They told me to look for the olive tree with a candle in front of it.

There I would find a cloak. I was to don it. That way they would be able to identify me. Once I’d taken off my shoes and socks and placed the cloak around my shoulders my journey would begin.

This is why I found myself shoeless in La Mirada, a collection of cul-de-sacs and tract homes on steroids in southern suburban Los Angeles county. La Mirada is close enough to Orange County that it’s hard to believe it isn’t actually where the OC begins. It’s sufficiently middle class that it manages to support a regional theatre — The La Mirada Center For The Performing Arts — which was the launchpad for last-year’s Carrie: The Musical revival.

Since last year La Mirada has also been the home of Screenshot Productions, which entered the immersive scene with the haunt Fear Is What We Learned Here and have proceeded to take a path away from horror into what could almost be called ASMR-immersive. Their previous effort, Parturition was a meditation on the experience of birth and their latest is a meditation on… well, meditation.

Shoshin is, as the tin says, “is an outdoor, real-world exploration of the self, illustrating the power of the mind and the awe and wonder of existence through a 90 minute journey towards enlightenment. Inspired by Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and Joanna Newsom’s Divers.”

How this high concept translates into an actual experience is quietly magical.

After donning the aforementioned cloak I was picked up by the first guide of the evening (Nicholas Sherwin Jr.) and taken away from the meeting point. As he drove the a gentle soundscape was overlaid with the recorded voice of our narrator. This would be one of the constants of the evening. While the voice was played over the vehicle speakers here for the rest of the night a series of bluetooth headphones would be the primary audio source.

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From the vehicle we strode onto a pathway marked by candlelight. The first of the headphones were placed over my — at the time still cloaked — ears. Here the guide and I shared a tea in the manner of a traditional tea ceremony. (Having not actually participated in a traditional tea ceremony I have to rely upon my memories of the Karate Kid franchise to gauge authenticity.) After that opening sequence I was entreated to traverse the candlelit path ahead.

At various points along the path I came across both unmanned stations with simple instructions — write something here, eat this — and installations that involved red robed guides carrying lanterns. All along the back pathway of this suburban housing tract. Installations sometimes brought myself and the guides within the back porches of various houses that have allowed the set-ups within their bounds.

The installations build upon themselves, relying on silence and doses of solitude to create an expansive, meditative vibe. If part of the immersive impulse is to chase the experience of being present then Shoshin’s thematic conceit hits the nail on the head.

In many ways this is the least theatrical of all the immersive experiences I’ve had. As much as there are occult trappings — the robed figures could be mistaken for Satanic figures instead of zen monks by suspicious passerby — and techniques cribbed from extreme haunts the center of the experience is largely an internal one. It also managed to push far more of my buttons than Parturition did.

It did this in three ways.

For starters the subject matter — zen practice and non-dual states of mind — is one that has fascinated me forever. Then there is the matter of the location. I was born in Orange County and lived everything from ramshackle apartments to Stepford-lite condo developments before the family fled to the Bay Area. The pathways of a La Mirada tract scratch at some of my oldest memories. This is not where I grew up — it wasn’t remotely this “nice” — but it is something like the platonic idea of what those early homesteads were trying to be. Or at least it is at night, with a nearly full moon in the sky and the sound of a creek trickling away in the background as you grip cool grass between your toes.

The final way was how creators Meghan Farrington & Nicholas Sherwin Jr. created space for reflection within the piece. This came in two forms: silent passage along the path, and in a conversation with Farrington who played the role of a key acolyte at the end of the sequence.

Now I’ll admit that this might not be everyone’s cup of jasmine pearl tea. Those who are looking for a story can seek elsewhere. This is a piece of work that requires you to set aside your expectations and give yourself over to the journey. To embrace shoshin the concept: beginner’s mind. Like a certain tree far, far away what you find there just might depend on what it is you bring with you.

Here’s the bad news: Shoshin has come and gone. The good news is that Screenshot is committed to continuing down this path they are walking, including a subscription series that aims to create even more focused experiences. Actually that’s not good. That’s wonderful.

For more on what Screenshot is up to, read Juliet Bennet Rylah’s review of Shoshin and her notes on her experiences with the unfolding Das Gericht.