[00:00:02] Speaker A: Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest telling you to move, to love, to speak, to try.
Day after day, you pretend you don't hear it calling. Or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse, but it's there, ready for you, and it will wait for you.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: As long as you need.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: My name is Johnny G. And I invite you to join me on a.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Journey of awakening as we dare to embrace our light.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: This is refractive.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Refractive. I'm so glad you're here. Today I have the joy of welcoming Deborah Eden Tull. We call her Eden. She's the founder of Mindful Living Revolution, which teaches the integration of compassionate awareness into every aspect of our lives. She's an engaged dharma teacher, a spiritual activist, author, and sustainability educator. She trained for seven and a half years as a buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery, and she's taught engaged meditation for over 20 years. She's the author of Luminous Darkness, an engaged buddhist approach to embracing the unknown. And she's here today on refractive to talk with us about one of our favorite topics, embracing the darkness. It's such a lush and velvety concept to dig into, so I'm really glad that you're here. Eden. Thanks for being here today.
[00:01:42] Speaker C: I'm so grateful to be here with you today. And I'm aware where I'm sitting in the mountains of western North Carolina. It's a particularly dark near winter's day, and so it feels really appropriate to be cozying up and embarking on this conversation.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. We have a lot to cover today. So I wonder if I can just dig right into the good stuff. Is that okay?
[00:02:06] Speaker C: Dive in.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: All right, so your book, Luminous Darkness, it really gave me so much food for thought, again, on this topic of embracing the darkness within and redefining it away from the cultural concept that we have of what it means to experience darkness into more of this broad, roomy, spiritual perspective of darkness. And you connect darkness with receptivity, and I really love that concept. To me, it calls to mind the power of the divine feminine, that the vessel receiving and then making space to give birth to all.
So, you know, the Bible gives lots of examples of the divine feminine as being the source, and that light comes from darkness, whether it's Jesus coming from the vessel of Mary, or whether it's even let there be light occurs only after there was no light. So, anyway, I don't want to get on this riff. I'm getting on a riff here. I want to stay focused here. I'm just excited about this topic. I guess what I really want to get your perspective on is that since this is such an area of focus for you, can you tell us about what you mean when you call the darkness sacred and help us contrast that with the more scary definition of darkness that you might hear colloquially in our culture?
[00:03:43] Speaker C: Sure. Thank you for that framing, Johnny. And first, I would say I'm inviting people to explore the possibility and the medicine of the healing offered by the luminous darkness. We might say the generative darkness, the fertile darkness.
Let's visit first what darkness actually is in nature and consciousness. Think of physical darkness, the restorative darkness of the night. Think of the yin, receptive, still slow, regenerative aspect or element of nature and consciousness, as opposed to bright lights, speed attainment, mind in spiritual practice, getting somewhere, the familiarity of who we know ourselves to be in daylight and how we tend to look out. One of my teachers calls this wake centricity, that alongside egocentricity and anthropocentricity, we have a kind of wake centricity, where we're so focused on the idea that what we see is real and that we don't question and look beyond just the comfortable, familiar domain of everyday human life. You with me so far?
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: And so, to go a little deeper in the natural world, we could look at so many examples of this regenerative darkness from the dark soil where we plant seeds that generate incredible abundance.
The embryo resting in the womb, and that period of nine months of pure rest in the dark. And what actually happens as this incredibly intelligent, amazing being body forms in the womb. We could look at the caterpillar and the cocoon. And so darkness as both the field of the unknown, rather than what's familiar and comfortable to us and intellectually known. And also darkness as this field, we might say, for restoration, healing, transformation. And the reason this is very significant right now is that just physically on our planet, we have really shifted our relationship to darkness as human beings. And we're experiencing the overlighting of planet earth physically, so that I think it's 70% of the globe and 90% of the US and Europe are overlit by artificial lights at night. And I find that an important metaphor because there's also been, in the dominant paradigm, a huge shift from our past to speeding up to the impact of capitalism and colonialism and this frame of kind of colonizing life rather than being with the mystery. Just so you know, Johnny, there's a lot I could say in response to your question, but I want to just frame it by giving the listeners some different ways to think of and consider darkness in nature and consciousness as different from the sort of young, active, expressive qualities of light. With me so far, yes.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Even when we think of physical light, it's always held by the darkness. I mean, when you zoom in, what is there in between the waves or the particles? However you're observing light, it's the space between the particles, and that is the darkness. Right. The darkness is the holder of all, and it's the source of all.
