Moving Through Fear’s Allure to Find Inner Peace with Akshay Nanavati

You're listening to the Human upgrade with Dave Asprey. I spent four days in a cave, frankly, because I was afraid that I'd eat something if I was trying to fast for four days. And also I knew that I would act like a total jerk and get all hangry and hypoglybitschy. So I was afraid of that. So, like, all right, put me in a cave, no people, no food, and I'm just going to face the fear of loneliness and I'm going to face the fear of hunger at the same time. And that was my last book and I've been attracted for years to do something called Vajra Armor, which is meditation in darkness, usually for 10 days. It's like an advanced form of Vipassana. Just finding 10 days to be in the dark much, let alone 10 days for me right now, is a little challenging. But you did seven days in darkness.

Why? Where? How?

Tell me about that.

Sure. What drew me to it initially was so I went through a very, very challenging divorce a few years ago. And at this point I'd sobered up, written my book, business was going, my life was going good, went through this experience and I broke my sobriety. And like everything I do, I do it hard. So I got to a point where, I mean, I'm downing like literally three 750ml of vodka a day and going on for five. I still remember I'd be throwing up over a toilet, throwing up and then picking up the bottle to drink right after I'm done, you know, so going into a very dark space. And I. Obviously something was missing, so I wanted to go. At this point, I've done like run ultras, I've done a lot. And so I was like, I gotta find, I gotta go deeper within to find some answers. And. And so I was actually going to go do a vipassana. The ten day silent retreats. I didn't know a darkness retreat was a thing. And when I was doing some research, I stumbled into this concept, this, this concept of a darkness retreat. And that to me was far more appealing than a vipassana. Because unlike a vipassana, where in a vipassana your eyes are open, so when you shut off the visual sense, which is one of the primary ways in which we engage with the world, you have nowhere external for your consciousness to go. So I can't look at the thing and say, that's a door, that's a wall. I can't go anywhere outside, I have to go within. And that's Inevitably, like a challenging, intense journey. But therefore the, the. The insights that will come from that will be far more profound. So that was the draw to it, why I went there. I went to a place in Germany, this darkness retreat in Germany, and the way it kind of works, sort of logistically, you're in this tiny little room, pitch darkness, can't see your hand in front of you, darkness. You can choose three options. You can do water, food or smoothies. I did the, like a pure water fast. I did the middle ground because I'm an ultra runner, so I'm pretty skinny anyway. And I was going to come out and keep training. I didn't have the. Of. I didn't want to lose too much more weight, so I did just smoothies. And they bring a smoothie three times a day at various times and they'll ring a little bell and you hear the bell and the hallway is dark too, so you'll come out and grab your food and other than that you have nothing to do. You're literally sitting in a dark room. And I also. Actually all of these journals are next to me because I was literally typing these out. I had to journal in the dark. I was journaling and inevitably people ask how you know, So I had a sort of ruler and would write and move it down. And obviously it wasn't in the lines, but it was legible for the most part. And the stuff that came through was deeply profound, you know, so you see lights pretty much from day two into the darkness, because your brain, they say in that extended period of darkness releases dmt, which as you of course know, is one of the primary ingredients in Ayahuasca. And so you're seeing these light shows that are intense. I mean, the brightest white light I've ever seen in my entire life was when I was in the darkness. After five days, I literally was touching my eyelids like this because I couldn't tell if they were open or closed. I was covering my eyes, sitting in a dark room, seeing this bright light. You know, six days into the darkness, I had this very intense light show where I was lying on the bed and my arms were locked out like this. And I literally felt like I couldn't move them. They felt paralyzed. I'm looking at the ceiling and I'm seeing these red and green lights, kind of like stars in the universe. And they're just this. This kind of magical experience. And I was so I was. I was moved to an experience of absolute awe, like at the highest level, tears coming down my face. And every Time they would fade. I would just sort of repeat to myself, please God, help me go deeper. And God knows how long this was because of course I had no sense of time and these intense meditation experiences. But even in my journaling, you know, I was finding answers to. And I'm not saying my answers are the right answers, but questions like about the nature of enlightenment, why are we here? What does it, what does God mean? My expression of what is my version of God, you know, and also going deeper into, into understanding what my, like where, what led me to those places, you know, like breaking my sobriety. And I confronted a lot of things. Like one thing I've always faced and to some degree it's still there, but I'm much more aware of it. So now it doesn't control me. Is this constant guilt about why do I get this life. Like just because I was born where I was born, I'm instantly blessed with hundred times more opportunities, a thousand more times opportunity opportunities than many other people. You know, like a few months, a few weeks before the Darkness retreat, I had gone to do this run across Liberia and doing some humanitarian work out there. And, and I remember when I was running, I met this kid who had lost his mom in the war, lost his, his father left, he was living with this other kid in the village in Liberia. He wanted to go to med school. Odds of that happening were damn near zero. And what, like, what was the difference? That kid was born where he was born. And as a result of that he, he's born into a world of darkness and struggle that I just, I didn't do shit to deserve the world I was born into, you know. And so I'd always struggled with being happy because why do I get to be happy when there's so many other people in pain? And that stuff showed up into the darkness and I was able to sort of process it, understand it, deal with it. And ultimately, I mean it took still work after it. You don't have one magic aha. And everything changes. You have to constantly practice it and implement it in order for the long term effects to last. But a lot of that stuff showed up that was really game changing for me. But to be honest with you Dave, the most profound part of the Darkness retreat was coming out of coming out of the darkness after seven days and seeing the light. I mean when, when I took off that mask and the way you see the light after seven days in dark, it, I mean no words can describe what I saw and how I saw it in those, in those moments. But the two thoughts that ran through my mind was one was, I wish I could see the world every day through these eyes, which inevitably you can't. And it sort of returns to the status quo that it was used to. Although you do have. You have opened a new door that you can now access. But the second thought was this visceral gratitude of. And knowing that you can never really see the light that way unless you have been in the dark. And so I felt this deep sense of gratitude for every bit of pain and suffering and misery I've experienced in life. Because only by going into those spaces of darkness, only by opening those doors of pain, was I able to access something else, you know, and so only by like opening the doorway into the dark could I find this window into a light that I had never experienced before. And it was a visceral knowing of that. Not just sort of a rational idea of it, just this deep knowing. I was again moved to tears seeing the light that way. And that was awe inspiring. I mean, it's hard to even describe what that moment was like.

Was that a. A transcendent spirit? Was that a transcendent spiritual experience or was that a coming out of fear experience?

I would say it's a bit of both. You know, I think they're very. They can, they can kind of coexist. Like if I had. If in one word, if there's one word to summarize, what showed up into the darkness, in the darkness was self transcendence. Transcendence was the one word. I mean, somebody recently asked me, what is life about in one word? The word to me is transcendence. So without a doubt, it was a transcendence experience. But it began with, you know, confronting my fear, my. My fear of stillness, my fear of this, of. Of the loneliness having just gone through this divorce, my guilt, you know, so. But I think these experiences can all kind of coexist. It doesn't have to be one or the other.