074: [FEMININE SPIRITUALITY] Luminous darkness, Yin & Yang, & re-remembering our true nature with Deborah Eden Tull

Hi Everyone! I am so beyond excited to welcome back Deborah Eden Tull. Eden is a Zen Meditation teacher, author, activist, founder of Mindful Revolution, and teacher of mine. We had Eden on the podcast in 2022 (link below) and I’m beyond thrilled to invite her back this year to dive deeper into luminous darkness, embodiment, her presence as a feminine teacher in a mostly Patriachical religion (re: Buddhism), and how to find an essence of trust and surrender in the midst of turbulent times.

Today we cover:

- Luminous darkness: why our relationship with the “dark” is so important
- understanding the root of light vs. dark: from yin/yang symbology, to good vs. bad
- the power of open hearted listening
- Why “sun-shining” or the “always see the light” is actually harming us and those around us
- The fine line between aversion to “darkness” and over receptivity without boundaries - how to discover that balance
- Endarkenment alongside enlightenment + what that tangibly looks like
- Navigating patriachical religions and philosophies as a female Zen teacher and how to foster or re-remember that yin/dark energy within these philosophies
- Embodiment: what it is and why it’s important
- so much more

About Eden:

Deborah Eden Tull, founder of the nonprofit Mindful Living Revolution, is Zen meditation/mindfulness teacher, author, and spiritual activist. She spent seven years as a monastic at a silent Zen Monastery, and has been immersed in sustainable communities for 25 years. Eden’s teaching style is grounded in compassionate awareness, non-duality, mindful inquiry, and an unwavering commitment to personal transformation. She teaches dharma intertwined with post-patriarchal thought and practices, resting upon a lived knowledge of our unity with the more than human world. She also facilitates The Work That Reconnects, as created by Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy. Eden has been practicing meditation for the past 30 years and teaching for over 20 years. Her books include Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown (Shambhala 2022), Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Our Self, Each Other, and Our Planet (Wisdom 2018), and The Natural Kitchen: Your Guide to the Sustainable Food Revolution (Process Media 2011). She lives in Black Mountain,North Carolina, Cherokee land, and offers retreats, workshops, leadership trainings, and consultations internationally.

To connect with Eden:

 IG:  mindfullivingrevolution
 
2022 Episode

Transcript

Kasia: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Other Way, a lifestyle podcast exploring uncommon, unconventional or otherwise alternative approaches to life, business and health. I'm your host, kasia. I'm the founder of InFlow, a women's wellness brand that designs intentional products to help women reconnect to their unique cyclical rhythm and find a balance between being and doing. This podcast is an extension of my mission within Flow. Here we provide intentional interviews with inspiring humans trailblazers, researchers, spiritual on the journey of doing things the other way. Hello and welcome back to the Other Way. I'm your host, kasia, and today I am so excited to be welcoming back a cherished guest and teacher of mine. I am speaking with the renowned and incredible Deborah Eden Tull, who is the founder of the nonprofit Mindful Living Revolution, a Zen meditation and mindfulness teacher of 20 years, an author and a spiritual activist. I had the great privilege of speaking with Eden back in 2022. And my conversation with her on the podcast, which I'm going to hyperlink below, was really the catalyst of many incredible changes in my life and, frankly, the catalyst of my deepening mindfulness practice, which I, as I've shared on many other episodes, has completely changed my life, my emotional lens, my perspective and just really the way from which I feel that I operate today, and today we are covering three really important and powerful themes, most of which come from one of Eden's incredible books Luminous Darkness an engaged Buddhist approach to embracing the unknown, which was published in 2022 by Shambhala, and Eden really introduces in this book the concept of embracing the dark. And what is that really defined as? And today we'll be talking about the concept of luminous darkness, why our relationship with those dark sides, the dark labels in our lives, are so important, and that is both from darkness being viewed as that yin, receptive energy as opposed to the productive, yang doing energy, but also darkness from the lens of some of the unspeakable evils and horrors that we witness in our world, or even the dark emotions within us, and so really defining what that looks like and how working with that can be so powerful is a core theme of today's episode.

