Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown
A resonant call to explore the darkness in life, in nature, and in consciousness—including difficult emotions like uncertainty, grief, fear, and xenophobia—through teachings, embodied meditations, and mindful inquiry that provide us with a powerful path to healing.
Darkness is deeply misunderstood in today’s world; yet it offers powerful medicine, serenity, strength, healing, and regeneration. All insight, vision, creativity, and revelation arise from darkness. It is through learning to stay present and meet the dark with curiosity rather than judgment that we connect to an unwavering light within. Welcoming darkness with curiosity, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing.
Dharma teacher, shamanic practitioner, and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull addresses the spiritual, ecological, psychological, and interpersonal ramifications of our bias towards light.
Tull explores the medicine of darkness for personal and collective healing, through topics such as:
Befriending the Night: The Radiant Teachings of Darkness
Honoring Our Pain for Our World
Seeing in the Dark: The Quiet Power of Receptivity
Dreams, Possibility, and Moral Imagination
Releasing Fear—Embracing Emergence
Tull shows us how the labeling of darkness as “negative” becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes us uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. We can only find the radical path to wholeness by learning to embrace the interplay of both darkness and light.
Praise:
"In this book, Deborah Eden Tull offers the strong medicine of darkness which helps us navigate the uncertainty of our times. The over-lighting of our planet in its urban and more populated areas rob people of access to their own hidden depths, so needed in these times of growing peril." —Joanna Macy, author of Active Hope"A novel and inspiring exploration of darkness bringing grace and balance to the complexity of our time." —Ruth King, author of Mindful of Race
“Deborah Eden Tull skillfully illuminates the wonders of the dark, shedding light onto areas of life where even angels fear to tread. Artificial light is destroying us, but the real light in this book can save us. By obeying the natural curfew of the night, and exploring the darkest corners of our mind, we can tap into natural resources previously buried in broad daylight. This book is a trustworthy guide to the treasures tucked within each of us." —Andrew Holecek, author of Dreams of Light
“Luminous Darkness is a wise, beautiful, important book. Through personal story, deep dharma teachings and social commentary, Deborah Eden Tull reclaims the power of darkness and the divine feminine and reweaves the often-overlooked threads—of potent mystery, fierce compassion, receptivity and relationship, imagination, and emergence—into the cloth of spiritual life. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to heal the wounds of inner and outer divisiveness, and engage our wide, aching world with a radiant, tender heart." —Pamela Weiss, author of A Bigger Sky
“From natural to social systems, Luminous Darkness illuminates with vivid imagery and sensory aliveness how reorienting and rebalancing ourselves inwardly is necessary to help heal our ailing cultures and this world." —Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers
"In this moving spiritual memoir, Tull lifts up the role of darkness as teacher, healer, and guide, revealing spacious and emergent possibilities. Each chapter offers mindful inquiry and experiential practice gateways to explore the potential in darkness to restore inner strength and wholeness. Drawing on spiritual traditions from Zen to shamanism, Tull invites readers to engage the luminous capacities of darkness to counteract the overlighting of the planet and truly learn to see in the dark." —Stephanie Kaza, author of Green Buddhism
DEBORAH EDEN TULL, founder of Mindful Living Revolution, teaches the integration of compassionate awareness into every aspect of our lives, bridging personal and collective awakening in an age of global change. She is an engaged dharma teacher, spiritual activist, author, and sustainability educator, who teaches dharma intertwined with post-patriarchal thought and practices, resting upon a lived knowledge of our unity with the more than human world. She trained for seven and a half years as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery and has taught engaged meditation for over 20 years. Eden has lived in sustainable communities and as an organic gardener/farmer for decades and celebrates the essential wisdom of nature. She currently resides in the mountains of western North Carolina, originally Cherokee land, with her husband. She offers retreats, workshops, classes, and consultations nationally and internationally, integrating presence and partnership with nature.
Eden’s first book The Natural Kitchen: Your Guide for the Sustainable Food Revolution (Process Media) was published in September 2010 and her second book Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other, and the Planet was published by Wisdom Publications in May 2018. Her newest book Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown was released on September 27, 2022.
Eden’s teaching emphasizes the personal, interpersonal, transpersonal, societal, ecological, mystical, and global impacts of awareness practice. Eden also facilitates The Work That Reconnects, as created by Buddhist scholar and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy for transforming our pain and love for our world into compassionate action, and teaches with UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She offers experiential trainings in deep listening, relational intelligence, regenerative leadership, spiritual activism, eco-dharma, and the deep-feminine. As one who has been practicing organic gardening and sustainable design/permaculture for 30 years, Eden believes these disciplines can inform how we relate with ourselves, one another, and the earth.
Readers can connect with Deborah Eden Tull on Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. To learn more, go to DeborahEdenTull.com.To request a copy of Luminous Darkness to review or an interview with Deborah Eden Tull, please contact Kelsey Butts at Book Publicity Services at Kelsey@BookPublicityServices.com or (807) 807-9027.