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Peter Frick-Wright: This is the ���ϳԹ��� Podcast.

We’re going to start with a piece of gossip about professional football. Don’t worry, we won’t stay here long. And if you don’t know football, all you need to know is that there’s this guy named Aaron Rodgers who is very good at football—in fact, he’s had the kind of career where, as you get to the end of it, you have to start to think about stuff like how you’ll be remembered, and where you’ll be in the conversation about all-time great football players. And in late 2022, early 2023, Rodgers had a decision to make. Should he retire, as an almost untouchable legend, from the team he’d played for his entire career? Or should he keep playing, and prove that he could do it again with different players and coaches, in a different city? This was not a question with easy answers.

Aaron Rodgers: I just needed to, to get the opportunity to reset. And, and as it got closer and closer, obviously there was a lot of other questions about my future that, uh, have been, you know, on the mind and been contemplated and I knew it'd be a good opportunity to kind of sit with those things

Peter: At previous intersections in his career, Rodgers had famously used psychedelics and meditation retreats to help figure out his path. But at this fork in the road, he wanted to try something new—a darkness retreat. Something so far out there, so completely unknown to the NFL’s usual audience demographic. You can almost hear the talking heads trying not to use the phrase “hippie nonsense” on TV.

Anchor 1: Ah, yes. When it comes to his life away from football, Aaron Rodgers has always operated from a unique playbook.

Anchor 2: That’s one way to put it.

Anchor 3: So what exactly is a darkness retreat?

Anchor 4: He has not yet made up his mind, whether he’s going to continue to play.

Anchor 5: What’s Aaron Rodgers going through this week?

Anchor 6: Are you scared to death? You’re going to the hole for four days.

Aaron: Terrified.

Peter: On a darkness retreat, you spend a number of days, usually around four, in a little room with no one to talk to, no screens, no interruptions, and no light. The thinking is, removing data from the constant barrage of inputs demanding our attention can give our minds a chance to recover. It’s the same idea behind everything from nature walks to sensory deprivation float tanks.

But a darkness retreat is a different beast. Cause it’s just you and your mind. For days.

News Anchor: The big NFL news trending around today is that four time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers has emerged from his darkness retreat.

Peter: Going into the darkness, Rodgers said he was 90% sure he was going to retire. When he came back to the light, he was 90% sure he was going to continue playing. Shortly after, he signed with the New York Jets.

Aaron: 48 hours ago, I was in the dark and now I'm out, trying to, um, really adjust back to, uh, this reality, even though there's only four days, but so much happened during that time.

Peter: So, how did Rodgers decide to keep playing? What changed his mind? Where do the answers to big life questions come from? What happens to someone, during four days of total darkness?

Rodgers did probably the most famous darkness retreat in recent history, but they’re not just for famous people. It’s not a luxurious experience. It’s hard.

Recently, ���ϳԹ��� writer Tim Neville started to wonder how hard it really was, and what the experience was like. And he ended up at the same darkness retreat that Rodgers went to, and took a journey into the depths of his own mind. Farther in than I think anyone involved expected him to go. And it turns out, there are some very good reasons to be afraid of the dark.

Producer Robbie Carver talked to Tim about it, and has this story.

Robbie Carver: In the past, Tim Neville has traveled pretty far for a story. There was the time he skied in North Korea, the other time he skied in Afghanistan. And then there was that crazy road trip through post-ISIS Kurdistan and Iraq. So it was a little surprising when a story idea popped up practically in his backyard.

Tim: I was sitting in bed one night just mindlessly scrolling through reels like so many of us do, and I just happened to come across one of the reels from this place called Sky Cave down in southern Oregon about, um, maybe three hours or so from where I live here in Bend. And, I was immediately hooked.

Reel: Oh my god. Okay, alright, okay. Oh my God! Okay.

Robbie: The videos showed men and women as they emerged from their self-imposed periods of absolute darkness inside one of Sky Caves three buried cabins, capturing the first moment that light reentered their world as they slowly removed masks that protected their eyes.

Tim: They looked like castaways that had, that had been like, ‘Oh my God, I'm actually rescued. My life isn't going to be spent in this one place all this time.’ Like, like this is actually happening.

