Dear Ones

This is the year we have been awaiting with great anticipation. It is a good time to be in the 'not knowing anything' mode, because we really don't know what is going to happen. A good daily practice is to 'not know' rather than expend energy on stories about what's going on in our own lives, or even within ourselves. Many are experiencing increased energetic phenomena, dreams, synchronicities, physcial changes, as well as a great surge of old wounds surfacing for healing. Many are aware of the presence of ancestors who are asking for help or offering their help.

The times they are a changin' and we can best attune ourselves by doing our best to stay present, be present, focus on now, open to what is as it is, and stay out of stories about what is or isn't. Energies are intensifying and shifting rapidly and intensely. I find it useful not to name these experiences as 'anxiety' or 'fear', but rather to experience them directly, with curiosity and compassion, and to simply be with them rather than try to know what is happening. The deep knowing will reveal itself in time...or out of time. As what we might call 'fear' arises, it's kinder to ourselves and allows for the energies and feelings to flow freely if we just simply BE with it, feel it fully and directly in our heart centers... naming 'sticks' it into a form and in time and we can end up in a mind loop with that.

Grace, ease and flow can be experienced if we keep turning inward, toward direct experience within our hearts, feeling what is in our bodies, and being utterly present to it all without fixating it with a name, a story, a 'knowing' of any kind. Any names are just names, they point to direct experiences and make it possible to talk about such things, but the names are not 'it'. Let's be with what is! Any information, knowledge, guidance needed will arise as needed. Grace is always present, even in those dark times when we think we have been abandoned and utterly alone.

What if we looked at everything that happens--no matter what it is or how it appears--inside or outside, collectively or personally, as Grace, the many faces and forms of Grace? Grace with her gentle touch, her full breast ready to feed our hunger, Grace with her claws and teeth, Grace as a soothing balm, as well as Grace as a fire burning away what is not real... can we live and trust in the Mystery of Grace in these amazing times at the edge?

I invite you into that possibility...
In Grace,
Sheila

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The Mystical Union of Love and Heartbreak
© Sheila Foster 2011

Today, December 7, is my Mother’s Birthday. I mention this because she is the first to have initiated me into love, heartbreak, and Grace. This is the neighborhood we have entered as we cross the threshold into the liminal space of Holy Days and powerful collective, archetypal energies. For some, time and space may collapse as memories of people, events, and times past arise, filling our hearts with love, loss, grief, joy, depression, missing of people we love. As the last page of the calendar is about to turn, I am aware of time and life flying by very fast. I feel a heightened awareness of the impermanence, imperfection, and incompleteness of things in our fragile human existence, in my own life. This year, with conditions being what they are in the larger world and in our own personal, local worlds, I hear from others and can feel in my own heart that the mystical union of love and heartbreak is palpably pulsating in the hearts of many.

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Samyama: Alchemy of the Heart

Samyama is an ancient meditation practice from Raja Yoga that appeared in my meditation one day about 17 years ago, to my great surprise. I was unfamiliar with this form of meditation at the time, so I simply followed the detailed instruction I was given on the inner levels in how to turn toward my heart. This radically changed my life and my work with others, and the lives of the many it has touched, as you will see when you read what others say about Samyama below.

Samyama makes it possible to directly experience life as it is, be in the present moment, and meet ourselves in our own precious hearts, no matter what is happening in any given moment. It is also a path and a portal to the realization of our essential being, the pure awareness that is the unified field. The practice also offers a profound level of healing for our deepest wounds. From my own experiences, as well as witnessing so many others doing Samyama, I see that it is an amazing gift of Grace that keeps on giving, endlessly, and an exquisite vessel of receptive devotion.

Samyama is truly Alchemy of the Heart. This means that when we learn the skill and cultivate the practice, amazing changes occur within our hearts so that healing of painful emotional states occurs and we open to the silence and peace of our essential nature.

The instruction given to me was simple: no matter what was arising, I was directed to bring my attention back to my heart and hold my focus there on whatever what happening in my heart. It sounds simple, and it is, once you learn the skill involved. We all can feel what is in our hearts, and we do. What we don’t understand are the subtlties of attention that are involved to activate the Alchemy of the Heart.

Once I began using the practice several times a day, I became more peaceful in general, and this was remarkable to me at the time, as I was going through a painful time. Ever since, I have used Samyama daily for meditation, self healing, for simply being with what is. My center of consciousness has shifted from head to heart, as it does with most of the people who practice Samyama daily.
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Introduction to Samyama Meditation Practice
Teleconference with Sheila Foster
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Three Mondays: January 9, 16 & 30 ~ $100
Time: 2pm – 3:30 PT; 3pm - 4:30 MT; 5 – 6:30 pm ET
Please register no later than January 2
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Embodiment of the Sacred Feminine
in a Chaotic World

I am feeling a resounding call to women and men for the ministry of the Feminine in these times present and to come. Much of the destruction we are witnessing is happening as a result of the shadow masculine energy which is present in both men and women. While the Earth is being ravaged by this energy, so are her people around the planet. To look at all that is happening right now around the world and in our own country is overwhelming.

At the Vancouver Peace Summit in September 2009, His Holiness the Dalai Lama declared that "The world will be saved by the Western woman." According to a report by The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute, His Holiness said, “Some people may call me a feminist... but we need more effort to promote basic human values -- human compassion, human affection. And in that respect, females have more sensitivity for others' pain and suffering.”

We are those women. We are the western women the Dalai Lama is speaking about. It's a daunting idea, mythically one of those impossible tasks and yet, here we are. We were born for this time. If you recall the myth of Psyche, when she came upon each impossible task and swooned at the thought of what she was required to do, the helpers appeared magically. As a witness to the lives of many, as well as through my own experiences, I completely trust and rely on the fact that this happen for us, too. What is needed appears. Whether we have the heart and eyes to be aware of it as well as receive it, is another issue. We must learn to ask for help and to receive it. These can be very powerful life initiations when they come to us.

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Living Grace Fully
Be Awake in Your Extra/Ordinary Life – NOW!
January - December 2012 ~ Women’s Tele-Temple Novena Journey
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Begins Monday January 2, 2011 ~
Please register by September 10, 2011 - Space is limited
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Please Read What Participants Have Experienced Here
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The Extravagant Gesture: Making Art from the Edge
Mondays January 9, 16, 23, & 30
12:30 - 2 pm ET; 10:30 - 12 MT
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Temple of the Sacred Feminine   
September 2012 – May 2013 ~ Sophia Center, Maryland
Guided by Sheila Foster, M.A.
Details TBA
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Temple of the Sacred Feminine Estrimonials
click here
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New full version E-Book available in Temple Store!! $10

Sacred Feminine Initiation:
An Archetypal Journey
by Sheila Foster

To purchase E-Book, please click here

This small book is the first written fruit from a 30 year journey that documents the first days of my own call and initiations into the Sacred Feminine Mysteries in the early 1980's. It includes dreams, Jungian psychology, kundalini awakening, the arising of the women's mystery school, and information about the archetypes of the Mother, the Amazon, the Lover, the Medial and the Queen.

I also discuss the process of initiation, longing, mythic perspective, the evolution of the mystery school, and this feminine path of spiritual awakening. The writing is a weaving of memoir with the learnings distilled from my time stewarding the Temenos Center and the Temple of the Sacred Feminine. 63 pages