Extreme Mind Training: What I Learned From 3 Days in a Closet
I unplugged and spent 72 hours in darkness without food in my friend’s closet. It changed my world forever.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal
In a world of information overload, distraction, and instant gratification, I went into the darkness to see if I could restore my mind to a more lucid state of tranquility and focus.
In the Tibetan Dzogchen mind training lineages, the dark retreat (mun mtshams) is used by meditators to deepen their practice.
But despite reading a little about similar retreats into darkness, I never anticipated just how much my perception of the world would change.
Armed with a portable toilet, 12 bottles of electrolyte water, and a tape recorder, I entered the closet at 2pm on Tuesday, May 26th, 2020.
Day 1: Existential Dread
Shortly after entering my tomb, a primordial fear of insanity, abandonment, death, and non-existence came bubbling up.
It’s hard to put the feeling into words.
These previously subconscious fears produced strong and painful emotions, and I nearly abandoned the project twice within a few hours.
When you’re alone in darkness, you’re essentially a brain in a jar. In other words, you’re just raw awareness without anything with which to compare itself. Lacking an outer world to separate yourself from, your sense of identity starts to blur.
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell
Fortunately, I had the tool of mindfulness at my disposal and dissected the physical sensations resulting from these difficult feelings until they dispersed.
I welcomed sleep when it finally came at an unknown hour of this first, endless night.
Day 2: Inner Babble
Over the course of the first couple of days, the voice in my head became increasingly loud as if someone had dialed up the volume 10x. Deprived of external inputs, thoughts began to race. The mind wanted out.
For many people there’s nothing scarier than being left face-to-face with their own mind.
In one shocking study, 67% of male and 25% of female participants opted to electrify themselves rather than sit alone in a room alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes.
Like a two-year-old that always wants something in its mouth, the mind goes crazy without anything to chew on (except itself).
“Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way and you never noticed.” — Henepola Gunaratana
This chatter is actually occurring all day long but we don’t tend to notice it since there are so many ways to occupy ourselves and passify it by going unconscious: Netflix, booze, sleep, etc.
Without any tools to divert attention away from the inner chaos, it quickly became obvious how neurotic the mind’s baseline state often is.
Another realization concerned the mind’s constantly craving nature. As soon as one need is satisfied, the mind immediately jumps to the next need, spending little time appreciating its attainments.
The above diagram will remind many of a modified version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. But the point here is that our minds are always looking for the next most important need and are difficult to satisfy. Once we’ve fulfilled our basic necessities, we ideally ought to shrink these circles, stepping off of this never-ending treadmill, in order to be truly content. Otherwise, the mind will keep seeking more status and trying to accumulate more resources.
No doubt, this is driven by 600 million years of our nervous systems evolving to keep us alive and reproduce. But it’s not useful for finding happiness in the modern world. I was thankful beyond words when the Sisyphean craving finally began to unravel in the closet.
While my thoughts initially consisted of outer status drives, I watched over the course of three days as my needs gradually became more central until all I could think about was food.
Day 3: Acceptance
“Do you want to know what my secret is? You see, I don’t mind what happens.” -Krishnamurti
Past the 48 hour mark, hunger became a major factor, and I began to fantasize about my next meals. The stench of my own B.O. and filth worked against my hunger but made the whole experience more uncomfortable.
I thought of all the homeless people, prisoners of war, and our ancient ancestors. Is this what their day-to-day affairs were like?
My Tai Chi teacher, Dr. Tamara Russell, once said, “When you meet suffering, you meet your mind.” That aptly summarizes what happened.
But, thankfully, an unexpected shift occurred. When I gave up resisting my circumstances and finally accepted them, the suffering disappeared. This follows the logic of meditation teacher Shinzen Young’s pseudomathematical formula:
Suffering = Resistance x Pain
Minimal resistance, minimal suffering.
After many hours of trying to beat down the inner voice, my prior meditation training kicked in and I could begin to observe thoughts without identifying with them. I began to notice the stillness between chattering thought-stories. I could begin to appreciate the joy of the pure awareness that is untainted by thoughts and sensations.
Accepting the mind in its current condition without trying to change its contents was paradoxically what changed everything.
The Exit
When my friends opened the door, the world came rushing back in. What followed was a deep sense of gratitude.
Shapes and colors, modern plumbing, running water, food!, and most importantly companionship — the basic necessities that we can easily take for granted — suddenly felt paramount.
“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’” — Seneca
Given a full detox from instant gratification, the 3-day closet retreat produced both a lucid mind and one heavily sensitized to the outside world. Walking down the street ahead of demolishing my first meal in over 72 hours, all of the sensory input (sights, sounds, smells) were overwhelming.
I experienced how complex and information-rich our world really is. Our minds usually filter most of this out, but having had virtually no inputs for days, it all came rushing in.
Even as I greedily munched a second pizza pie, part of me longed to get back in the closet.
I’d like to suggest that I probably learned more experientially during this closet retreat than most previous months, or even years, of my life. It’s easy to go about life without gaining insights into the mind because there are so many external things on which to fixate. But when you remove all distraction, the only place to look is inward.
What we find when we direct our attention inward might not be comfortable initially, but it’s an essential part of the examined life. In coming to terms with our minds, we can free them from their habitual patterns and become more conscious of the subconscious currents that determine our lives beneath the surface.
Our only hope of gaining the treasures introspection has to offer, however, is by taking the time to sit quietly alone.
Here’s the poem by great Sufi poet Hafiz that inspired my inner journey and perhaps will inspire others to do the same:
FOR THREE DAYS
Not many teachers in this world
Can give you as much enlightenment
In one year
As sitting all alone, for three days,
In your closet
Would
Do.
This means not leaving.
Better get a friend to help with
A few sandwiches
And
The chamber
Pot.
And no reading in there or writing poems,
That would be cheating;
Aim high — for a 360 degree
Detox.
This sitting alone, though, is
Not recommended
If you are normally
Sedated
Or have ever been under doctor’s
Surveillance because of your
Brain.
Dear one,
Don’t let Hafiz fool you —
A ruby is buried
Here.
P.S. — If you’re serious about your own mind training, check out the FitMind meditation app.
About the Author: Liam McClintock is the Founder & CEO of FitMind, a mental fitness tech company. He’s an RYS-certified meditation and yoga teacher, having trained in multiple styles around the world.