Robbie: Some had only been in the dark for a day or two, others much longer, but there was a shared experience from each that spoke to Tim.

Tim: And so there was that profound relief in some ways, but then they began to speak about what the dark had given them.

Darkness retreater: I mean wow. This experience, it really affects everything.

Tim: And they spoke about it as if it were like this living, breathing thing that had helped them see parts of themselves, maybe. And so it was a hundred percent authentic. There was no way that they could be faking this.

Darkness retreater: It’s nothing like I’d ever experienced in my life.

Robbie: Tim, was much more of the rational thought, scientific method sort of guy. Not so much into the alignment of the planets or the singing of Tibetan bowls.

But there was no denying the transformational impact it seemed to be having on people.

Four days in the dark seemed like the kind of thing that might make a good story. It also sounded like some kind of cruel punishment.

Tim: I just think the idea of being in the dark, just being in the dark, first of all, I think is naturally scary for people. And I don't mean dark like in your bedroom when you turn off the lights and you can still see street lights or whatever. I'm talking pitch, pitch black. Like you can't, you See your hand in front of your face and your eyes will never adjust to it. Like complete utter darkness. I mean, you panic you, it's, it's just a natural reaction to just be like, Oh my God. Like one of your senses has just been completely stolen from you. Like our main sense, how we process and see the world is going to be completely taken away from you.

And so, I think just, just the thought of that alone would make my hands get clammy. And I'd, I'd start feeling like there was a gorilla on my chest. Like, Oh my God, like, what am I going to do?

Tim Diary: Okay, I'm with Scott, and Scott, I don't even know your last name.

Scott Berman: Ah, Berman.

Tim: Can you spell it for me?

Scott: Yep, B E R M A N.

Tim: Great, okay.

Robbie: Scott Berman is the founder of Sky Caves, a retreat he created after many years in pursuit of transcendental and ecstatic experiences at the edges of society.

It was in 2012 that Scott heard about darkness retreats. Intrigued by the idea, he and his wife blacked out their rental house, taping all the windows, and spent five days in darkness. But the familiarity of the house, and spending the time with someone else, left him feeling that the experience lacked the kind of depth he wanted.

Scott: When you're in your house, you're still surrounded by so much familiarity. All the ways that you typically move are still there because you're in your house.

Robbie: So Scott traveled to Baja, where he helped build a small blacked out earthbag dome, and with 5 days of food and a plan to be there for ten days total, entered the darkness.

Scott: I was so humbled on just even my first day in there. I went in with a spiritual ego of like, I've got this. Not scared. I know solitude. I've spent years alone. I can meditate 10 hours a day. Like I'll be totally fine.

And I was completely floored after my first day with how challenging it was. I was really taken by the experience. I was like, I want to build dark retreats.

Robbie: Fast forward to today, and Scott now has three darkness cabins on his property near Siskiyou National Monument. When he first conceived of creating darkness retreats, Scott was sure it would only appeal to the most devout meditation practitioners. But the experience has struck a chord. His wait list is now years long, populated by people from every walk of life, including one nervous journalist still unsure just what he's getting himself into.

Tim: You know, I would have no way of checking the time. I would have no idea if it were day or night I would have no idea. Just like, even just the passage of time was going to become this very abstract thing.

I just, I started like hyperventilating and, and getting like just crazy nervous.

Robbie Tim's wife calmed him down, reminding him that he isn't exactly trying to cross Kurdistan this time, so maybe just suck it up and be happy you don't have to check your cell phone for four days.

Tim Diary: Okay, so here I am. Just arrived in the evening. At the Sky Cave Retreat, Scott met me on the way up the dirt road and took me up in a little golf cart to the actual retreat.

Robbie: Scott built the cabins by excavating a big hole in the side of a hill, building a room roughly 300 square feet inside of it, and then covering the whole thing back up with dirt.

Tim: It looks like almost, I mean, it's a very pleasing bunker, but it looks like kind of a little bit like a bunker, like a, like a door just stuck in the hillside framed by lava rock.