It's the vessel of all.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: All light arises from darkness, all insight, all creativity, all vision, all possibility. And so again, even just on a personal and interpersonal level, when we're just sort of fixated on the domain of light or don't give ourselves permission to rest in the darkness, which is one aspect of, for instance, a meditation practice, we tend to get very full of thoughts, belief systems, positions, and not let ourselves empty into the place where we can actually access fresh possibilities, actually truly create anew. So that's one aspect of the generative aspect of.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: And you, I don't know if you coined this term, I haven't heard it before, but I think it's lovely.
Can you tell us what you mean by endarkenment? You talk about that quite a bit in your book.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: Sure. Well, Johnny, I'll go back to early on in my spiritual path, I'll say first that there's so much healing that I experienced on my journey of enlightenment, or pursuit of enlightenment. And at the same time, the deeper I went, I did notice the human tendency.
In Zen, we study the self first. And so I could take ownership for this, but my own tendency to want to get somewhere, to want to attain something like enlightenment was something to attain, to want to fix and solve and improve myself, really to want to transcend. And it reminded me of how much in our world I see kind of and many spiritual traditions in the modern world, sort of a tendency to want to get away from what we label dark, difficult, painful, uncomfortable emotions, wanting to get away from all that, to try to get to the light.
And I found that not only did that not work for me in a sustainable way, but that there was a really different approach that ultimately practice guided me to. And it was about being willing to dissolve the duality between light and dark, always trying. And listeners can just reflect on this for themselves, the ways we try to push away, to get away from what we label dark. I see in the conventional language darkness as a term that we use to sort of put everything that's unwanted into that category. And I can just pause and say, we all know this goes into tremendous collective harm. Everything from racism and xenophobia are connected to this conversation. But even just the ways that we try to push away unwanted parts of us or try to get away from, I'll pop a pill and get away from a difficult emotion. I believe that to be awake in today's world, to be compassionate, to be vibrantly alive, to be resilient, means to embrace both the teachers of light and dark on our path, to recognize that we're made for the medicine of both. And so endarkenment is a term. I hadn't heard it before, but it came through for me when I was giving birth to this book in a really strong way. And there are five aspects to it that I explore in this book, and one is our awakening through embodiment and earth connection. That instead of trying to get up, up and away, almost a sense of like light as the lamp of knowledge we're trying to get to, if we can label something, understand something with the rational mind, we think we have a solid ground to rest upon. And this is inviting us to go down into our earth bodies, the darker, deeper undercurrents of our human experience, our emotions. I think there's so much of a need to metabolize our shared grief in this day and age, and that this needs to be part of someone's spiritual practice. The second is the restoration of our ability to see clearly with the heart by surrendering to receptivity and taking responsibility for the lens through which we're perceiving. And we can talk more about receptivity because it's such a potent quality in a few minutes. But acknowledging, I mean, just in my life, I can acknowledge the harm that's been caused when I was seeing through this duality or binary perception of appreciating everything that's light and judging the dark, the great harm caused by that.
The next is the reclamation of our true nature or original consciousness by releasing hierarchical perception. And again, this is something that we can just see how often what I call the mind of separation tends to categorize things as positive versus negative, good versus bad, better versus worse. Many people don't question this kind of mind activity, but there's great freedom for each and every one of us in investigating it and considering releasing it.
In Zen, we talk about, and I'll quote for a moment, ehe Dogan, who was the founder of Soto Zen original consciousness. Our direct experience in the moment, our naked experience. In the moment, there's more room and space to actually embrace and welcome all that's arising. The multidimensionality of what's arising. Without saying, I like this, I hate this.
And the suffering that that like and dislike, hates.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: Is that mirror your own experience?
[00:14:07] Speaker B: I have to say, I find myself currently on my own spiritual journey noticing where I have fallen into the trap of spiritual bypass.
And for listeners who might not be familiar with that, it's a similar concept to toxic positivity, where I'm only focusing on what I deem as the good stuff.
And that's it. And listen, there's value, in my view, to orienting myself to the good stuff. The good stuff is good for a reason.
And what I do is, what's the word that I want to say? I delay and render more complex my personal development when I value the good stuff at the expense of what I deem as the not good stuff.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: I really appreciate the language you use for that, Johnny.