Kasia: 3:01

We're going to be talking about the power of open-hearted listening, why sunshining or some of us might know the term as spiritual bypass, that kind of act of always seeing the light, the bright, the positive is actually harming us and those around us. We're going to dive into that as well. We're going to talk about the fine line between aversion to darkness versus over-receptivity without boundaries, which I think is really important for our time today, because we're just being inundated with so much more information, so much information that is designed to bring up negativity, that is negative inherently and painful because there is so much uncertainty and also evil percolating in the world, but we're also receiving this information at a rate that is, frankly, just evolutionarily unnatural. We're going to be talking about the concept of endarkenment alongside enlightenment, and what that looks like, and what it is like navigating patriarchal religions and philosophies as a female Zen Buddhist teacher, and how to really re-remember that yin dark energy that is present within us in the context of these philosophies, and so much more.

Kasia: 4:17

This is a beautiful episode. I'm so excited to welcome back Eden and I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, let's jump on into it. Eden, welcome back to the podcast.

Eden Tull: 4:31

I'm so glad to be here with you again and I loved our last conversation, so I'm very curious about where today will go.

Kasia: 4:40

Well, I feel the same way and, as I was reflecting, right before we got started, our spent quite a lot of time talking about the concept of ambition and from where we can find ourselves motivated, and your description of ambition, coming from a very different place, like a heart-led place, I remember just completely shifted my lens at the time and I ended up going to your retreat, which just spearheaded like a complete domino effect of changes. So I'm so excited to have you here in person as well, or online in person, and also excited to do a part two here.

Eden Tull: 5:36

I'm excited too, and thank you for reminding me about that last topic. Just to note, if it's not heart led ambition, it's going to drain us profoundly. It's going to fall into the hands of ego way too easily. We're not going to be able to sustain it. So, heart led ambition, yeah, I love that.

Kasia: 5:56

So we have a lot to cover. I mean, I could just even go down that entire lens. But, as I shared at the beginning, I am really curious to dive into this real exploration of light versus dark, which you bring up in Luminous Darkness. So I would love to actually start there. But before we dive into really kind of discussing that in a way, duality of lightness versus darkness and the interconnection of the two, I'd love to actually share, if you could, what was the inspiration behind this book, if you could share a bit of that personal story, sure, I think at a bone deep level I came to recognize that in my practice, in my path, darkness and when we speak of darkness we're talking about elemental darkness and really in some level the yin, receptive, restorative aspect of nature of consciousness.

Eden Tull: 6:52

We have very limited definitions of light and dark based in duality in the dominant paradigm. So we'll look at that. But for me there came a point in practice where I just recognized that not only has darkness been my greatest teacher in those times of facing and meeting the unknown very explicitly, but my practices of simply learning to surrender to my reverence for the mystery rather than the way I was conditioned to try to label all of life, understand my way rationally through all of life, experience life which is nonlinear, in a linear way. So there's a lot I could say there. But I wrote this book, the bulk of it, during the pandemic, and I had a very profound sort of experience, mystical experience, while leading a retreat in Big Sur before that time, in which I knew, okay, the darkness has something to teach us now, beyond what I think human consciousness is open to. And just an aside, I have a number of friends and colleagues who in recent years have also written extraordinary books about darkness in some form, because so much of what we're facing in today's world is a really sobering experience of meeting the unknown, global uncertainty. We could even speak personally about the continual unknown and uncertainty of being on the spiritual path, and so we need to develop more awareness, create more room in our heart to recognize the full spectrum of light and dark as our teachers and to get to find our peace within the full spectrum of light and dark and just to pause and maybe people listening can reflect as well. Let's just together reflect on these times.

Eden Tull: 8:50

We are facing so much uncertainty in terms of climate crisis, systems collapse in ways we haven't quite experienced before, the pain of what's happening in Gaza right now and in wars and genocides all over the planet. When we label something just dark and push it away into a I don't want to be with that. I can't attend to that we're actually cutting ourselves off from a huge space in our hearts that has room to be with all of it, and we can get more into this as we talk, but tremendous harm has been caused continually by the pushing away of what we label dark to try to get to the light. Can you resonate with that even in your own practice? Can you resonate with that, even in your?

Kasia: 9:43

own practice. Oh my gosh, I mean a hundred percent in so many ways, right, the discomfort that comes with uncertainty I remember you would call that very fertile ground when we were speaking but also the pain that comes with a lot of the things that we label dark. I'm curious, actually, because something is coming up for me. You spoke of the term yin and yang, which I think is just such a beautiful concept, the tai chi, right, the symbol of the light and the dark and how one actually lives within the other. And I know Chinese medicine and I guess Taoist philosophy speaks to this as well. I would think I'm not as familiar with it, but when we look at the symbol like that, it seems to feel very balanced. There's the lighter kind of symbolism and then there's the darker symbolism. But when you speak of some of the things that we label as dark, they feel very heavy and painful, right.

