Deborah Eden Tull: Shadow Work, Limiting Beliefs, and Luminous Darkness

Voices of Esalen

Deborah Eden Tull is a spiritual activist, author, and sustainability educator who works to teach the integration of compassionate awareness into our everyday lives. For seven years, she trained as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery. She has been teaching engaged meditation for over 20 years. Her latest book, “Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown” was released in September of 2022. She currently resides in the mountains of western North Carolina, originally Cherokee land, with her husband, offering retreats, workshops, classes, and consultations nationally and internationally, integrating presence and partnership with nature. Eden’s teaching emphasizes the personal, interpersonal, transpersonal, societal, ecological, mystical, and global impacts of awareness practice. She has worked with a wide range of audiences, from dharma students and people wanting to cultivate more compassion in their lives, to concerned citizens and activists, parents, schools, inner city youth, non-profits and corporations, and people who are incarcerated. Her current focus is training and empowering leaders and facilitators in conscious response and regenerative leadership as we collectively navigate the climate crisis. In this episode, we explore her childhood and her journey as a Buddhist monk, then discuss her longstanding interest in shadow work, the path by which she helps individuals release limiting beliefs, and how she believes mindfulness and meditation can help up tap into our full potential. We'll also explore her work on post-patriarchal thought and practices, her insights on relational intelligence, and principally, we discuss the major themes of her book, Luminous Darkness, focusing on her approach of "Endarkenment," which seeks to challenge traditional dualistic understandings of light and dark in spiritual practice. Eden’s work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Tricycle, Yogi Times, Shambhala Times, The Shift Network, Best Self, and The Ecologist. You can visit her and check out her books, upcoming retreats and workshops and many of her podcast interviews at https://www.deborahedentull.com/ Deborah Eden Tull's upcoming workshops and retreats: https://www.deborahedentull.com/retreats