Teri's Upcoming Book: The Divine Feminine Fire
	Shakti in The Divine Feminine Fire
	Sophia in The Divine Feminine Fire
	Participate in Teri's Questionnaire

Teri's Upcoming Book The Divine Feminine Fire Creativity and Your Yearning to Express Your Self
We yearn. And we think it means we are empty. We long, and we think it means we are lacking. We ache, and we think it means we are inadequate. Because of this, we think of yearning itself as an emptiness, a great yawning hole at the very centre of our being. But - if you yearn to express your Self creatively, if you yearn to heal the suffering you see around you, if you ache to save Mother Earth - your yearning is not an emptiness at all. It is a vast and limitless potential power. It is, in fact, the divine feminine force of the universe. That this is so should not be as surprising as it is. Age-old spiritual traditions have told us the divine feminine is the great Mother, the creative source of the universe. The Divine Feminine Fire reveals that she is also the creative source within each and every one of us. It does this by sharing the stories of ordinary, everyday women who have discovered that their longing for creative self expression is a spiritual practice in and of itself, that it is just as vital as other aspects of their lives, and that it allows them to bring better, more creative thinking not just to their art but also to their families and careers. The Divine Feminine Fire also explores extraordinarily creative female saints and seers from different traditions whose stories show just how universal this force is and how - even though we are far from being saints! - it is working within each of us just as it did within them.		To show this to be true, The Divine Feminine Fire brings to light forgotten - or more often ignored - sacred writings, like those from Tantra that tell us poetry drips like ambrosia from the tongues of yogis who have awakened the cosmic feminine force known as Shakti. Woven in and around this are sagas, myths, and legends that reveal the true nature of Shakti, Sophia, and Shekinah and empower you with the knowledge that we do not have to strive to embody the divine feminine. We already embody her. Realizing this, we can discover the joy of allowing her potent creative power to rise upward and flow outward into our creative work and into a world that has such a great need for her sweet grace. The Divine Feminine Fire contains fifteen experiential exercises in creativity that will show you how to: • create a safe, secure, protected space for creative self-expression • draw your divine feminine creative energy from within and apply it to both your creative work and the problems in your daily life • discover how to fuel your creative work with the depth of your emotions and the fire of your passion • honor your inner divine masculine and bring it into balance with the inner feminine For more information on when The Divine Feminine Fire will be available contact Teri. Back to top of page

Shakti in The Divine Feminine Fire
…when I talk about the "feminine fire" I am referring to a primordial, elemental force that is powerful beyond our wildest imaginings. It is, in fact, power itself. This force is seen in many spiritual traditions as going back to the very dawn of time and as being the fundamental creative force behind the universe. Ironically, I didn't discover anything about how this concept is viewed in the Judeo-Christian tradition until years after I had begun learning about it in Eastern traditions. The first time I came across it was when I began studying Tantra and some of the other philosophical traditions behind yoga. There, this feminine, generative force is known as Shakti. Once when I was in India, listening to a talk given by the yogi and philosopher Gopi Krishna, someone said they’d heard that a person could learn to control this power through certain yoga techniques and asked Gopi Krishna if this was indeed the case. In reply, Gopi just shook his head and laughed.		If you could take a ball of fire, he said, no bigger than a baseball from the center of the sun and bring it within a few hundred miles of the surface of the earth, the heat from that small ball would scorch the ground beneath it. Now, he said, try to imagine not just that small ball of burning energy, but the energy of the entire sun. Next, he said, try to imagine not just the energy of that sun but of all the billions of suns in the universe. And then, he said, imagine, not just the energy of all the suns but the force that moves all those suns and all the planets around the universe. That force, he said, is Shakti. This image reveals how little control we, as individuals, could possibly have over this awesome cosmic force. It also makes it clear that this is the energy of life, of creation itself and that, as such, it must pulse in some way through each of us and have a role to play in our daily lives....And this is indeed the case for yogic tradition tells us there is both a cosmic Shakti and a shakti that finds its home in each and every one of us..… Back to top of section Back to top of page

Sophia in The Divine Feminine Fire
The force many call Sophia was know as The Eternal Feminine to the prolifically acclaimed and passionate Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin. In his prose poem of the same name, Teilhard describes this feminine force as the power that literally holds the cosmos together and propels evolution. For him, the Eternal Feminine was an all-pervasive, all-powerful love —a divine fire that was the fundamental principle of attraction, union, and generation of the universe, regardless of whether the elements that were being attracted were two atoms, two human beings, or a human being and the divine..... In describing one of his own many encounters with The Eternal Feminine he once wrote: I melted away....lost in a strange yearning to attain some individuality vaster and simpler than mine —as though I had become pure light. And under the glance that fell upon me, the shell in which my heart slumbered, burst open. With pure and generous love, a new energy penetrated into me —or emerged from me, which, I cannot say— that made me feel that I was as vast and as loaded with richness as the universe.		While researching the eternal feminine I came across a book written by a woman who said she had to think of Sophia as a tangible sort of Goddess because any reference to the "divine feminine" or the "eternal feminine" seemed cold and distant to her. This was certainly not the case for Teilhard, nor —as you will see as you read the personal stories in The Divine Feminine Fire— for many others. Certainly in my own experience the eternal feminine is neither cold nor distant. It is a palpable, visceral force. When I am totally tuned into the creative process, I feel it pulsing in the cradle of my pelvis, surging through my womb, and pushing up and out through my heart. When I am particularly blessed, little streams of it even seem to reach my brain and flow out the tips of my fingers into the words that I write. Never, never is this force cold to me. It is warm —sometimes even too hot to bear— and it pours out of me in every salty tear, every wave of compassion, and every surge of love that takes me in its grasp…. Back to top of section Back to top of page