Kasia: 10:42

And I'm curious, when we think about defining the light or the dark, as you spoke, yin and yang as like one kind of you know, maybe like term for each, how can we come to look at the dark side of things from a different lens, because some of it is so deeply painful. It's one thing to view it as like a fertile ground of possibility, which was, I think, a very powerful reframe. But I think a lot of us are grappling with this concept, and I'll just speak from my own experience of there's just so much pain in the world, there's so much uncertainty, there's fear that comes out. These are a lot of things that one I myself would label as like dark emotions, dark experiences. Is it about changing our lens of how we view them or is it about welcoming them in a way Like, how do you think about that relationship with really the darkness of things from your point of view? Thank you.

Eden Tull: 11:41

Yeah, yeah, just a few things as I go into this One, both, both the welcoming and the reframing, just a subtle shift in our perception from a very binary lens to what I call seeing, perceiving with the heart, perceiving more from the core of our being. But let's presence the yin and yang for a moment. And just to note, as Zen Buddhism traveled through China, it was deeply, greatly, profoundly influenced by Taoism. So this relates and is visible in Zen as well. We're going to, in this conversation, talk about darkness in different ways. So there's darkness as the receptive, restorative aspect of nature. There's darkness as those difficult or unwanted experiences you labeled as heavy. Right, and how do we work with that? I think the first thing I want to say is that meditation practice invites us really, in a radical way, to learn how to be with what is, what is arising in the moment, with our hearts open and with a sense of curiosity, rather than immediately pushing away that which we want to push away that which is uncomfortable. The more we sit with our experiences, the more we tap into this kind of light in the dark and dark in the light, the nuances, the multi-dimensionality of an experience.

Eden Tull: 13:14

So, just as an example, this year has been a big one for my husband and I. We began the year losing his mom, who I was deeply close to, and just a couple months ago lost an uncle who I was also really close to. And in addition to all of the pain and grief collectively that we're facing, those personal experiences of grief reminded me how soberingly intense the visitor of grief is. I've navigated grief many, many, many times in this human life. My practice began by losing my dad at the age of 11, and that kind of shocking my belief system. And part of grief, part of loving, part of loss, is recognizing impermanence at a much more profound level. That can only open our hearts to greater aliveness, if we allow it to, to greater appreciation for every split second of this life, to a fundamental understanding that there is not time to waste here, that our time is fleeting, and that calls us forth into I'm going to use the phrase a vibrant aliveness. So, even in an experience of personal grief which nothing compares to, nothing compares to watching my husband go through the experience of losing his mom and knowing it's not going to move through quickly, at the same time recognizing that when we turn towards that darkness rather than push it away into a dungeon of sorts or a hidden closet where we're not able to breathe life into it. There's profound healing within that field.

Eden Tull: 15:07

Is what I'm sharing resonant with you so far? Yeah, and I talk a lot about the difference between shallow listening and deep listening, shallow listening being when we're just sort of up in our heads, paying attention to the surface or superficial chatter or narrative. Everyone's got it and we learn through meditation to drop deeper and deeper and deeper into listening, which allows that to be there but from which we're really connected to source, allowing so much more multi-dimensionality into our awareness. So just to tie this into what you're asking, I had a visit last week with one of my teachers of many years, joanna Macy, who's an extraordinary Buddhist scholar, eco-philosopher.

Eden Tull: 16:00

She's 95 now and on that day we dropped into listening together, which is really about just being in our receptive nature together, listening almost a childlike, wonder-filled, excited curiosity. Now it's a privilege for me to get to talk to one of my teachers about death. Many people don't get to witness people Something like death. Isn't that always dark? Isn't that always unwanted? Don't we just assume to push that away? But because of her practice she was able to talk about just wanting to listen deeply and not miss a beat of the descent towards death. It sounds pretty dark, but to her it was absolutely full of beauty, because it was a life experience she's never had and one of the most natural experiences of our animal bodies.

Kasia: 17:08

Yeah, Wow, oh my gosh Eden. Well, first I want to extend my sincere heart and condolences for the loss that you and your husband suffered this year. It definitely, husband, suffered this year. It definitely sounds like a lot. That is a lot Even for two people from such a short period of time. The year is not that long yeah.

Eden Tull: 17:33

Well, and we can just remind ourselves. Maybe a lot and maybe very little compared to what's happening in so many other places on the earth. So grief is with us. It's just part of the river of grief is flowing through human consciousness right now.

