A Dream about This Article
By For several days I’d stewed over this weekend’s assignment: this article.
That’s seldom the case. For most assignments, ideas come to mind during the week, which I jot down, because these promptings are like vapor. They come easily, but they quickly vanish too.
So it was unusual for this article to so trouble me.
Here’s my challenge: how to differentiate my article from all the excellent stories around mine? How? A big question.
Little ideas popped up on my mind’s screen throughout the week. How about the nurse who’d shopped a number of churches before settling on one where she felt at home, among friends? No, I’d already done that. A repeat would be stale.
All right, what about the story of captive wild animals choosing friends that in the wild would have a standing invitation to dinner? Interesting. But not this time.
Well, then, how about one on love? I wasn’t in the mood.
So you can imagine how I carried a very uneasy mind off to bed. The night dragged on. Each time I surfaced a moment from sleep—no inspiration yet.
Still I had complete confidence that the ECK, the Holy Spirit, would provide. Hadn’t It always?
But why the delay?
Then It spoke!
Rather, It showed me in a short, vivid inner experience. Sure, call it a dream if you like.
I awoke in the other worlds to find myself toting a well-worn copy of The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, the ECK bible. Some pages had fallen out. So I’d headed for a bookbinder who specialized in the repair of volumes precious to their owners.
Mine was dear. Scribbled notes in the margins recalled concepts that fleshed out the text or marked a quote once used in an ECK publication.
The bookbinder studied this patient. “I’ll see what I can do.”
A week later I returned to his shop. A face like a troubled bloodhound greeted me. “The pages won’t stick,” he groused. “There’s no reason they shouldn’t. There’s no charge.” He brushed away the twenty I tried to hand him. I started for the door.
“By the way,” he called after me, “what does the title mean?”
“The Way of the Eternal.”
He repeated it. “You know, I read bits and pieces of it while trying to restore the pages to the binding. The pages are thin, but they should have stuck. So why is the book so important to you?”
“It’s the holy scriptures of Eckankar.” And I explained about the marginalia.
His head had started at the mention of Eckankar.
“You know,” he mused, “I’d never heard of Eckankar until last evening when a friend told me about it. Come back in a week. I’ll give it another try.”
A week later, his face was a sunflower. “Would you lend it to me for a week?”
“I’d be happy to,” I laughed. “But you could have your own copy today. The price is reasonable.” He was grateful for a nearby ECK center’s phone number.
“How much do I owe you?”
“No charge. I think I’m coming out ahead.”
And that’s how the ECK provided me with the material to write the article you’ve just read.
A word about the inner worlds: they’re real. There are also real events taking place in those very real worlds. So study your dreams. Write them down. I guarantee you’ll profit spiritually.