Aug
30

Finding Hidden Treasure—Giving Service and Being Served

Category: Spiritual Experiences, Your Stories Tags: Chanhassen, ECKANKAR, hidden treasure, HU, Minnesota, service, spiritual home, Temple of ECK

By Benny, Minnesota

Twice a year there is a special service day at the ECKANKAR Spiritual Campus. Volunteers come from all over to help beautify the Temple of ECK through gardening, cleaning, and working on the contemplation trails—just for love.

I was working with a team to renew an old garden. Our job was to dig up the top layer of rocks and then the soil to prepare the garden bed for new growth. Before commencing, I invited our team to do a spiritual exercise to look for spiritual meaning behind our task.

Together we sang HU, and then in contemplation we each inwardly asked to be shown the significance of what we were about to do. On the inner screen I saw that the garden we were digging was far deeper than it appeared in the physical plane. I kept digging through the many layers until I found treasure. Read More

Aug
26

By John Villemonte

A Dream Reunion Heals a Grieving Heart

Category: Life after Death, Your Stories Tags: dreams, dreams of loved ones who have died, ECKANKAR, five stages of grief, Soul Travel

By Kathleen, Illinois

A few years ago, my friend Jim passed away suddenly. He’d been a companion with whom I lived for many years. Like me, he was a longtime member of Eckankar. His passing left me feeling shocked, lonely, bereft—and unaccountably angry.

Over the next month or two, I kept thinking of things he did that really annoyed me. I shifted between anger and missing him terribly.

Then one morning I had a fantastic dream. I was walking down a white marble hall and sensed Jim coming up behind me. I felt his right arm wrap around my shoulders and gather me to him, my cheek against his chest. Without looking up, I sobbed, “I miss you so much!” I felt his kiss on the very top of my head, and he breathed two compassionate, loving words, “I know.” Read More

Aug
12

By John Villemonte

Who Am I?: The Mystery of Soul

Category: Questions and Answers, Videos Tags: ECK, Eck Seminars, ECKANKAR, Harold Klemp, karma and reincarnation, Mahanta, Soul

This clip—and the transcript below—is from Harold Klemp’s 2011 talk “A Clear Message.”

Many people don’t realize that this lifetime is a rare opportunity. Of all the billions of people who are here, not so many will find ECK. But it’s a precious lifetime for every Soul who is here. We come here, in a sense, like people walking into a dark room—into a dark hallway even—where there are a lot of sharp edges. And we stumble along, trip over things, bump into walls, get turned around, run into corners, and things like that. Eventually we begin to look around for the light, or a voice, a sound—anything to give us a clue. How can we get out of this dark place? Read More

Jul
22

By John Villemonte

How God’s Love Enters the Human Heart

Category: Prayer, Meditation, and Contemplation Tags: agnostic, Colorado, ECK Masters, ECKANKAR, God's love, Harold Klemp, Native Americans, Temple of ECK, trout, trout fishing, vegetarian, voice of God

By Harold Klemp

An agnostic joined Eckankar. He stayed an agnostic for a long time, but he developed a great respect for life.

He used to love to go fishing. He’s from the midwestern United States, and he’d go out to the western part of Colorado to do his trout fishing.

This man used a special hook that had no barbs so that he could unhook the fish with the smallest amount of injury and throw the fish back into the stream. He’d thank the fish, the way the Native Americans used to. They always gave thanks for any food that they needed to take from the theater of life because they realized that to survive one must eat another, whether it’s animal or plant. It’s a part of living.

Today we have people who are very self-righteous about being vegetarians. They feel they are more righteous because they don’t eat meat. They are eating plants, as if plants don’t have life or consciousness. Read More

Jul
1

By John Villemonte

Love Should Be the Smile You Wear

Category: Soul Travel, Your Stories Tags: ECK, ECKANKAR, Light and Sound, love, Mahanta, Soul Travel, Spiritual Exercise

By Emeka, Nigeria

As a member of Eckankar, you can study monthly spiritual discourses that come from the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master. ECK members (chelas) plant their feet on a direct path to draw ever closer to the heart of God through the ECK initiations, which include receiving a sacred personal word. Sri Harold says this secret word “fine-tunes you to the life stream of God, Divine Spirit.”