Kasia: 17:48

I'm wondering I think it is so beautiful to have you reflect how your teacher is approaching death with curiosity when is the fine line between looking at grief and something painful and horrible and heavy and perhaps even just outright horrific in nature, and approaching the world? Where's the line of approaching those types of experiences with an open heart versus a concept that I know you mentioned in your book and on our last podcast, which is sunshining, which I think is just so common in the wellness world right, which is just to suddenly oh, I'm going to see it from this brighter lens and this different like? What is the line between curiosity of the experience and compassion versus?

Eden Tull: 18:37

sunshining. Thank you. I really think curiosity towards the experience, curiosity is a form of turning towards rather than away. It's one of the anecdotes to sunshining and sunshining is a phrase that came to me when I was writing Luminous Darkness, reflecting on my childhood. I grew up in LA and after my dad passed as a child I remember really getting it that not many people wanted to hold space for my grief. Really getting it that the message was you better, get through this as quickly as possible. Everyone just wants to see you smile and literally developing like a tense jaw in my childhood. After that, from becoming Eden, who was always smiling even if I was feeling tears underneath and recognizing this kind of keep it light, keep it surface.

Eden Tull: 19:31

We don't want to have conversations that are too uncomfortable as a basic tenant of the dominant paradigm. Okay, and so there is a fine line and, kasia, it's very much an inquiry for every single person individually. It's an inquiry what is the middle place for me between turning towards and seeing that I can just turn 10% more towards maybe a difficult emotion than I have in the past, 10% more towards something going on in the world that I've thought would be too much for me to bring my heart to. We take our own measure, and we have to take it step by step. But if we're turning away, we are blocking the path towards healing. If we're turning away, we're not able to metabolize our grief and transform it into compassionate action. Literally, let it inform how we show up in the world. So it's a fine line and a balance. Like how much news does someone want to take in in a week or a day? Do you have practices for making sure you are connected to source and present when you take on news? It really is a personal practice, but I know that for me, one of the things that was so freeing about Buddhist practice when I first came to it was that I was welcome into spaciousness, the spaciousness of my meditation, the spaciousness of people coming together in a more contemplative way to look at and be with my pain for the world I'd inherited, because already as a preteen, I was well, well aware, gosh and I just have to pause feeling the feelings I feel for young people today, having inherited even more, of the poly crisis we're facing, and so the practice allowed me to make space for that, to make room for that. And guess what? And here's where light and dark come in. That allowed me, the more I made room for it, for my pain, for our world. That allowed me more and more room for joy, for bliss, for ecstasy I hadn't opened to.

Eden Tull: 21:50

Because if we're blocking off one side, we're blocking off the other. If we're pushing away our capacity to feel the quote-unquote difficult things, we're pushing away our capacity to feel fully alive on the other end of the spectrum as well. So it's about are we willing to be fully alive folks? Are we willing to trust that our hearts have room for all of it? And if we're judging or pushing away perceived darkness within ourselves like I share a story in the book about pushing away the angry part of me when I first came into contact with her, we're also pushing that away and judging that. In the book about pushing away the angry part of me when I first came into contact with her, we're also pushing that away and judging that in the world or in consciousness. So I believe so much of our collective healing has to do with healing this dualistic perception and learning how to be present with it all.

Kasia: 22:43

Hmm, what you're sharing really brings up a feeling of like, as I'm listening and taking it in, there's like an element of relief that's there.

Kasia: 22:52

I think that in a lot of the I guess narratives that I have witnessed in my life, there's so much of an element of having to fix or change something like that the experience itself cannot be witnessed as it is.

Kasia: 23:07

I cannot be witnessed as I am. I cannot sit with those just, you know, uncomfortable feelings and I need to fix them in some way. And I really appreciate the kind of message that I hope I'm obviously paraphrasing horribly, but that I'm, you know, I'm digesting here, which is really the ability to experience what is happening with an open heart and turn towards it instead of away and maybe not even try to proactively I mean obviously take action where possible but that in some cases, especially when it's impossible to do anything about it, to also know that you know the way that we receive it can be handled. I don't know, there's like this element of surrender that I feel when I hear this. That just feels almost like giving faith to something bigger in a way. I don't know if that was a fine explanation, but that's kind of what's coming up for me.