Yes.
There's, in my experience, a missed opportunity.
First, when we're spiritual bypassing, when we're trying to avoid or quickly move past discomfort or difficulties in order to reach to the light, we're missing the opportunity to get in touch with in a very steadfast way that can change our whole lives, that can deepen our overall resiliency for the entire human experience. Getting in touch with this deep, vast, accepting, compassionate field within that is just not actually interested in the continual categorization of things.
I could simply talk about it as love in a really simple way. It's a deep, steadfast, profound love that allows us to be with really difficult emotions. Oh, really difficult emotion. From this place of love, I can be with it someone else's. Really difficult emotions are challenging, but often very experiences that really help us to learn. If we're continually trying to turn away from all of that, we're turning away from our great strength, our personal and collective strength. So I think that's important to underline. Yeah.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yes. One of my favorite quotes at the moment. It comes from the world of the twelve step recovery community. And it says, nothing is wasted in God's economy.
Isn't that so rich? Isn't that?
[00:17:15] Speaker C: I love it, I love it.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: It's just juicy.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: It reminds me of a quote that I shared in luminous darkness. There is no darkness within, only light unseen.
Just kind of making us question some of our.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And when we talk about embracing darkness, and I don't want to speak for you, Eden, but we're not talking about giving in to urges that result in harm.
That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is embracing the totality of what we are and that we are light and dark together. And the darkness is unknown, the darkness is unknowable, and the darkness is sacred. We're not talking about traditional concepts of evil.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Thank you. This is so important early on in our conversation, Johnny, because people get confused. So there's a strong tendency in our culture to think of darkness as all that is bad, evil, unwanted. But we're talking about it in a different context here.
I also want to back up for a moment and just share that the quote I read a minute ago comes from the Kashmir Shaivist tradition. Just important to note. But my spiritual path has bridged longtime decades of buddhist practice as well as practices of animism, earth based practices that have been part of my life for decades. And it's important to acknowledge that the human experience contains all of it. And if we are given the tools and the guidance to embrace the full spectrum of our experience, not getting all tripped up when something difficult happens, or when we have an emotion we wouldn't have chose, or when there's a part of us shadow. By shadow, I mean parts that we tend to want to push away because they don't fit the identity we see ourselves as. Right?
The human experience, life contains the full spectrum. So why not make our peace with the beauty of the full spectrum? It's like someone just saying. My preference is summer. I can be happy. I can be comfortable. In the summertime. It's warm, we're active, we're going at a fast pace. Things are light, and then the other seasons, I'm not going to be doing so well. The idea of the full spectrum and embracing it is very much one of the intentions of this book. Yeah.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yes.
I want to move us to your discussion around fierce compassion. Would it be okay if I read a quote from your book?
[00:20:34] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Okay, so you say fierce compassion is the mother of endarkenment.
It is the courage that expresses our willingness to stay present in the dark and to let the darkness open our heart's perception. In the words of Carl Jung, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness that I love.
[00:21:05] Speaker C: That powerful quote, isn't it? Yes.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Can you walk us through? Tell me about what you mean by fierce compassion and relating to the journey of embracing the darkness?
[00:21:20] Speaker C: Sure. Well, first I'll share one way we can talk about fierce compassion. Is that for most of us, it's easy enough to access the invitation of gentle compassion. I use the metaphor of a soft, open, receptive hand.
