A Spiritual Advance

I’ve just returned from a week of retreat, a summer conference with Centers for Spiritual Living. The retreat was held at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, a conference ground across the street from the vast and beautiful ocean.

American New Thought writer, teacher, and leader Ernest Holmes held his first summer conference like this at Asilomar in 1953. He called this gathering a spiritual advance, making the distinction that we retreat from the world to advance spiritually. 

It was Tuesday afternoon when folks began to arrive, check in, and get settled. We sat for our first meal together in Crocker Dining Hall at 6 PM, and it felt like a family reunion with familiar faces, new faces, catching up, laughing, and shedding a few tears of joy, all while breaking bread together. We went into our first session that evening, and the speakers were heart-expanding, the musical inspiration uplifting and inspiring.

Each day was a glorious journey of meditation, meals, connection, music, inspiration, spiritual practice, beach, and repeat. After twenty-four hours at this retreat, I found myself completely present. Detached from the endless barrage of thoughts, responsibilities, and to-do lists, I fully communed with the Beloved One – Spirit Divine.  

The invitation for us all was to experience the newness of now, and I had arrived fresh in the moment, wholly available to the fullness and richness of this instant.

One of the nuggets gleaned from the week was the meaning of Sankofa, an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana. The literal translation of the word and the symbol is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” The word is derived from the words: SAN (return), KO (go), FA (look, seek, and take). The Akan believe the past serves as a guide for planning the future. To the Akan, this wisdom in learning from the past ensures a strong future. Sankofa symbolizes the Akan people’s quest for knowledge among the Akan, implying that the inquiry is based on critical examination and intelligent and patient investigation. 

Ask yourself these questions: 

1. Does my spiritual conviction produce results?
2. Can I stand for something and against nothing, redeemed enough not to condemn others out of the burden of my soul?
3. Can I get my littleness out of the way and reveal the immeasurable magnitude of the universe in which I live? 
4. Can I sing my celestial song as an outburst of the cosmic urge to sing?

Let go of everything hindering or blocking you from experiencing your radiant magnificent, good. Be all that you came here to be. Now is the time. This is the moment. Practice Sankofa and go back to investigate what needs to be released, then do so with patience and love. This is the work that only you can do.

A wise being once said, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” You are loved.

And so it is.