Eden Tull: 24:02

Thank you. When I heard the last line of what you shared, what came up is it's a willingness to set aside the reactivity of our binary perception and of ego, which really, if we investigate, I would suggest, never serves, and maybe that's the giving it to something bigger, learning how to see with the heart. You know, even just being on a path of personal evolution through meditation, we're going to recognize that, oh, the more I'm asked to open my eyes to, the more I'm asked to open my heart to, the more I see.

Eden Tull: 24:39

Consciousness is not always pretty. There's so much to be with Buddhist teaching is that each and every one of us contains everything that's happened to all of us, contains everything that's happened to all of humanity since before the beginning of beginningless time. So that's a lot of, we might say, light and a lot of dark, but it's willingness to access a larger consciousness that is not caught up in sunshining and that can actually see, perceive life as it is, be intimate with what is. It's hard to understand because we're so used to a positive versus negative mind frame Good, bad, higher, lower, superior, inferior, better, worse judging our experiences through that. But there is another way and it's a way that very much serves.

Kasia: 25:31

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Kasia: 26:41

All right, now back to the episode. I'm curious from your perspective on kind of witnessing and and being able to see through the heart lens. I think that in today's day and age, we as a society and I'll speak also for myself I feel sometimes inundated with the information that is available, and you spoke to this briefly where you mentioned what is your capacity as you the individual, or me, the individual around how much news to consume and whatnot. How do we find a balance between open receptivity and then also boundaries, because we are being exposed to so much more information, and this information is designed as well to be triggering, because unfortunately, that is the model of reward. Like these companies, they get paid on clicks, and so if the information is more terrifying, more triggering in either direction, it's going to result in a click. How do we both become openly receptive but also set boundaries, or are boundaries not needed and just that open receptivity is enough? I'm curious what your perspective is there.

Eden Tull: 28:00

Thank you, it is so corrupt so I appreciate you naming it. And the statistic is that in one day of human life right now, we take in as much information as a human being did in a year in maybe 1800. So that's a big shift. And so let's go back to the yin and yang. What I teach is the balance of conscious allowing and conscious protection, the balance between receptivity and conscious response. So, yes, boundaries are really, really important. We could talk first just in a really basic way about meditation. We're learning how to access, how to drop into, how to remember our innate receptivity. Now, receptivity is not fully passive, it's an action, but it's receptive and we learn like so we don't get too philosophical practical ways that we access our receptivity or through deep listening, through compassionate witnessing, through being with, through just pausing more and resting, paying attention to life as it is, without judging and assessing everything, attuning to one another. This is receptivity. We need so much more attunement in our world.

Eden Tull: 29:26

Okay, at the same, in meditation practice we learn conscious protection. I'm sorry, but just the discipline it takes to show up each day to sit is part of an expression of protecting life, protecting practice, conscious protection, as in we learn how to set boundaries with our own conditioned mind. This is one of the essential aspects of a meditation practice learning to set boundaries with the mind of separation and limitation. And we learn that it has a kind of most would say a sort of tone to it that we recognize when we're in a conditioned conversation either with our own minds or with someone else. So we learn to set conscious boundaries in our life at large. And so, to answer your question, yes, fierce boundaries. The sangha that I guide every week on Tuesdays is called the Fierce Compassion Sanghaha, because we need both gentle and fierce compassion.

Eden Tull: 30:31

And so, with the news, I encourage everyone, everyone, to set boundaries that are true for you, to take your own measure in recognizing just how does one protect I'm going to use the phrase again our connection with source and your chance to live from that place in this lifetime. And then what do you notice? Pulls you away too much. And how do you set conscious boundaries? We can set conscious boundaries, even in a conversation with loved ones, even if it's uncomfortable. Anything that comes from, I'll say, love, in capital letters, can be communicated in a way. That's kind. I remember once telling a friend I needed to take a pause from the entire relationship for a year and I knew that was absolutely true for me and I could say it in a way that was loving.

Kasia: 31:27

That was loving, absolutely true for me and I could say it in a way that was loving, that was loving even if it was hard to hear. Yeah, I think that's so important to name because, unfortunately, the technology that has inundated our lives does not optimize or prioritize those types of boundaries for us and it requires that discipline that you speak to and I think that is just so important and I think it's such a perfect segue to the other, I guess, element or side I don't want to say side, but the other category of light and dark that you talked about, which you know. There's this, I guess, in the yin and yang symbology. There's also the concept of masculine and feminine energy in a way, and not from like, even a gendered way, but the representation of yang being doing energy in many cases, versus yin being rest and receptive energy.