And yet, on the other side, on my path, is what we speak of in Buddhism as Manjushri sword, which cuts through delusion. The gentle and the fierce compassion, both are needed. Many people have been fed the notion that because one should always be nice, which, by the way, is not the same thing as being kind, but a lot of people are out there trying to be nice, trying to keep it nice on their spiritual path, trying to make sure it all looks really nice. And that's not going to take people to truth and authenticity. A willingness to devote one's life to being kind, to kindness, to figuring out what that is, is going to point to a much greater freedom and a much greater contribution to the whole. But kindness takes a million different forms and expressions. Kindness knows the entire spectrum of light and dark, of gentleness and ferocity. So, for instance, from gentle compassion, I might just paying attention moment by moment, be able to listen deeply and be with parts of myself that are struggling, or others who are struggling, and without doing much at all, just being a receptive, spacious presence. I talk about it as relational presence, just by offering that there's a healing that occurs, okay, that's expressed. On the other hand, there are times when each and every one of us needs to go deeper and access fierce compassion. This could be the fierce compassion required to speak up on a truth on behalf of the collective, to belong ourselves more fully to a situation we're in, where something needs to be voiced that might be uncomfortable, but voiced and expressed with kindness, with love, to literally go down into our psyche and say to a part of us that we've pushed away a long time, I'm willing to befriend you now. I'm willing to take a look with clearer eyes, even though I've pushed you away for so long, and say, what is actually happening here? Tell me about your suffering. Why are you acting out in a certain way that's made me judge you for so long? I'm talking about a quality of kindness that befriends the full spectrum and that leaves no part out. And so if we want to cultivate that, we have to work at times with gentle compassion and know when that's what the moment calls for. Again, it could be as simple as just being with someone in a moment of need, as a compassionate witness, and times when fierce compassion is required. And as a meditation teacher, I'll share that. I believe fierce compassion is required, even just to maintain a sustainable, long term practice. Because there are times when we just don't want to show up. So fierce compassion says, I hear you. You don't want to show up, but I love you. And we're showing up no matter what. You can tell by the tone in my voice there's something strong and loving about that quality. And so back to the quote by Carl Jung, really acknowledging that if we're just kind of sitting back, imagining figures of light and again, trying to transcend our experience, that's very different than, hey, let's provide you with the tools to go down and into your experience and know that you have what it takes to meet each moment, the full spectrum of the human experience. With love, that's very different, very different thing. And I've been through a lot in this lifetime. That's the practice, the path that has been transformative for me and allowed everything that's occurred in my life to be a teacher of this kind of love I'm talking about.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Yes. Oh, I'm right with you there. Because in my experience, I can't show myself true kindness that is not also kind to you and vice versa.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: So if I feel led to leave our marriage and am therefore being kind to myself by honoring that, this is the situation I'm in, that is kind to you as well, because not to do so would be dishonest to you. It would be misleading you. Right. So there is no true kindness that results in a loser.
[00:26:30] Speaker C: You got it. And even on a just more subtle day to day level, how often people have the opportunity in the relational field, in conversations, for instance, to set kind boundaries, to set conscious, compassionate boundaries, to notice when boundaries are needed. And for many people, they haven't gotten a chance to learn that tool. They think, I can only set boundaries from a place that's going to be hurtful. But from fierce compassion, from integrated presence, we can recognize when setting a boundary, saying to someone who's asking for our attention in a particular moment, I would love to sit with you and to listen. And now is not the right time for me. I'm not resourced to do that just now. So let's set another time. Or no, I need to say no to that invitation.
It sounds wonderful, and it's not true for me right now. So my answer is a no. Many people just haven't been given that skill set. You with me?
[00:27:38] Speaker B: I am totally with you.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Harnessing the love in an authentic no is a life changing skill.
[00:27:48] Speaker C: Yes, it is. It's one I wish everyone would develop.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: I want to bring us back to another quote from your book on fierce compassion, if I may.
[00:27:58] Speaker C: Please.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: You say fierce compassion cannot go along with injustice or choose complicity with collective conditioning so as not to rock the boat. Fierce compassion calls forth authenticity and sometimes audacity. It is nonviolent. It never causes harm, but it might call upon outrageousness. It knows how to take a stand and how to say no with dignity. And I like that you went into this because earlier in your chapter, I started to feel a divergence from my perspective in yours, because I thought we were talking about.
[00:28:48] Speaker C: Take your time.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Activism as a form of defense.
And one of my favorite spiritual writers, Byron Katie, said, very often, defense is the first act of.
So immediately I was to go, I don't want to go scream at the opposition.
But that's not what you're saying. What you're saying is to love myself enough to be authentic is not an attack on you.
[00:29:30] Speaker C: Thank you. I'm so glad you framed that around authenticity, because to live in authenticity is a full time job. It's a life commitment. And again, it really does require this fierce compassion. I like to remind people that there's a real difference between defending what we fear, defending against what we fear, versus protecting what we love. And so in the book I talk about, and I'll just frame this for a moment, this balance that just living a present life invites us into on one hand. And this is related to the gentle and fierce compassion, but conscious, allowing, learning how to really soften mental effort. A lot of people think mental effort is required for everything they do. It's just the conditioning that's gone through our society and to learn to rest more in receptivity. So we'll talk about a couple of things here right now, if that's okay.
