On how we heal; trusting that you know what you need to heal, to thrive, to rest and to rewrite your story.

• 4:00 Journaling journey; Writing to heal, writing to get clear, writing to get kind and writing to get to know myself.
• 7:00 Giving young people the tools to to grow in emotional awareness. Healing by example.
• 9:00 Starting from scratch; Peach cobbler story – The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
• 12:10 Some people just are who they are and can’t necessarily show up as we expect them to; Allow the adversity in your life to show you just how much you are learning.
• 15:00 Beginning to journal about trauma and baby steps to get started; It’s never easy, but it’s always worth it.
• 18:55 Writing about people in a potentially negative way with grace; Holding grudges keeping us from being free; Blaming our younger selves for the actions of our parents.
• 23:10 Pain Can Feel Like…, Healing Can Feel Like…, Both Can Feel Like…; Reclaiming your power
• 26:00 Finding therapy sessions, prayers, meditations, etc. not enough to sustain the healing work, and needing more support; Learning to trust I know what I need; Faith without works is dead.
• 29:00 Our healing is an act of community service. It is not just for us, but for everyone we come in contact with. The healed version of me recognizes the unhealed version of you.
• 31:15 Rewriting your narrative: Taking ownership over who you are and what you want to be; Making space for joy.
• 34:00 Nurturing your inner child. Pain that relates to pain from the past. Beginning to think new thoughts of joy and thriving. I am releasing to receive and I am open to what is for me.
• 37:00 Compassion and connection are essential to this work. Practicing and exercising our compassion, grace, joy, etc.
• 39:20 Healing is an active process; Choosing to walk away from titles as a reclamation of self. Writing the book I want to write, not the book people want to see from me.
• 43:05 Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machada de Oliveira
• 45:10 Things that bring me joy help me heal. We know that physically in our bodies there are endorphins and other things signaled when we laugh and smile.

Writing came into her life by way of therapy and the exploration of healing through journaling and mindfulness. The intention behind Alex’s work is to build community & healing practices through literature & language.

Alex teaches workshops, courses, and retreats to assist others in finding their voices and create clarity in their lives & relationships. 

alexelle.com

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.