Kasia: 32:20

And I think that as we, as I kind of explore the these two concepts, especially from the lens of Buddhism, one of the things that I've been struggling with personally as we talk about that dark yin energy is a lot of the concepts that I feel introduced to in Buddhist philosophy feels like they're presented from a very masculine lens, even the level of discipline that comes with meditation, as you shared some of the talks or some of the, I guess, readings that are available and I'm curious as a female Dharma teacher, you identify as female as well. How do you view this and how do you, or do you, see a bit of that yin, feminine energy aspect in Buddhist philosophy as well? How does that show up for you? And also, how do you grapple with, like a very masculine, mostly masculine, lineage tradition?

Eden Tull: 33:14

Thank, you First. Yeah, we can acknowledge that within Buddhism and within so many other religions and pathways today, there remains an imprint from patriarchy going vastly throughout our history. That we can see in the ways of a more masculine approach to the teachings. We can see in ways that for a long time, more of the female Buddhas were left out of recognition in Sanghas that are now hopefully becoming more woven in. We can see it in well, let's frame it this way Something that I talk about in the book, because what you're presenting is one of the reasons I wrote Luminous Darkness.

Eden Tull: 34:03

I talk about a need, I believe, for a path for endarkenment alongside enlightenment, and just a recognition that, in the name of enlightenment which is, by the way, something that really saved my life as a young person, inspired me onto the path. But I then took on a kind of trying to be the solo, heroic, masculine style spiritual warrior that many, many people do and we try so hard to transcend, to go up, up and away, to leave our bodies in the name of enlightenment, sometimes to leave away the realms of relationship, earth connection, of the deeper, darker undercurrents of our experience. Listeners can look for yourself to see if this relates to you, but it was certainly true on my path and also I recognize that there is. We hear so many stories, folks, every year. I heard another one recently about power abuse in spiritual communities over models, power over models which come from patriarchy in part, to more of shared power or power with and I talk a lot about how this connects us to endarkenment.

Eden Tull: 35:43

There are many things that I talk about in the book that we won't have time for today, but one of them is simply and I feel like everything we're facing in today's world calls us to this a need to go down deeply into our bodies, to make our spiritual practice one of embodiment, not trying to transcend or get away from our bodies, Our earth bodies, our earth connection lives here, and I'm pointing to my physical form right now. And when we negate this, we perpetuate harm caused for so long from the conditioning of the Cartesian era, caused for so long from the conditioning of the Cartesian era, the age of rationalization, from colonialism, imperialism, racial capitalism, disconnect from nature. All of those movements were and are related to this pushing away of the body.

Kasia: 36:42

For those listeners out there who might hear the word embodiment and feel like it is quite loaded, because I think there are many different versions of what that means, especially circulating online. What is exactly embodiment? Is it a practice? Is it a state of?

Eden Tull: 36:58

being. Yeah, Thank you. I actually want to read a quote, if that's okay, from Luminous Darkness that speaks to this, though it's indirect. You with me.

Eden Tull: 37:10

Our bodies are not just the physical. They are also the energetic, emotive and mythical wilderness that is both uniquely ours and intricately connected to Gaia consciousness. Each of our bodies carries an intricate map of our ancestral history, cellular memory and relationships that stretch beyond time and space. Our bodies are a natural feedback system for all of life on earth and change constantly, throughout each day, season, year and our entire lifespan. The battle wounds and casualties of a hierarchical world are held within our bodies. The body will tell us who has been left out, where we are repressed, where we've become stagnant or weighed down by habit. The body will let us know where we are obeying other people's truths instead of our own. The body will show us what unlocks our zest for life and what nourishes our joy. The body will show us where we are holding back from a deeper power. Our earthly body reveals to us our past traumas, expressed feelings and emotional baggage, along with the mental baggage of dogmas, the inertia of self-doubt and the dreams that have been discounted.

Eden Tull: 38:29

I talk about how the gift of knowing darkness is the gift of knowing more of ourselves through healing the body-spirit divide. So when I think of embodiment, I think of the willingness to heal the body-spirit divide that goes throughout history, that we can see in so many spiritual traditions, in so many religions A body-spirit eros and spirit divide, an earth disconnect, and so these are. We're talking about pathways and practices that invite us to remember, to come home to who and what we truly are through this body, not separating from it, and so all of our practices get actualized through this body. And yet still today, I find a language that points to a kind of transcendence. That's about going up into our heads and causing a divide. You know what I'm pointing to.