Robbie: To get inside, a guest walks through the outer door and descends down into a tiny foyer, then enters a second door into the tomb, sorry, the room. Inside There's a bed, a bathtub, a little meditation corner. A little two way cubby allows scott to put food items in for Tim to grab, all without any outside light ever ruining the experience. As Scott showed him around, Tim's anxiety began resurfacing.

Tim: I was like, what do I need to do to prepare for this? Like what do I, what do I how do I do this? Basically. I'm not I'm not a I'm not I'm definitely not a religious person and maybe I'm spiritual in some ways, but I'm not like a new age guy you know Yeah, I'm none of that stuff.

I'm pretty mainstream, you know, I mean I eat Taco Bell for goodness sakes, you know, that sort of thing. And so he's like there's nothing you can do. Like people who try to go into this thinking that they're going to manage the dark be it through meditation or chanting or You know, trying to get their 10,000 steps in by marching around the room, whatever. Like they're, they have a very, very difficult time.

What you need to do, he says, is you just have to surrender to this experience. And he kept saying, soften into it. You have to soften into the experience. And I was like, I really didn't couldn't understand what that meant

And he was much more blunt. He's like, look, it's basically like preparing for your deathbed. Like there's going to be no one around, there's, you're just alone, you're completely alone. You can't do anything. You just have to surrender to the experience and soften into it.

Tim Diary: It's about seven o'clock or so at night and I'm transitioning into the darkness. I, uh, I went to shut the door, and I just couldn't quite do it, couldn't quite get myself into the dark. I think I'm gonna sneak out and get one more peek at the sun. It's slipping behind the mountains. Okay.

Tim: And so I went down into the first room there, you know, um, he gives you a little candle, so I lit that candle and put it in the second room next to the bed. There's a light switch in that room that's got this like plastic guard on it like a little thing so that you can't accidentally flick on the light while in the middle of this experience. I shut all the doors. He's got like a towel that you put along the bottom of the door so that no light whatsoever can get in from anywhere. Like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Robbie: Tim had a water bottle, his toothbrush, cotton pajamas that were soft and smelled like his wife. He placed his things where he hoped he would remember, and turned off the light. He walked over to the bed, picked up the candle, and sat down. It would be four nights and three days before he saw the light again.

Tim: And I'm sitting on the bed and I just think going, okay, okay, you can do this, you can do this, you know, and that panic begins to build again. And I'm like, okay, time to be brave and just

Tim Diary: Okay, I just, uh, I'm in the dark now. Um um it's pitch black like pitch black. Um like I'm debating whether even like keep my eyes open or not because it's so dark

Tim: Just the absolute black that consumes you. It's not even like a garbage bag that comes over you, but that's sort of what it felt like like this suffocating just heavy nothingness just completely consumes you and there's nothing you can do about it There's nothing whatsoever and just that that feeling of all of a sudden understanding how dark the dark is was pretty terrifying.

Robbie: And I should tell you right here and now that this story eventually gets pretty strange. Pretty “far out.” But not yet.  Because Tim, sitting in the purest, deepest, most terrifying and nightmarish darkness he's ever experienced doesn't scream, doesn't weep, doesn't even try to make sense of the primal fear bubbling up inside of him. Instead, he lays back on the bed he's already sitting on and just goes to sleep.

Tim: I just climbed into bed and slept wonderfully that night. The best guilt free rest was just like this warm honey, just working its way into every little achy bit of me and just, Oh, it's just absolutely blissful, you know?

Tim Diary: Okay, I have no idea what time it is. I just had, I think it's morning. I figured that was my first night. I'm trying to guess what time it is based on when I need to go to the bathroom, which is generally in the morning. Did some stretching just now, a little bit of yoga, got totally turned around in the room. Like totally turned around. I was like I thought where I was going was not and I ran into the tub

I'm definitely kind of anxious, but I'm gonna really try. I'm just gonna try to like, surrender to it. I really hope that I'm okay on the other side when I come out, you know. I don't want to be crazy. And would I even know that?

Robbie: That first day, Tim occupied himself with learning his surroundings by touch, creating a routine of stretching and pushups that would give him some structure, and taking lots, and lots, of naps. Then, it was time for a bath, and it was here that the darkness first began to reveal its character.

