Paulette Pipe was spirit-led to retreat into the silence for forty days and forty nights.  There, she found a healing place in the heart of God that looked like a cabin in a forest, with a small bed, a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a writing desk.  The cabin had a screened-in porch that was surrounded by tall trees, which she felt held her “in the womb of silence.”  This Shantivanam or “Forest of Peace” gave her the space to release, restore and reunite with Spirit.  She dreamed prophetic dreams, moved beyond the appearances of things, and bore witness to the truth.  (See Paulette Pipe, “The Voice in the Silence,” Unity Magazine, July/August 2010, at pp. 20-22)

When we go away and pray awhile, we forge a path that awakens to love and resurrects in the divine within.   By our witness to solitude and introspection, we allow the summer to open new spaces of retreat and  embrace us with the recreation, re-envisioning and re-connection of God’s heart fully open.  We have to rejoice in the time away from obligations — catching our breath in the rhythm of our being.  We need to re-enter the soul with intention, and find there the refreshment, renewal and rejuvenation of our purpose on this planet.   We need to slow down long enough to listen and resonate with the beat of the spiritual pulse that is always giving us direction.

Are you listening?  Or are you standing in the way of your own good?  Are you diving without hesitation into the wellspring of nonresistance and surrendering to the Kingdom within?   Or are you worried about what other people think, caught up in the straight-jacket of  other people’s opinions, limited to appearances of lack and limitation?  Have you stopped preventing yourself from being too happy, too successful, too visible, too loud, too different, too much?  Or are you still worried about people hatin’ on you — because you know and you show that you are the temple of a living God? 

If we cannot love ourselves fully and completely, then we will never transcend the jealousy and envy and hateful attempts to sabotage other people’s success.  The truth is that many of us hate on each other because we dislike ourselves.   The truth is that many people disregard and disrespect each other because they have no idea how to celebrate themselves.   We need to sing our song and dance our dance and speak our speech and take our stand — because the Spirit in us is the most powerful force in the universe.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian or a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Jew, we all live and move and have our being in the Spirit.  Our beloved Jesus said love one another.   He said stop second-guessing yourselves: you are the light of the world!  Stop second-guessing the gifts and talents that God is expressing as you!  Put your lamp on its stand, and give light to everyone in the house.  Stop sabotaging yourselves.

There is a healing place in the heart of God.  We have to honor ourselves enough to go there and recognize ourselves in the beauty of infinite possibilities.   We have to honor ourselves enough to release the television and the internet and the cell phones and other electronic devices, and surrender our prayers to the endless ethers of inexhaustible supply and look God squarely in the eye.  We have to honor ourselves enough to forgive, forget, find new beginnings, and plant fresh seed there.

There is a healing place in the heart of God.  But we have to take the time to go there and be a witness to the co-creative power of Spirit expressing as us.  We have to do the work that it takes to peel back the layers of resistance and allow ourselves to surrender to the Kingdom within.   We have to learn to dance again — to the rhythm of the universe that reminds us of the harmony we all share.  We have to learn to walk again — toward the goals that are always giving way to good for all.  We have to learn to write again — by believing that we are here to be the best and the beautiful and the bright shining stars that we are.  We have to learn how to sing again — our own song that knows one lyric — Hallelujah!

We have to learn to give again — not because we want something back but because we want to bring happiness to others.  We have to learn to be silent again — and in that stillness — allow ourselves to be loved and delivered.  We have to learn to find that connection with Spirit again — and in that Oneness know that we always in the heart of completion.  And there is nowhere else to go or be — but here.

All of the materials in God is a Brown Girl Too® email messages are copyrighted by and may not be used without the written permission of Cecilia Loving. 

Register for the God is a Brown Retreat this July 16-18, at the Mariandale Retreat Center by going to http://www.godisabrowngirltoo.com.  You don’t want to miss it!

This Sunday, JOIN SPIRITMUV FOR PART VI OF OUR 7-PART SERIES ON TERRIE COLE-WHITAKER’S BOOK, What You Think of Me is None of My Business, from 2:30 P.M. to 3:30 P.M., at the Unity Center of NYC, 213 West 58th Street, between Broadway and 7th Avenue.