It’s a beautiful representation of the duality, for even in any kind of darkness, you can find and even create light. Like Victor Frankl described in Man’s Search for Meaning, those guys who gave their last bread, that’s light.

You have nowhere to go and no place to be. Remember that always. This applies to every minute of your life. Let that moment consume you like the dark. And remember, in darkness, in the nothingness, the all encompassing nothingness, you spirit transcends.

Remember the purple light show.

You be that guy giving away his last piece of bread. You be that always. That light in hell illuminates the pathway to the divine. God is now. God is whenever you choose God to be there. Call him forth. 

People are suffering. Bring light to the dark. Bring that purple light show to the world. Maybe this is why some play and light is needed. You can become the dark, fight the dark, but sometimes you just need a fucking purple light show 🙂 Perhaps its in the becoming one with the dark that you actually call forth the light. You cannot resist it. You must become it and become the light.

You could probably never stop human evil, but perhaps by simply accepting its presence you can pave a way to the divine through it.

Think about meta adaptation. In 1 fucking day, less even, you have adapted. You are already seeing the light show. What’s the secret? Full presence. Become one with your world. That is how you will better it. That means more pain, but also more pleasure. Unite with the darkness and the light. That is how you transcend them.

Self transcendence then is ultimately not the removal of the self, but the unification of the self with all that is. Feel the pain of the world, so you help alleviate it. Feel the pleasure of the world, so you can help enhance it. But to do either, you must explore both. You cannot know the magic of the light show without going into the dark. Hmmm….

If all of us on earth were a part of something bigger, then is individual (illegible word) part of a greater whole? But I can’t accept that because what about that individual. That individual matters!! Perhaps we get to decide who wants to be the chosen by choice, not by some external force. We choose. I choose to be the John Coffey, to be the pain, to feel the dark and to be the light. Because ultimately its not about me. Just like me here in this dark room. I am nothing but a part of the darkness. What I feel means nothing, only in the context that those feelings are about me. You are a part of something so much more.

When there is no time, there’s only time. In destruction, there is creation. The singular duality is everything. As I sit here in the dark and all these thoughts come to me, I wonder are these thoughts me? Or am I just a product of all the stimuli that has passed through me. If that is the case, then who am I? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps the only question that matters is not who am I, but who or what I am transcending the self in service of? 

We cannot exist in a closed system, isolated. Even in the dark, I am not alone. I am a part of this system now. I coexist with the dark. Wow, we are never truly alone, and it took being truly alone to see that. 

We must engage the edges, the fateful frontiers of all our limits to find the truth that we’re one. By going to the edge of solitude and stillness, I found that I am not alone and stillness is not contextual, it is a state I get to choose anytime I want. 

It’s all a paradox. Only when there is nothing to see here in the dark can you truly see into the depth of your soul. In darkness, there is clarity and light. In solitude, there is connection. What ultimately matters is you can create this at will.

True consciousness must be self transcendence because the self is simply a piecing together of everything that has brought us to where we are today. So it is only by rising above the self can we tap into a higher consciousness and discover what lives beyond the machine. The conscious self is therefore not the elimination of the self, but the unification of the self with the other. In that union, there is transcendence.

The consciousness must always be directed toward the other. So the journey within is simply a means to embrace the without. That is once again the paradox of the human condition. In my journey within, in the darkness, I’ve actually come to be connected with the without and found I am one with the dark. The difference is this is now a knowing, not just a thought. It’s a true knowing. I do not exist and yet I do. This oneness is everything.

In the dark, the self molds with the external. It is connected to it. In the destruction of the “self” there is in fact a greater, higher self being born. There must be a death for a rebirth to occur. Death and life are one.

Side note: remember your nightmare about light coming into the room. Ironic that in the dark, the nightmare was about light. Ultimately light and dark are only a matter of how we choose to view them. Ultimately, light and dark are both one and the same – access points to the divine.