Tim: I remember sitting there and I like lifted my leg up to find it and I could like, I could see it. I could see, could see my leg and I couldn't, it wasn't like I could see detail. It wasn't like I could see the water dripping off my leg. It wasn't, I couldn't see any color, but there was no doubt that I could see my leg. It was just this, like the dark is, not this monolithic thing. It, it, it begins to take on textures. It's hard to say shades of black because black is black, but it almost begins to take on shades like. Some parts just feel darker. Some parts feel rougher or smoother. And, and here was my leg, which was this smoother, darker bit of darkness. But I could, I could literally see it. I was like, this is so weird.

Robbie: Weird, as well, was the realization that, despite being trapped in a pitch black room with no phone, tv, books or companionship, Tim was not the least bit bored.

Tim: Boredom to me anyway, is like, it's having all these things to do, but just none of them sound fun. You don't want to do any of that. And so you're bored, right? Well, if you can do nothing, if you literally can't even sit there and stare at a blank wall, then, then you kind of destroy, boredom's habitat is the only way I can describe it and boredom can no longer exist.

And I know that sounds completely counterintuitive or weird, but that, that was just my experience in there. It was like, like, like boredom didn't become, it was never really an issue.

Robbie: Without the tyranny of choice, the few actions Tim could take became profound and meaningful decisions in his experience. Do I sit on the bed? Or the yoga mat? Do I take a nap, or is it time to indulge in the sensorial bliss of an olive?

Tim: And I would just sit there and just savor. Just eat this olive and just be like, Oh my God.

Robbie: He felt like, just maybe, the next two days would be a breeze.

Tim diary: So I was sitting in the tub just now and, um, had this wave of happiness come over me. I think, um, part of it is definitely the, the sense of like accomplishment. Um, you know, I've made it this far. I can keep going. But, um, anyway, I'm feeling pretty good. Okay, until tomorrow.

Tim: But then things, things get weird, really, really quickly, really quickly.

Tim Diary: I don't know if they're hallucinations or daydreams or just straight out dreams, but they've really kicked in and they're fucking wild.

Tim: At first the, the, the hallucinations all have to do with light. So I remember I was sitting there. One of the things he gives you is hard boiled eggs. It gives you, they're already peeled and, um, they're in this little container.

And so I remember I was sitting there like playing with a hard boiled egg, like woo, sitting at slipping around because it was something to do. And, and all of a sudden, this what I pictured being a, you know, 30 cylinder Ram pickup truck, high beam lights, just drill into the side of my head,

Or like, I'd be sitting there on the bed daydreaming and all of a sudden somebody would like flick on strobe lights where like this constant light flickering to the point where I would like have to put my hands over my eyes thinking that would help. But of course it didn't.

Robbie: At first, the hallucinations were interesting, a novelty to help pass the time, like when Tim was convinced he was in a cave, and could see all around him using beams of light shooting from his eyes, even though they were closed.

Tim Diary: It was there, man. Clear as day. Then I opened my eyes and boom, gone.

Robbie: But pretty quickly, they became frustrating, an invasive visual disruption that he could neither turn off or control.

Tim: It's super annoying actually. Um, and so I was, I think a little worried. I was like, Oh my God, is this going to be like this? Am I going to have to be fighting this? Is this distraction, is this going to be going on?

Robbie: But eventually on that second day, the visual assaults died down, and Tim was able to return to the silent, dark waiting. And it's in that waiting that a new awareness begins to settle.

Tim: You begin to have these spaces that open up between thoughts and I don't know how, how you are, but during my day, I'm like, Oh, I've got to do this. Check that email. It's time to eat. What am I going to have? Like there's, it's a non-stop parade of things I'm thinking about, of stuff coming in my head.

And so what, what slowly begins to happen in that space is I would have a thought about something and then there would be nothing. Nothing at all, just nothing. Like you don't have to try to have nothing going on in your head, to just be, that sort of begins to take over on its own.

Those spaces begin to open up and get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where you're almost, you're aware of them, but you're not at the same time. It's a weird feeling to be aware of not thinking, right?