Kasia: 39:32

Oh yeah, I know that divide very, very well. There are so many examples of that, from the thoughts that we have driving overriding the needs of our bodies. The thoughts that we have driving overriding the needs of our bodies, may it be from a overworking perspective, may it be from what it is I choose to eat or don't eat, or the decisions I make there. I mean, even one could argue that, you know, sleep deprivation in order to kind of get up and do something else and take coffee is a state of disembodiment in many ways, right To ignore the cues of the body, and those are physiological cues, and I assume that there's also. There are physiological cues, there are intuitive cues, there are energetic cues that are being ignored. That, I mean, I know, I experienced in my day-to-day life for sure.

Eden Tull: 40:19

Yes, there are so many cues, and another aspect to it that I think more people are starting to wake up to is that when we're stuck in the narrative of our conditioned mind, the place of egocentric, karmic conditioning, we are believing that this narrative is true. We are projecting authority onto this narrative, onto the ego or separate self, instead of coming home to the wisdom of and the amazing instrument our body is like I use the phrase natural feedback system for all of life on earth, speaking to us continually, not from the separate self, but from an interconnected presence. Relational presence is one of the ways it's spoken of in Buddhism. This allows us to know ourselves as so much larger an expression of life than from the myth of separation, and there's not any way to heal any of the isms we're facing today without this kind of embodiment, without remembering our earth body. So thanks for stirring the pot with that for a few minutes.

Kasia: 41:32

I'm going to stir the pot a little bit more, I think, because I'm nodding my head, because I've had some recent life experiences along with, of course, my deepening meditation practice that have helped me witness and experience firsthand some of what you're describing. But I also can speak to the version of myself, even a year ago. That is like, okay, philosophically I'm aligned, but in reality how do I practice this, how do I cultivate this in my life? Because, as you very well know, through knowing me for some time now, that very often there are so many other interfering motivations, mostly coming from my mind, that make it pretty feels like pretty impossible to actually cultivate the state that you are describing, pretty impossible to actually cultivate the state that you are describing. And so for people out there who are perhaps early in their journey of practicing meditation, kind of really starting to open up in an open hearted way, what would you recommend that they do for the version of me even a year ago? What should that version do or perhaps explore to cultivate more of what you're describing?

Eden Tull: 42:48

First thing I would just say I tend to prefer, instead of the word cultivate, which still has again this frame of what to do, what action to take, remembering. Remembering, because what we're really doing in quotes is giving ourself the space and the quality of attention and the compassionate support to remember our natural state, to remember, we might say, the already awakened state, to remember true nature. It's who and what we are. We all, even before coming to practice, taste this and then have so many experiences of being knocked out into the conditioned mind that maybe that's for a while how we identify. We identify with our thoughts and feelings and reactions. And so an encouragement is really for people to and this connects with the teacher of darkness and receptivity to be willing to spend more time, to give more time to becoming aware of the space, the space between your thoughts, the space in conversations being a little quiet together in addition to using our voices. The space of rest. When we close our eyes every night as an example, or close our eyes to experience darkness, we might notice first that some of our other senses become more awake, become more alive. There's a lot that we can access in the instrument of our beings through pausing more through spending more time in the physical or metaphorical darkness, fields of restoration, fields of quiet and listening. I'm emphasizing the yin can you get that from what I'm saying? And so it's kind of actually an encouragement to um, to consciously find ways to do less and to rest in the darkness more, and I'll name.

Eden Tull: 45:02

There's a chapter in the book about the power of receptivity. So one of the things that happened for me when I was living as a monastic silent monastery for many years is that I had to face all the conditioning I had been given through my family lineage, through my cultural conditioning that said wait, you can't stop, you can't pause, you can't listen more and do less, you can't just rest in emptiness. What would be the point? You've got to be doing to prove yourself, doing to make sure you're going to be lovable, doing to become who you're here to become. And that is yet another way that the sort of messaging from a world that overvalues light and productivity to restoration and attunement and darkness. That's another way that was revealed to me, because what happened for me was it was like a scam getting revealed when I finally really let myself open to just being receptive more, to just resting in open space more. It was like everything I had been looking for was right there waiting for me. It was like everything I had hoped to become was already there inside me. I was a teacher of mine used to say we're all running, society is running too fast but in the wrong direction. Okay so, running really fast, but in the wrong direction. And so many of us have to experience and many of the listeners perhaps have this moment when you realize, oh, this has been a scam. The whole time I thought it was about achieving more, doing more. That's why I'm cautious of even that word cultivating, I would say.