Receptivity is a big aspect of this book. Learning how to come home to resting in the moment without having to use mental effort or doing or thinking and believing. That kind of collective conditioning, that force is what's powerful. I actually believe resting in nondoing, full presence. Receptivity, where we're really open to life rather than clinging to our view, is the place of power, but shared power rather than power over.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: That's what you mean when you say power, not force.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: You got it? Yeah. So conscious, allowing, learning how to and when it's skillful to rest in this place. So maybe listening to someone who has a really different perspective than us, but we want to give some space to just listen and witness, maybe something difficult comes up within our own being. We need to consciously allow it to be first so that we can witness, so that we can allow some space around it, so we don't just dive into reactivity. On the other hand, conscious protection is another element we want to be activating regularly for a life of real presence. And this has everything to do with fierce compassion. But this is like just consciously protecting our.
If we are developing a deeper relationship with ourselves, consciously protecting that, noticing as we become more and more present, what pulls us away, what seduces us into old habit patterns rather than allows us to keep freeing ourselves to respond to the moment in a fresh way, we create some protection around that. That's not defense at all, but it's coming from care, from love. In a conversation, it can be like noticing when to use transparency to caringly protect our authenticity, what's true for us, to speak our truth. But we're not defending. Defending is something that is really an ego activity. And this comes from and only for people who are willing to go beyond the ego. Does that mirror some of your experience?
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Yes, 100%. 100%. The minute I need you to agree, I'm no longer coming from a place of unconditional love.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: Thank you. Yeah. And this has a lot to do with darkness because part of the book, the book subtitle is an engaged buddhist approach to embracing the unknown. What is it like, what happens for us when we become more and more willing to be open to. To rest with, to stay present with the unknown? And even in a conversation like what you just shared, a lot of people, it's like, I want to stick to the known. I want to stick with what I know and think is right, my opinion. And so if you present something different, I'm not going to be with that very generously. I'm going to immediately try to defend my known because it's too uncomfortable being in that in between place where you're asking me to actually let go of the beliefs I'm clinging to and be open to a reciprocal.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: You know, before we wrap up, I want to ask you if you're willing to introduce the listeners to Electra and tell us the story about what you learned from her.
[00:34:24] Speaker C: Sure, Johnny. So in chapter three of the book, I share a story of how when I was 26 and I gave away my belongings, shaved my head, moved to a silent Zen monastery in the wilderness, which is quite a dramatic thing to do, but I was receiving so much clarity and truth and so much compassion through my meditation practice. And I was so at that time, full of a lot of grief about both our world, the world I had inherited as a young person, and also personal grief that led me to devote to spiritual practice. So I moved to the monastery thinking, all right, I'm going to just peace out, right? Silent monastery. I'm going to drop into a very peaceful state. And exactly the opposite happened. In the mirror of the quiet.
A shadow side arised in me who I had never actually really seen before. Clearly. I named her Electra because she was electric with anger, with outrage. She was so flammable. And I was someone who, until that time, had always identified as a very quote unquote, nice person. And so nice people don't get outraged and angry. And it was really rich, because at first I thought, oh, no, what's wrong? Why is this happening? This is the opposite of the direction I thought I was going. And when I brought this up in conversation with my teacher, she said, this might be the first time that you've ever gotten to know, you've never gotten to befriend this part of you. This is an extraordinary opportunity.
This part of you is needing your attention and awareness, is needing your friendship, is needing you with fresh eyes to spend time with her and actually find out what this angry energy is, what this fire is. And so I would spend time digging in the garden with electra. I would go on walks with her. I began to say, as we can learn to do with every single aspect of ourselves, I'm willing to let go of my notions about you and actually get to know you, actually begin to befriend you. And the process was extraordinarily healing and transformative. And more importantly, it was completely life affirming, because she was full of energy, she's full of life force. She also had a lot to tell me about the anger, both ancestral, collective and personal, that had fed that I had pushed down for so long. And in embracing that energy, rather than judging it, in really, really turning towards rather than away from it and being willing to see it with fresh perspective, I reclaimed so much life force, so much courage, so much joy, so much vitality, so much willingness for truth telling. It was extraordinarily healing. So this story points to the healing power of turning towards rather than away from those parts that we deem shadow.