In Emeka’s story below, she describes a spiritual exercise that began with reading her ECK discourse and chanting her personal word, then developed into a Soul Travel experience where the Mahanta, her spiritual guide, led her to an inner volume of the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, Eckankar’s sacred scriptures. It expanded her awareness with blessings of love and spiritual wisdom. Read More

Jun
24

By John Villemonte

How to Be Most Like God

Category: Prayer, Meditation, and Contemplation, Relationships Tags: ECKANKAR, God, God in little things, Harold Klemp, Holy Spirit, HU, Light and Sound, voice of God

By Harold Klemp

A search for happiness is the pursuit of God. Yet the reason so many people fail to find happiness is because they look for it in the wrong place—at the market instead of in their hearts.

It takes discipline to pursue God.

There is no mystery to finding God: just follow the Sound of the divine Voice back home. Could anything be easier? Not so for most people, for whom the pursuit of God is as unlikely as the phenomenon of a flying rabbit. And why? It’s simply not in their consciousness yet to know that the destiny of each Soul is to become a Co-worker with God, who expects more of us than an eternity of eating and play. Read More

Jun
3

By John Villemonte

An ECK Master Helps Out During a Trying Time

Category: Your Stories Tags: ECK Master, ECKANKAR, Harold Klemp, husband's death, Kata Daki

Kata Daki. An ECK Master in the Ancient Order of the Vairagi Adepts…. Although her true age is beyond belief, she appears to be in her midtwenties to early thirties. She is five and a half feet tall. Her light-brown (honey-blond) hair often falls to her shoulders, but she changes hairstyles to fit her duties. Like all the ECK Masters, she serves Sugmad (God) by helping others find the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master. Her pet project is to help people get back on their feet during hardship.

By Ann, Virginia

Two months after my young husband translated (died), I was shopping in a department store with my eighteen-month-old son. I was not an ECKist at the time. When the shopping was finished, my son did not want to leave the store. He went into a temper tantrum, and I was beside myself.

My husband’s death had overwhelmed me. I was still deeply grieving, and even the simple task of taking my son out of the stroller and out of the store while he was screaming was a chore. My arms were laden with bundles, and I couldn’t figure out how to carry him too. It was too much. Read More

May
27

By John Villemonte

Finding Your Own Spiritual Path to God

Category: ECK Parables, What Is ECKANKAR? Tags: ECK, ECKANKAR, finding and exploring your spiritual path, finding your own spiritual path, Harold Klemp, Light and Sound, pathways to God, the path to God

By Harold Klemp

Someone sent me a poem. The title was “The Calf Path,” and one of the lines in it was “the calf-paths of the mind.” It tells an interesting story.

Three hundred years ago there was a little calf on its way home. It meandered as it made its way along a path that led through the forest, and as the calf wandered and made its trail, it disappeared into history. The next day, along came a dog. He was just out for a walk when he smelled these tracks, and he decided to follow the path of the calf. A few days later there came a bellwether, the sheep that leads the flock, and by some coincidence this sheep followed the trail made by the calf and the dog. Read More

May
17

By John Villemonte

ECKANKAR—The Path of Spiritual Freedom

Category: Featured Article Tags: ECKANKAR, Harold Klemp, hero, HU, Soul, spiritual freedom, the hero's journey

The Hero’s Journey

By Sri Harold Klemp

Have you ever felt a hunger for something you can’t even put words to?

What if you are actually on a journey—a quest—that has spanned the ages, continents, lifetimes? It has survived victories, tragedies, wealth and poverty, unimaginable gains and losses. Death and rebirth time and again.

The journey is worth everything. Because you are the hero, and your saga continues until the quest is fulfilled.

A hero? Read More

May
13

By John Villemonte

What Is HU?

Category: HU, Spiritual Exercises Tags: ECKANKAR, Harold Klemp, HU, HU song, love song to God

By Harold Klemp

Singing HU or chanting your secret word enhances your life and gives you strength. HU is a holy name for God which will lift you into the higher worlds.

But the name itself has even more meaning behind it. I would like to recommend a spiritual exercise which will be very beneficial to you in finding it out for yourself. Read More