Nate Hagens

I'm Nate Hagans.

On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future.

By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming great simplification.

Today I'm joined by consciousness scholar and meditation practitioner, Andrew Holachek, for an in-depth look at our most important and accessible tool for navigating the great simplification, the human mind.

Andrew Holachek is an interdisciplinary scholar practitioner in non-dual wisdom traditions and is actively involved in scientific research on what ended up being the main topic of today's conversation, dark retreat,

with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies.

He is also a research consultant for the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at Northwestern University.

Andrew is the author of many books and offers seminars internationally on meditation, lucid dreaming, death practices, and dark retreat.

While these ideas are ancient, he believes these are urgently relevant given the stakes we face today.

In our conversation, Andrew describes how in our era of light pollution, devices everywhere, and nonstop stimulation, many of us now constantly exist in fragmented, distracted states of mind, which he calls darkness deficit disorder.

Going to the roots of this problem, Andrew and I discussed the power of work that does not require fossil fuels or machines or even a light bulb in the form of what he calls dark retreats.

Drawing from scholarship rooted in ancient traditions like Tibetan Buddhism, he details how meditative practices like dark retreat can help alleviate our suffering and enable us to better do the work needed to navigate our present moment.

Importantly, and surprisingly to me, Andrew outlined how light itself and contrast darkness relate to our behaviors of endless acquisition and consumption.

And he invites us to remember the fact that for most of us, we're actually happiest the moment we stop wanting for more.

As such, I hope this episode offers some insight into how our hunger for constant growth is an ineffective substitute for reflection and the understanding of our own minds.

Before we begin, if you are enjoying this podcast, I invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletter, where you can read more of the systems science underpinning the more than human predicament.

And where my team and I share written content related to The Great Simplification, you can find the link to subscribe in the show description.

With that, please welcome Andrew Holachek.

Andrew Holachek, welcome to The Great Simplification.

Yeah, things, our world is horribly complex and complicated and all the things.