In God We Trust?

By Harold Klemp

A woman lived in a foreign country and often transferred money from her American account to her local account. Lately she had been having a great deal of trouble financially and was losing money on the exchange rate. It got so bad that she thought, I have so many financial problems, I don’t know what to do. I think I’ll do the Shariyat technique.

So she sat down on the bed in contemplation and opened The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad at random. The passage said something to the effect that there is no limit to what Soul may accomplish. That’s pretty neutral, the woman thought. She opened the book again and read something about how Soul cannot know the value of its experience until It is like an empty vessel. (And here the woman is on the verge of losing everything.)

This isn’t the help I needed, she thought. She came out of contemplation, and just then the mail arrived. She opened a letter and found that a check she badly needed had been further delayed by the bank. Because of this delay, another check for a very large sum had bounced. The woman lost her patience.

She went down to the bank to talk to them about the problem and to exchange five one-hundred-dollar bills into local currency. The foreign-exchange department of her bank had always been difficult to deal with. One of the managers took great pride in making any of her transactions as complex as possible. I’m not going to let that guy get to me this time, the woman vowed as she filled out the forms and handed them to the teller.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty, thirty, thirty-five. She saw a group of clerks running around the bank, holding her hundred-dollar bills to the light. They’d study some books, then look at the bills again. Finally the woman couldn’t take it any longer.

“What seems to be the matter?” she asked one of the clerks. He held up one of the bills. “See?” he said. “Some careless counterfeiter forgot to print ‘In God We Trust’ on this one.”

When the woman realized the message, she started to laugh out loud, right there in the bank. She laughed at the subtlety of the Inner Master bringing her a lesson in a way only she could appreciate. The Master was saying, “You don’t trust ECK.”

The woman realized that the Master had answered her question, not just through The Shariyat readings, but through an experience that was tied directly to her financial life. The answer showed her exactly what she needed to do spiritually to straighten out her finances at the bank.

This is often how the Inner Master works, and often we don’t recognize what’s happening. We’re too busy being angry or afraid to see the humor that life uses to teach us what we must learn about ourselves.

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Excerpted from The Book of ECK Parables, Volume 3.

 

Would you like to try this technique?

In the story above, when the woman was having a problem with the bank, her finances, and the exchange rate, she used the Shariyat technique. The following is an explanation of how to use this spiritual exercise when you are looking for help and inner guidance in your life. Now you can try it for yourself.

 

The Shariyat Technique

If you have a problem you’re having trouble solving using other techniques, this one has proved to be helpful to many ECKists. It’s especially helpful if you are down-to-earth by nature. Called the Shariyat technique, this is given in Harold Klemp’s book Unlocking Your Sacred Puzzle Box.

First, simply look at your problem. What is its nature? Is it a spiritual matter, or does it involve physical health, finances, or a broken heart?

Second, open Book One or Two of The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad at random and read a paragraph.

The third step is to chant HU and contemplate upon what you have just read in The Shariyat. Don’t contemplate on your problem or try to make some kind of bridge between your paragraph and your problem. This is very important. Just contemplate upon the paragraph from The Shariyat while chanting HU.

After you have completed the contemplation, the fourth step is to open The Shariyat, again at random, and read another paragraph. At this point, you can try to see how the first and second paragraphs relate to your problem. The entire exercise shouldn’t go much longer than fifteen or twenty minutes.

The following day, if you still don’t have an answer, do this spiritual exercise again. If you do get an answer, then you can use the same technique on another problem bothering you.

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Excerpted from ECKANKAR—Ancient Wisdom for Today.