Our shadows can be our greatest allies, but if we're still trying to look a certain way or are still bent on judging, this is welcome, but not this. We're going to miss out on that.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: You know, I had a very parallel experience to you earlier in my spiritual journey, I met Johann and Johan.
When I first saw Johan, he just oozed danger.
He was this character inside of me, this piece of me who was violent, rageful.
I have a history with extreme obesity. He was extraordinarily obese, powerful. He smelled. He was filthy. And I actually saw him in a turret, like a princess in a fairy tale, locked in a tower. That's where I kept him without even knowing what I was doing, because I saw him as so dangerous. And I just met him in a meditation one day, and I was terrified of him. And over the course of the journey, eventually I went up to him and I said, I can't give you the reins.
I can't let you control, but I can let you out.
And I knocked down the tower. There was just rubble everywhere. And I held Johann in my arms. And he didn't want to be held at first, but I was so much stronger than he was that he was powerless to resist being held. And I just held him in stillness, in meditation until he stopped moving.
And I had to come to terms that by letting him out, that he might influence me in ways I wouldn't choose, I wouldn't prefer, but that the power lies here.
[00:40:36] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Please. I would love to hear your perspective.
[00:40:41] Speaker C: Well, just beautiful story and rich story, and for anyone listening who's like, oh, so I got to befriend all the parts of me? Do I even have a bunch of parts? Yeah, you do. Start paying attention. It can be so easy to think there's just this fixed, solid eye. And when we begin to pay attention through more contemplative practices, we really notice that it's an ever changing landscape inside and who and what we really are. If we want to access that depth of compassion, of courage, of inclusivity, as you're describing, of everyone's welcome. And then we get to live in the wholeness of an internal landscape where everyone is welcome. This is a huge part of the healing work, and we can recognize that how we treat ourselves and how we treat our world are one and the same. So there's not going to be any capacity to offer compassion or see with eyes of compassion out there. If we're not doing the work internally within, it's of the same. So that's a great story. And I love just your description of how this one represented, like, everything you wanted to push away. And when we're willing to turn towards, rather than push away, we can actually say, who are you, actually? And what do you need? And, hey, what's it like when you actually have a friend, oh, wow, you don't scare me so much anymore. And, wow, you don't even want to act out the same way. Wow, you actually have wisdom for me. I never knew that before. So it changes the a beautiful.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: What a beautiful concept to kind of wrap up our conversation.
Know, Eden, I imagine that we've struck chords with a lot of just. I cannot recommend this book enough.
It's exactly what I'm thinking. I'm reading it, I'm like, yes, it's just right there. And so if listeners want to learn more about your experiences, learn about other ways that you serve people, encounter your earlier books, et cetera, how can they do that?
[00:43:03] Speaker C: Sure, people can visit my website, which is my full name, deborahedontol.com. You can find me on social media through mindfulliving revolution, which is the name of my nonprofit. And I offer all kinds of retreats and workshops, both in person and online. And also longer immersions. Six month. There's a year long luminous darkness immersion that'll occur in the middle of 2024. There's a lot of opportunities from wherever you are to taste, experience, and deepen in this path. And I'll just say that I've so enjoyed our conversation, and it's my experience that many more people, including other writers and colleagues of mine, extraordinary books coming out about the darkness. And who would we be, folks, if we could let go of some of our obsession with this, hating the dark and overvaluing the light, and actually begin to welcome the full spectrum, go beyond duality. So there's so much possibility happening right now through the challenges we're facing. Yeah. Thank you for this conversation.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Oh, it was lovely, and I really enjoyed it. Everyone, I am just delighted that you've tuned in to another episode of Refractive. This is Johnny G, and I want to show appreciation to Eden. Deborah Edentull. That's D-E-B-O-R-A-H. Deborah Edentull. And as you go out in the world, folks, and you encounter everybody just doing the best they can, remember to aim your light and love your dark too.
[00:45:00] Speaker C: Take care.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: You've been listening to refractive podcast, and this is Johnny G. If you found today's content uplifting, if you think it might make somebody's day better, give it a share on social media, click like, subscribe. All those things help to expand this podcast availability to new audiences. I'm a speaker, a coach, and a facilitator based out of Washington, DC, but I travel a lot. If you think can be of service to you or to your organization help people get unstuck or move into their authentic power. Shoot me an email. My email address is
[email protected] take care. Thanks for listening and aim your light.