Tim: That night, Scott comes in to bring more food and check in on Tim, speaking through the closed hatch. Tim describes this feeling of nothingness, and Scott suggests that that nothingness is always there, that for the first time he can notice the canvas that reality gets imprinted upon.

Tim: I thought, Oh, that's kind of a neat thought. And he's like, so ask yourself, who's doing the thinking when a thought comes into that space.

And, uh, you know, I was like, okay, this is, this is too much. I'm. It's me. Of course it's me. Who else would it be, man? What, you know, so I, I, I'm not cynical. I'm not skeptical, but I'm pretty grounded. So I was like, dude, that's me. And he's like, look, look, look, look, just think about it.

Robbie: Tim slept poorly that night, unsure what time it was when he woke. But he noticed that his relationship to the darkness, and by extension the nothingness, had changed. Maybe, this wasn't a place to fear after all.

Tim: And so slowly this feeling of, of, of panic of being suffocating in this black, dark garbage bag became slowly began to become this canvas upon which I could do anything.

The dark begins to, to work with you. And for me, what that meant was I could like visualize all of a sudden, I remember I was sitting there and I was like, kind of looking around, I was like what is all this?

Robbie: Sitting there, alone in the pitch black, Tim looked over and, as clear as day, saw a pile of cubes, shiny and black and about the size of a die, all stuck together, some buried underneath, others held up.

Tim: And, and I remember like looking at them being like, this is weird. What is this? And I went and picked one up and you can, I could physically hold this thing, man. I could like pick it up and hold it in my hand and turn it around and look at it.

And I was like, Oh my God, I'm five, like with my mom and riding around in her Corvair or like, this is me ordering the Chalupa, at Taco Bell or what it was, what it was, it was every experience I'd ever had was being represented by these little tiny jelly cubes and there were millions of them.

Robbie: Tim sat in awe, staring at the sum product of his sense of self, every memory, every experience, every interaction that had gone into creating the person he understood himself to be.

Tim: And so I just start picking them up. Oh, there's my best friend, Pete. When I first met him. Oh, that's the time you missed the 8:45 bus and then there'll be another one about how I dealt with that at work or whatever, like every little tiny experience becomes one of these cubes.

And so I'm sifting through them. I'm like, Ooh, that one's, that one's, that's when you were really mean to that person, you know, like gross. Or like that one was full of jealousy and Oh man, why you hate yourself like that?

Robbie: And that's when the darkness gave Tim his first breakthrough

Tim: I couldn't get rid of them. You get, they're part of you. They're part of me. Like I couldn't just like beat and chunk that thing out the, out the way. But I could put it in a less conspicuous spot, a less meaningful spot. I could just kind of bury it in the pile or put it someplace else.

It didn't have to define me. It did not have to become, you know, a ruling, a critical piece that held up everything else or whatever.

And I know that sounds weird, but when you can physically hold your sadness or physically hold your happiness, it no longer becomes so consuming, so boundless, like it has limits.

Robbie: Tim knew he was hallucinating, yet at the same time he knew what he was experiencing was real, like he was doing a spring cleaning on his sense of self, tidying up the closets in his mind and hanging up new pictures on the wall.

Tim: And so I remember I kind of come out of this state, let's say, and the dark has completely shifted now, man. It was this clearly very loving, nurturing. That was no longer something to fight or to endure or to make your way through.

It became a thing, it became a being, it became very alive. I don't, I promise I'm not like a wacko weird guy or maybe I am, maybe I am. But it was like, it had this, this presence that was felt very, very real.

Robbie: It was the end of the second day. Tim had made friends with the darkness, found the stillness that lays beneath the torrent of thought, and rebuilt his psyche to reflect the best parts of himself.

Tim: And I was thankful. I was like, wow, like, like I've come to terms with all of this. And so that second night I was like, I'm great. This is fantastic. Like, I don't need to do this anymore. Like I've, I've come to terms now with this dark. I've seen myself. I've rearranged these jelly cubes. I have no need to like be angry or jealous or self loathing or, or mean or whatever.

