By Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Opening To Darkness: Eight Gateways for Being with the Absence of Light in Unsettling Times

We are born from the darkness. We return to the darkness. And throughout all of our lives, the darkness is ever present. Yet do we really understand the dark? With Opening to Darkness, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel explores darkness as a cosmic landscape for transformation within unsettling times, rooting her teachings in indigenous earth-based wisdom, her Buddhist practice, and her lived experience.

For Manuel, darkness is both a universal concept and embodied experience—and she’s witnessed firsthand how our cultural rejections of darkness and blackness can have painful, real-world effects. Here, we’re asked to confront the questions: What has been lost in our pursuit of the light? And what has or has not been born into ourselves and our world because we fear, oppress, and misunderstand the dark?

“A profound exploration of darkness, through the interwoven perspectives of wisdom teachings, earth medicine, and indigenous spirituality.”  – From the publishers

“Opening to Darkness is beautiful, wise, magical, earthly, and utterly necessary for our time.” —Resmaa Menakem, bestselling author of My Grandmother’s Hands, The Quaking of America, and Monsters in Love

Paperback, 222 pages