Eden Tull: 47:04

Receptivity is a wildly phenomenally powerful expression of our being, of our life, that most of us have not been given permission to fully tap into. And I as a woman, as a female who's both physically small and very sensitive and receptive, had also always undervalued and kind of judged that quality in me. I go I should be more competitive and aggressive. That's what this world would appreciate more. So, yeah, the scam was up. Receptivity is a phenomenally powerful place. I'm going to just say a little bit more is a phenomenally powerful place. I'm going to just say a little bit more. Today. I'm a teacher and facilitator and through receptivity we can unify incredibly complex fields, groups of diverse peoples, incredibly complex fields of completely differing perspectives, beyond the binary, beyond this or that becomes this and that. Receptivity is also magnetic, like the earth is magnetic. We find that when we rest more we allow ourselves to be in a deeper conversation with the universe.

Eden Tull: 48:19

I would say and we don't have time to go into that in too much depth, though I do in the book but these are times when, through the grave, immeasurable challenges we're facing, we need to open up our perception lens in fresh ways. We need to rewild our perception lens, and the lens that has said light is superior to dark has caused us harm from the micro to the macro, from the isms we face. We don't have time to even get as deeply as is honorable into the legacy of systemic racism and how this seed is at its very base. The seed is at its very base Patriarchy and again, light as superior to dark, the active and productive as superior to the receptive, yin more feminine. But then just to the micro level of noticing that there has been a through what's referred to as materialism in spiritual circles, an assumption that it's the physical world that's real and, most important, the invisible gets discounted.

Eden Tull: 49:34

I'm going to pause right here and just note that people listening might find it interesting to investigate the burning times of time in history when, through the age of rationalization, so many people majority women, but people practicing communion with the invisible realm, people practicing pathways to spirituality that were based in body and earth, were burned at the stake and persecuted because rational mind needed to be held up as God. I don't know how eloquently I shared that, but I hope people felt that my heart was in it. It's a time of day when I'm starting to feel the tired, but what I want to emphasize is that I believe that in this time of so much uncertainty and unknown to the invisible realms, to the invisible, to that which is unseen, to that which might be just beneath the surface in a conversation or debate, to that which is an expression of nature we can't tap into, if we're into much of a loud surface mind conversation yeah, surface mind is great.

Kasia: 51:09

Oh my gosh, Eden, that was so beautiful. I could literally talk to you for hours, as I have in the past, but we are coming up on time and I would love to give you a moment to share with our audience what incredible retreats you have coming up, where a lot of this can be practiced, and we can. Well. You can re-remember it. Let's put it that way. I won't even put it as practice, but there's an opportunity to re-remember. But please just share with everyone. Where can people find you? I'll hyperlink everything in the show notes.

Eden Tull: 51:51

And what do you have coming up? Where will you be? Thank you. So in August we have a women's retreat on luminous darkness, about reclaiming our authentic power, and these retreats are so rich and so fun and involve meditation and dance and deep time in nature. And we also have a shorter retreat following it, open to everyone, about listening. I have a six month training called the heart of listening. That is an extraordinary opportunity You've done this with me to go really deep in your listening to within, listening to self, to our world, to each other, to the invisible, and I also have a two-year training in facilitation of relational mindfulness and this quality of deep listening.

Eden Tull: 52:36

But, kasia, there are many retreats that are available to people on my website. Luminous Darkness will be explored open to every gender in the fall in New Hampshire and then there's also going to be a wonderful back-to-back set of retreats over Christmas and New Year's, both at Esalen and at the Big Bear Center in California. So if people feel called, come and join me. I'm hoping to take at least part of next year for sabbatical, so I won't be offering as many retreats as I have this year and if you feel the call, sign up, and I want to thank you for your rich questions and it's such a gift to be here with you again and simply to stir the pot together. The honor is mine.

Kasia: 53:21

Thank, you so much, eden. This, the honor is mine. Thank you so much, eden. This was such a joy, thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into the Other Way. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star review. It really helps the podcast grow and I'm ever so grateful. If you want to stay connected, you can find information on how in our show notes. And finally, if you're curious about inflow and want free resources around cyclical living or moon cycles, check out inflowplannercom. And, of course, for all my listeners, you can use the code podcast10, and that's all lowercase podcast10 for 10% off any purchase. All right, that's all for today. See you next time.