Episode 162: Deborah Eden Tull

On the necessary redefinition and reconnection to darkness as the medicine of compassion, and how our embrace of the unknown can change the world.

• 0:42 Introducing Deborah Eden Tull, Luminous Darkness, @mindfullivingrevolution
• 4:00 Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown; Redefining Darkness
• 6:30 Journey into 'Endarkenment'; 5 Aspects of Embodied Meditation and Spirituality
• 9:00 Through what perception lens am I perceiving right now? Original consciousness – consciousness free of the perception lens of overlay. Fixation with light -> fixation with rational mind.
• 11:45 Recognizing darkness as a great teacher of deep listening. The biases we carry.
• 14:15 Deeply questioning and examining our biases. Biases valuing light over dark. Understanding 'fertile' darkness.
• 16:15 Going through grief in a culture of sun shining. Learning to look within and reckoning with traumas.
• 18:15 Welcoming the full spectrum of light and dark in meditation. Waking up to the vitality and sacred teachings of darkness, as well as light.
• 20:20 The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom; "It is by staying present to what is that we find a freedom far greater than the utopia we are seeking."
• 22:20 Fierce compassion is a needed ally throughout our entire human journey. Presence is a transmission, an invitation into shared presence. Finding fierce compassion through mysterious illness. Finding a balance with gentle compassion.
• 26:48 Endarkenment invites us to open our heart to the dharma gate that exists just behind inconvenience and comfort. Obstacles do not block our path, they are the path.
• 30:50 Complications are auspicious, do not resist them. Cultivating a soft gaze. Attention follows the gaze of the eyes.
• 33:50 Living life is our meditation, sitting is just the formal part of practice. Learning to see with inner vision, or more clearly with the heart.
• 35:55 Seeing from wholeness and interconnection rather than the habit of fragmenting life and seeing through the lens of separation. Leading in the dark is a path of freedom from small self.
• 40:20 Liberation from the idea of success as binary. Success and failure can exist simultaneously. Liberation from the idea of success as a byproduct of our efforts. Co-creating with life while resting in emergence.

Deborah Eden Tull, the founder of Mindful Living Revolution, is an engaged dharma teacher, public speaker and activist. She spent seven years as a Buddhist monk at a silent monastery, now offering retreats, workshops and consultations internationally.

Eden teaches dharma intertwined with post-patriarchal thought and practices, resting upon a lived knowledge of our unity with the more-than-human world. Her books include Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other and the Planet and The Natural Kitchen: Your Guide for a Sustainable Food Revolution.

Eden also teaches the Work That Reconnects, created by Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, for transforming out pain and love for our world into compassionate action.