Robbie: There was nothing else, he felt, that he had to learn. But Tim still had two more nights and a day to go, and the darkness wasn't done with him just yet.

We’ll be right back.

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Robbie: Tim awoke sometime later—maybe 10 minutes, maybe the next day—and made his way to the meditation corner.

Tim: I remember that, that for whatever reason, that corner felt somehow darker than the rest of the room and which is complete baloney because the whole thing is just pitch black. Right. But for whatever reason, maybe it was cooler in there, just tucked more into the earth. And so I remember I would go over there and I brought a sleeping bag as well.

And I remember I got in my sleeping bag and just laid down there on the ground and just kind of let that space between thoughts pop up again, and, um, I don't even remember how long I was there or when this began to happen, because again, time just becomes something completely different.

I was lying there like daydreaming about something. just sitting there in this very happy, blissful place when all of a sudden this, this thought, this argument comes strutting into the, this space into my space.

And I remember very clearly, it was this like, scrawny Facebook argument from 2016, you know, election year when we were all just so angry and, and mean to each other. And I remember like it came trotting in and, and, uh, it was trying to pick a fight with me. And I was like, man, what are you doing?

He's like, you could have won that argument. And I was like, I don't want to think about that right now. Like, it was just such a buzzkill, such a bummer to have this, like, bully come marching into this very blissful space. And it starts to like, pick a fight with me and I just cut it off. I just lose my temper, man.

I'm like, I'm like, stop it. I was here first. Like, you know, like, it's like we're fighting over a swing or whatever. But what I meant was like the space I was in, this was mine. And he's like coming into my space. It's like, get out, get out. Like, you're making me angry. I don't want you here. Bother someone else.

And as soon as I like acknowledged that, that I was here first, whatever that means, that space between thoughts. Ooh, here we go.

Uh, yeah, this, uh, uh, the space between thoughts, like just explodes. Like it that void that nothingness just Erupts and just I can feel it like filling me up from the inside. Like my hands begin to like get hot and tingly, like my chest. It's like, it's like, I can no longer, it's like, my, my skin is too small. My rib cage is too small to hold everything that's happening right now. I could literally feel it like racing around and inflating me from the inside.

And the way I described it was like, it was like I was a balloon and all my life I had been a balloon. Right? Just this floppy piece of rubber and all of a sudden the dark like shows me how to inflate it. Like no, this is what a balloon is. It's not this floppy piece of rubber It's this thing that you can inflate and so that's what the dark did it just completely inflated me.

And I realized like, Oh my God, like this nothing within and this nothing without. Both of them are shaped by me, which is just this super, super thin rubbery shell, like that's all that I am physically is just this thin rubber shell, completely shaped by what's in and completely shaped by what's without on the outside.

And it was…

It was just the most blissful, uh, feeling blissful revelation.

I had all this room to hold competing things to completely contradictory things, things that, that like would normally define a moment or whatever, no longer had to do that at all.

For instance, I could be like angry or I could be sad, or I could be frustrated that you're driving 35 and, you know, in the passing lane on the interstate or whatever. And it no longer, it no longer had to like take over. It was like, I had room to be angry, to be sad, to be frustrated, to be happy, to be joyful, whatever.

Like these things no longer had to crowd out everything else I had. I, it was like, it was like I, all of a sudden my storage unit was like infinite. It was like, I no longer had to Tetris my shit into it. It was like, it could just be, it could just be, you know?

That feeling was just so relieving. Like just an absolute, absolute gift.

Robbie: Tim doesn't know how long he sat there, expanding ever further outward in this moment of transcendence, but when he finally returned, he found that the darkness had a name. A very specific one, in fact.

Tim: I just, it came, I was sitting there. I was like, Oh my God, your name's Janet, aren't you?

And so Janet like goes, takes me back to that pile of jelly cubes and she like rummages through it. And again, I can't see her. There's just, it's not a being, it's not, it's not like a form. It's just a presence. But all of a sudden she like reveals to me this this cube, this jelly cube that's sitting there.

