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What is Sacred Feminine Initiation?
Even though i have been consciously engaged in Sacred Feminine initiation since 1980, the short answer to this question is that it is the Mystery unfolding, i.e., I don’t really know what it is. I can’t know what the Mystery is. I can only experience it. Initiation is such an intimate encounter and conversation with the Mystery, the Divine Mother, the Kundalini Shakti, that it cannot really be put into words. This is why there has always been so much secrecy about initiation rites. We can say what we do but that does not even get near what actually happens. While there are experiences and patterns that seem to be common to all of us on this path, the sights, sounds, colors and flavors of each woman’s experiences are unique.
I can more easily speak about what initiation does and how it unfolds. I had the following dream in the early days of my investigation of the Feminine. At the time of the dream, I was in graduate school, and at the beginning of my Jungian analysis. I was aching for some connection to, or understanding of, the Feminine, even though I really did not know what it was, at least not experientially. I was studying Jungian psychology and exploring my dreams, doing research papers on the Feminine in my graduate program, and giving women’s workshops about it. My longing to know was a relentless burning, and at that time, the way I knew how to go about this was to go after it intellectually, through my dream analysis, and by teaching what I was learning.
Here is the dream:
For the complete article, click here:
2009-2010 Temple of the Sacred Feminine Mystery School -
What Is It & What Is Offered?
The Mystery School teachings and initiations will be offered in Maryland, Boulder, CO, and Santa Fe in the coming year. Please join the email list if you want more info or contact me, sheila, directly. The school was established in 1987 and continues to be stewarded by Sheila.
The Mystery School offers a curriculum of study that includes Jungian psychology, focusing on archetypes, including the masculine as well as the feminine, shadow, dreamwork, active imagination; the paradigm of the hero’s/heroine’s journey as delineated by Joseph Campbell; psychology that includes object relations and attachment issues; spiritual practices and inspiration from many traditions, including nondual teachings such as Buddhism and Advaita. Hands-on healing work is part of the process, focusing on Samyama Healing, and energetic and psychological healing modality that supports women in healing wounds from the past and learning how to become rooted in the present and presence. Participants also learn heart alchemy, meditation practices, engage and make art, writing, self inquiry about their lives. - click here for complete details:
- click here for info onMaryland March 22nd Intro
Carry the Fire... and Don’t Get Burned: An Early Call
"You must carry the fire and not get burned," said the small, wizened, African shaman as he placed a glowing red coal in the palm of each of my hands.
These words were spoken to me in a dream in the fall of 1983, nearly a year after I entered Jungian analysis, in deep despair, and with intense longing to experience my creative self, my true, essential Self. My analyst, Jake, called this a "big dream", an initiation dream that not only carried life-changing personal significance, but also contained a message and meaning for others, as well.
In dream-sharing societies, a dream like this is shared with the community and its message and gifts then belong to all who heard it. I invite you to be part of my community, the community of women who are seeking to wake up to the Truth of their own Being, and I offer this dream and its gift of Fire to you as a gateway, a threshold, to an amazing journey.
Imagine that this is your dream, that it is you who are the "I" telling the dream, having the experience, receiving your assignment. I tell the dream in the present tense because the dreamtime is always now. A dream is never past, it is always unfolding in the present, it's message is always current, and is a gateway to the Truth every moment.
Now, I invite you to enter the dreamtime with me: click here
A Shaggy Pony Ride in My 60th Year:
I Followed a "Call"
© Sheila A. Foster 2008
A couple of months before my 59th birthday in May 2007, i dreamed that i was driving down the middle of a dark road, following the white line which seemed very white and clear, going the Middle Way. Abruptly, the road came to an end and i was looking into the Vast Dark Nothingness. I woke up.
Upon awakening and reflection upon the dream, i experienced this nothingness as both a terrifying and compelling Beloved beckoning me into the Great Unknown. {as i write this i hear poet David Whyte passionately reciting: "Leave everything you know behind, everything, leave everything you know behind..."}
The Call was irresistible, undeniable, inevitable. Did i have choice? I don't feel it was a choice, it was more of an evolutionary unfoldment. My egoic mind, which sometimes thinks it can choose, offered no resistance. Mythically it was a great Call to Adventure, so eloquently spoken of by Joseph Campbell. Spiritually, it was, for me, the next big Surrender, the next initiation, the next death of all of my ideas and constructions about me and my life and my i~dentity.
Life as i had known it was over and i had no idea, no images, no vision, no plan, for what was coming. I felt ready for something and did not want to manifest or manufacture anything out of egoic need or fear. I wanted to surrender fully.
Click here for full text
- more adventures, inner and outer, including the underbelly of this journey on my blog: http://sheilafoster.blogspot.com
Stages of the Mythic Journey
based on Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces
Departure
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The Call to Adventure
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Leaving the Known - Crossing the Threshold into the Unknown
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Encounters with Gatekeepers & Allies from Many Dimensions
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Entering the Belly of the Whale - the liminal dimension between the old life and the new life
Initiation and the Road of Trials
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The Impossible Tasks and Tests
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Meeting the Mysterious 'Other'
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At-One-Ment with the Mother/Father ~God/dess
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Apotheosis - Transcending Opposites
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Finding the Ultimate Treasure
The Return
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The Refusal of Return
Magical Flight & Rescue
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Crossing the Threshold of Return
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Awake in the New Life, Sharing the Treasure
*****
The Flame Bearer
is only as large as she is small.
You remember this saying?
It means no one is ever worthy to do what she is called to do.
No one is ever significant enough.
The mission is always larger than the one who goes out on the mission.
The Flame Bearer is made up of the same clay that makes every woman.
She is a Flame Bearer only because she knows, in the clay lives the spirit of The Mother. If Chochma waited for one woman who was more worthy than another,
how would The Mother do her work in this world?
~Kim Chernin, The Flame Bearers
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