What Happens to Creativity When We Spend Time in Total Darkness?
A conversation with Dr. Andrew Holecek about Dark Retreat
Hello friends.
What a fascinating podcast conversation I had with Dr. Andrew Holecek! His new book about Dark Retreat, Total Eclipse of the Mind: Unleashing the Power of Darkness for Creativity, Healing, and Transformation, is due out May 26, 2026 from St. Martin's Essentials / Sounds True. Listen to the interview on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
For many people, me included, Dark Retreat can lead to profound insight, personal healing, and the opening of creative floodgates. In fact, Holecek’s newest book burst into his mind whole and complete “like a Mozart symphony” during such a retreat. But Dark Retreat is “big medicine” not to be undertaken lightly. He wrote the book as much to keep people out as to invite them in.
At one point Andrew flipped the interview to ask me about my own experience in the dark and how it has impacted me as a writer. As I work to finish my third novel, I plan to renter the dark—in Andrew’s words—“to actively troll and farm this dimension of the mind where there are no limitations.”
Andrew Holecek is an interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner in Tibetan Buddhism and other nondual wisdom traditions. He is the Resident Contemplative Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, and a research consultant for the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at Northwestern University. His work involves studies on dream yoga and the practice of dark retreat. Dr. Holecek is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the author of ten books, and a concert pianist. He has completed the Tibetan Buddhist three-year retreat and is a frequent subject in scientific studies on meditation and lucid dreaming. His work integrates ancient wisdom traditions with contemporary perspectives, aiming to help individuals navigate spiritual challenges and end-of-life experiences. He is currently writing a second book on “gray” retreat—a less radical form of Dark Retreat. He holds degrees in classical music, biology, and a doctorate in dental surgery.
I’ve summarized below a couple of highlights from our wide-ranging conversation. Hard to choose! I hope you enjoy!
Yours at the well,
Tess
Dark Retreat is an ancient practice in many wisdom traditions, including Tibetan Buddhism, in which you to spend extended periods of time in utter darkness. Darkness embodies feminine/yin energy. Human society is currently overwrought with yang/patriarchal energy. This, Holecek holds, is the essence of the meta crisis. We suffer from metaphysical light pollution, the blazing sun of our assumptions so bright it blinds us to the galaxy of stars above. Individually and collectively, darkness restores our vision.
At the bottom of this post you’ll find links to several retreat centers that offer Dark Retreat.
“I read Total Eclipse of the Mind with the particular curiosity and attentiveness of one who has also entered into darkness as a spiritual practice and creative adventure… I love that he treats the absence of light not as an enemy but as a collaborator–one that strips distraction, sharpens perception, and invites wonder. This book will be a beautiful companion to anyone who, like me, is curious about how entering the darkness can bring us closer to the light.”
–Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and All the Way to the River
Would you like to tell us a bit about your new book and what prompted you to write it at this time?
I have been engaging in this somewhat unusual type of practice—Dark Retreat—for close to thirty years. Two and a half years ago, I had a particularly impactful journey. Like you mentioned, I’ve written nine previous books, and towards day eight or nine of this particular retreat, the book that will be coming out in May 2026 just burst into my mind, you know, like a Mozart symphony. It was a marvelous experience. Boom—there it was.
The timing was quite interesting because there’s a lot of stuff in the zeitgeist now about Dark Retreat. I’m working in concert with a number of academics, academic institutions, and scientific establishments to study it. There are definitely ways to do this practice wrong. And some of the stuff that’s coming out in the media is—whoa—really misleading. The sensationalistic, exaggerated approach isn’t helpful. And so I was inspired to write the book to invite properly motivated, properly prepared people in to explore this really powerful psycho-spiritual transformative technique, this technology, dare I say. But Tess, I wrote it just as much to keep people out as to invite them in, because this is big medicine. If it isn’t used as directed, so to speak, it can cause some challenges.
“Physical and metaphysical light pollution is pulling us away from ourselves, distracting us from who we truly are. The result is a world that has lost its way in the light. Andrew’s writing is like walking with a dear friend who is expertly and lovingly guiding us through the deepest passages of our mind. This book will help you find your way back–and reconnect to what really matters.”
-Judson Brewer MD PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Unwinding Anxiety.
As a fellow writer, I’m curious how the writing of this book was different than your previous books—how it came to you in the context of a Dark Retreat itself.
I was trained principally within the context of pretty traditional, classical Tibetan Buddhism, where Dark Retreat has been in the tradition for thousands of years. It’s a huge practice, and you’ll find renderings of it in the pre-Socratics, ancient Egyptian sleep temple rituals, and neo-platonic traditions. There’s a huge lineage.
But there are aspects of it that I have not found in the classic nondual wisdom traditions that I have found through my own personal journey. I’m interjecting more depth psychology approaches—the work of Carl Jung and the like. The reason I mention this is because of the creativity thing. More and more artists like Elizabeth Gilbert are going in and writing and talking about it. And I think when the word gets out, you’re going see more and more musicians and all kinds of other creative types going into the dark.
One of the most spectacular things that happens in the dark is the attenuation, the thinning out, and eventual erasure, the removal of the boundary between the so called conscious and unconscious mind—and that’s where creativity comes from.
This was a massive set of insights for me that resulted in the creative flourishing that led to this book. Since then, the dark is where I now go more overtly, more directly, to incubate creativity, to actually troll and farm this dimension of the mind. And there are no limitations.
There’s a wonderful Tibetan term called “rangbop,” which literally means “self fall.” The mind relaxes, opens, and falls into itself. It goes through this kind of sedimentation—my languaging—a kind of archeology of the conscious and the unconscious mind. I can speak at length about what happens in the journey and why the initial aspects of dark routine can be so difficult and challenging. There’s an absolute, clear reason why that’s the case, why it becomes more interesting and creative as you go down, and why it becomes absolutely ecstatic, otherworldly, and non-dual blissful when you go all the way down. As you work your way down, the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious mind comes apart. That’s where creativity lives.
Listen to the full interview on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
Andrew Holecek teaches on all aspects of Tibetan Buddhist meditation and nocturnal practice, including: liminal dreaming, lucid dreaming, dream yoga. sleep yoga, death and dying, and bardo yoga. You can find him at: AndrewHolecek.com.
Check out my recent interviews with George Saunders and Martha Cooley.
Stay tuned for upcoming conversations with Pulitzer Prize winning playwright/ novelist Ayad Akhtar—whose work you may know from Disgraced or Homeland Elegies—as well as essayist Antonio Romani and debut novelist Halle Shepherd.
RETREAT CENTERS OFFERING DARK RETREAT:
Sky Cave / Oregon
Dark Havens / Vermont (where I did my retreat)
Chamma Ling / Colorado
Menla / New York (coming soon)
OTHER BOOKS BY ANDREW HOLECEK:
Dreams of Light: The Profound Daytime Practice of Lucid Dreaming
Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep
Lucid Dreaming Workbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Your Dream Life
Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition
I’m Mindful, Now What?: Moving Beyond Mindfulness to Meet the Modern World
Reverse Meditation: How to Use Your Pain and Most Difficult Emotions as the Doorway to Inner Freedom
The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual Hardship into Joy
Meditation in the iGeneration: How to Meditate in a World of Speed and Stress