Interview Questions
Why do the questionnaire
These questions are designed to provide a framework for examining any spiritual experiences you may have had and discovering relationships between your spirituality and your creativity that you may not have known existed. If, after answering the questions for yourself, you decide to send the material along to me it would be very much appreciated, and I will be pleased to read it and add it to the information database I am keeping on these experiences. Although I will notify you by return email that I have received your		information, I may not be able to respond personally. If you wish, you may provide me with your name, but it is not necessary. (Of course, if you send me your information by regular mail, I won’t be able to respond without a name and address.) Although I have already gathered many of the personal stories I need for the book, I may be able to use a few more. If I would like to use any parts of your material, I will contact you to ask for permission to do so.
Questions Below you will find the interview questions. You will probably find it helpful and time saving to read through all the questions before you begin answering them—especially since your answers to some questions may overlap.
1. Please tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, and when and how you first became interested in the spiritual. 2. What form(s) does your creative ability take? Have you always been considered creative or talented? Or did your creative abilities "appear" at some point in your life? If so, please describe. (Although I am referring to music, art, writing, and the other traditional types of creative expression, you might also include such abilities as an ability to parent creatively or to find solutions to life’s difficulties, etc.) 3. Have you ever had one or more profound or extraordinary spiritual experience(s)? If so, please describe in detail, including any physical, auditory, or visual sensations that occurred; how long the experience lasted, and the changes it brought about in your life. (Please note that I’m leaving it up to you to decide what a "profound or extraordinary spiritual experience" is—so you can include anything you think is one. It also may be that you wouldn’t define your experiences as "profound" but in some other way, for example, "recurring" or "on-going" or "gradually transformative." Please don’t hesitate to describe these experiences.) 4. Have you ever had an experience of mystical union? (Some of the forms this commonly takes include a sense of "oneness" with the divine; oneness with nature; a loss of the sense of separation from the divine or from others; union with the feminine or masculine divine nature; an awareness of the "oneness" of all things….) Please describe. 5. Have you ever experienced any visions of light. If so, please describe them in detail, including whether the light appeared to be inside or outside your self and the state you were in at the time. 6. Have you ever experienced unusual sensations of heat or "energy" moving or rushing through your body? Have you ever experienced spontaneous yoga postures or other physical movement associated with the flow of this "energy". If so, please describe. 7. Have you ever had an experience of what might be called the Divine Feminine, of the divine as "Mother", of or any other aspects of what might be thought of as the feminine side of the divine? Were these experiences related in any way to your creativity? Please describe. 8. How has the feminine side of your nature developed over the course of your experiences? How has the masculine side of your nature developed?		9. How do the spiritual and creative aspects of your life seem to intertwine or be related? Has there ever been a sudden change in your creative ability? Was it related to any of your spiritual/mystical experiences? Please include very specific examples if possible. 10. If you follow a regular spiritual practice of any kind please describe it and how much you time you spend at it, etc. 11. Has any change in your spiritual practice ever had an effect on your creativity or your creative output? If so, please describe. 12. Has your creativity or creative expression ever had an effect on your spiritual or psychological growth? Please describe. 13. Have you ever had what you would consider a dramatic, profound, or extraordinary experience of creative inspiration? Do you have on-going or recurrent experiences of inspiration? If so please describe in detail, including what you believe the source of this inspiration is. 14. If you have faced difficulties—or difficult decisions—related to your spiritual growth or creativity, please describe some of the most significant ones, how they evolved, and what has helped you the most with them. Please include how they have been resolved if this has occurred. 15. Please describe some of the most important lessons you feel you have learned from your spiritual/creative experiences. Please be sure to include details of not just what you learned, but how you learned it, and what transpired in the process. Thank-you for taking the time to fill out the questionnaire. If you would like to email your responses to me click here: teridegler@sympatico.ca. Mailing address: P.O. Box 302 2 Laird Drive Toronto, Ontario Canada M4G 3C3 NOTE: An airmail letter from the U.S. to Canada needs a $.69 stamp! Back to top of section Back to top of page