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February 21, 2009
Dear Santa Fe Friends of Eve's Fire,
I want to thank you for coming to witness and support Eve's Fire,
on behalf of the extraordinary women of the Temple of the Sacred
Feminine in Maryland who were the inspiration and participants in the film,
the courageous women whom you heard speak the truth of their raw and
beautiful experiences in the moment, my partner and co-creatrix of Eve's Fire,
Kirsten D'Andrea Hollander, and myself.
It was a pleasure and an honor to meet you and, once again, a fresh
experience for me to see Eve's Fire again. I deeply appreciate Kelley
Rainwater and Dhaturra for inviting me and Eve's Fire to Santa Fe, and
for creating such a welcoming and elegant ambience and evening. Anna Dorian,
I thankyou for your lovely invocation, and I thank the other women and unseen
hands who helped Kelley create the event. I enjoyed the conversations I had with
so many of you individually pre and post screening, and appreciate the personal
sharings you offered.
If you have more you would like to share, or questions about the mystery school,
the production of the film, whatever, please email me. I'd be delighted to hear
from you. We are considering having a mystery school/Sacred Feminine event
in Santa Fe, so if you have interest in such, please let me or Kelley know.
I didn't tell you that evening that this film took six amazing years to film and edit.
It was conceived in a moment of pure awe and wonderment one day in the mystery
school when we witnessed one of many miracles that happened there on a regular
basis. Kirsten, then a participant in the school for several years and a recent
graduate of film school, and I looked at each other and mouthed the words "film."
We had never had a conversation before that moment about making a film.
Clearly there was a divine arrangement unfolding, and the film happened as such.
The energy to make the film began to gather in that moment. We raised our first
money toward the filmmaking the next day in a silent auction-the exact amount
needed for a special microphone! Kirsten had some film equipment, access to
borrowing equipment from the community college, and the experience of several
years as a participant in the mystery school. I held stewardship of the mystery
school and the body of work that was to be shared.
The name of the film emerged a few years into our process when Kirsten and I, in
separate parts of the country on the same weekend, each had a 'meeting' with Eve
viaa painting. I was in Taos and she was on the east coast. It was uncanny, and
from that point on, we felt Eve walking with us, helping us to dispell the myth of
blame, shame, and 'original sin' surrounding Eve and all women, and reclaim Eve as
our Mother Goddess.
We didn't have a script, a story board, a step-by-step plan, and didn't do things
the way Kirsten learned in graduate school. We worked moment to moment, intuitively,
listening and being directed by guidance from HER as to how to fully capture on film
what was incredibly multi-dimensional and alive. I spoke with one of the women in
the film just this morning. She had just watched it again with some other women
after not seeing it for a couple of years. She commented on the fact that what was
so intimately shared could be shared because of the trust established in the field.
She also commented on how 'fresh' it was for her, too. The women who spoke their
experiences shared with us in total trust of their own experience in the moment-
there was no pre-planning or rehearsals, yet there was immense willingness.
Every moment in the film is present tense, filmed as each woman went through
her own initiatory experience. Seeing it again two weeks ago with you, I see ever
more deeply that it truly is 'always NOW.'
We filmed and edited at the same time. We started doing the voiceovers in a
professional sound studio and discovered that we had better sound quality in her
walk-in closet, so that is where all the voiceovers and our meditation cds were
created. When Kirsten's little boy was about two, he told her there was a dragon
in that closet! The Kundalini Shakti in that grew in that closet each time we worked
created a very powerful alchemical vessel.
Kirsten had the filmmaking and the technological skills, and I was her apprentice
in that realm. Her innate gift of deeply and truly seeing was able to be transmitted
through the camera. There was always a LOT of Shakti happening in us when we
were filming and editing, as well as in the women you saw. The Shakti field was
strong and directed what unfolded and the decisions that we made. We filmed the
women's inner experiences with 16mm film, and the outer life of the temple with digital
video. We spent a week or ten days together nearly every month for close to six years,
filming, editing and recording voiceovers. At the front end of this, Kirsten had a baby
and I experienced a significant trauma with my daughter. We were each in the midst
of our own deep feminine Mother initiations, even as we were gestating, laboring
and giving birth to Eve's Fire.
Our devotion and our commitment was to honor and surrender to the guidance that
came from the Divine Mother, "The Ma," as we called Her, rather than make filming
and editing decisions from the egoic mind level. The name, Dangerous Old Women,
just appeared one day during meditation, as did the name of this newly created film
genre, evocumentary. We later understood that consciousness, awakeness, and
truth-telling are 'dangerous' to the continuation of the patriarchal conditioning of
women and men. It puts an end to living a lie behind a mask, and allows for the
emergence of women's true power and inner spiritual authority. At this time on
the planet, so many of the indigenous elders, medicine people, and spiritual teachers
of all traditions are recognizing the urgent need for the Feminine and calling for women
to become empowered and take their place in the transformation of planetary
consciousness that is now occurring.
Throughout the six years, even through the most challenging times-and there were
many--Kirsten and I continually experienced gratitude for the enormous GIFT of our
'assignment' to make this film, and for this mystery school and the women who made
it possible, for the teachings they brought through and for the teacher that each
woman was. I am still passionately devoted and grateful for my own ongoing initiations
into deeply feminine experience and consciousness, for a path of awakening that
feels utterly feminine, for all that has come from the making the film and the meditation
CDs, and that my work with the Sacred Feminine and this evolving mystery school
continues.
The film was funded by the women and men of the Temple community via everything
from silent auctions, bake sales, as well as gifts, and we were helped by having a
501(c)3 pass-through from the Boulder County Arts Alliance. At the time,
Sherri Silverman, was the director of that organization, and is now a Santa Fe
resident who was at the screening in Santa Fe with her beautiful sacred art table.
We can truly say that every moment of the filmmaking was guided and directed by
the Divine Shakti Ma. We were scrupulous about staying true to that intention,
to listening, serving the truth as it was revealed to us, and to sitting at the edge
of the unknown constantly with each moment of the filming and editing. We were
continually given what was needed to show and express the inexpressible beauty
and rawness, the grit and the grace, the truth-telling of women about being
embodied as women and awakening to the truth of who they are.
Over the course of the five years since the film has been completed, it has
touched the lives of many men and women in about 25 countries. With any
'dip' into the fathomless pool of Sacred Feminine energies, we are catalyzed
and moved in mysterious ways over time. I hope that your 'dip' two weeks ago
brings you the increasing blessings and awareness of Her presence.
If you would like more information about the Temenos, Temple of the Sacred Feminine,
I discovered after the screening that some of you wanted to purchase films or CDs,
Kelley and I are talking about a two-day workshop in Santa Fe on the emerging
feminine and this archetypal model of women's spiritual initiation that I have evolved
and worked with for 25 years. We will be looking for a quiet place to have such an event,
so if you know of one/some, please let us know. And... if you are interested in
participating, please email me. Please let your friends know, too. I feel SHE is calling
women to step into the initiatory vessel, meet their shadow, and harvest the gifts, the
gold, and the empowerments there for their own healing, awakening, and service to
the planet.
Again, thank you for a memorable evening.
Peace and Grace to you,
 Sheila Foster
temenosctr@aol.com PS ~ thank you for sharing this and our website information with your friends.
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