I was like, Oh my God, like that one's. That one's very different. It was green. It's like this incredible hawk green color. Uh, it had a little white dot on it. And I was like, what is that? And I kind of deeply enthralled with it. I'm like, Oh my God. And like, so different. And I pick it up and I realized immediately like, Oh my God, this is my sense of like wonder. This is like this uh, this thing that I didn't even know that like I'd lost. You know, and, and, and looking back on it now, I can see like the pandemic was hard on a lot of people, a lot, a lot of people, you know, and I know I'm no special in that way or any way, but, but that was the thing that I think I, I had lost during that whole thing was just this childlike curiosity.

And when Janet shows me this, that there's my sense of wonder, and it was still part of me, I was still there. It will always be part of me, but it was just buried under so much crap. It was buried under like so many other jelly cubes and stuff.

Tim: You know, I would have never found that on my own. Like she had to like reveal it to me. And then so you could, you know, bet your ass, man. I put that thing right back on top of the pile and was just like, you know, and then when I like, uh, kind of come to from that. It's just like, again, man, I'm, I'm in this completely other world.

And I think I fall asleep because I just, I remember, I just, Uh, the next thing I really remember was Scott banging on the door and I'm just like, wait, wait, what? Like, what's going on? Like, wait what’s going on? And he's like, Hey, Tim, it's time you're ready to come out.

Tim diary: So nervous man. Oh my god, just moving it a little bit. Oh my god. Oh. That is way brighter than I thought it'd be. Oh my god.

Robbie: After 82 hours in pure darkness, Tim returned to the surface wearing a blackout mask. Scott led him out to sit down and slowly reorient himself to the light.

Tim: And I remember so clearly, like I went to take the mask off and all I did was touch it. Right. Didn't even like move it, hardly just touched it, and a thin shard of lava, like nuclear hot blast of light just sears underneath my eyeball, like coming up from the corner of like my cheekbone or whatever. Like, you cannot imagine just how bright this is.

Tim diary: I feel ready for sure, even though I'm sitting here with my eyes closed still just because it's uh, more of an adjustment than I thought it'd be.

Tim: But very quickly, it's amazing how quickly our eyes do adjust. And so within, within a couple minutes, like I could like see, and I remember like, Just looking up at the tree and just like everything, everything was so incredibly detailed and vibrant beyond anything I had imagined or had ever seen before, like every little leaf of the tree. Every little leaf, every little squiggle in the bark just seemed to have this relief to it and this motion to it. And this like depth to it that like, you just can't imagine. Like, I, I don't think I'd ever seen the world like that or whatever. Just having that gift of vision back was also very overwhelming.

And I remember just like looking around and then wind, wind hit my face. I was like, Oh my God, that's wind, you know? And I could hear like the little birds or whatever. Like all your senses just come back online, racing online. And that's a lot to work through, man. It's a lot. It's a lot to work through.

Tim Int: I just hope this lasts. I won't, I won't, I'm talking to the dark now, but I won't forget you. Thank you. I’m just,n you know, I'm just so scared it's going to go, that it's going to get piled on again.

Scott: But at least it's still the thing that's, it still remains no matter what you pile on it.

Tim: I still get frustrated, you know, I still get angry, all that stuff, you know, I still get super stressed out. I'm stressed out about writing this story for ���ϳԹ��� right now, you know, but, but at the same time, it doesn't like, doesn't, uh, crowd everything else out. And that's just how Man is, just a wonderful, wonderful gift, wonderful way to like, see my life now.

Like, you know, I'm definitely not Aaron Rogers trying to figure out, should I play for the jets? You know, I just went in curious and it, and it, and it like, just gave me this completely new way of being. And, and it was for three days, all I had to do is spend three days in the dark and it gave me all of this. And, um, I am deeply, deeply grateful for that.

Peter: Tim Neville is a contributing writer for ���ϳԹ���. His  article on his experience at Sky Cave Retreats, is called "I went on a dark cave retreat, Things got weird." It’s on outsideonline.com.

This episode was written and produced by Robbie Carver. It was edited by me, Peter Frick-Wright.

The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast is made possible by our ���ϳԹ��� Plus members. Learn more about all the benefits of membership at outsideonline.com/podplus.