Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Sunday – Self Sufficiency

Tags

Eckankar, God, ideas, Inner nudges, Intuition, Karma, Life, Self-responsibility, Self-sufficiency

Whatever path to God you follow ought to make you able to stand on your own feet here as well as in the inner worlds; here and now, in this lifetime, before you drop the body in death.

If the path isn’t able to do that, then you ought to keep looking until you find one that gives you this ability.

Sri Harold Klemp – Touching the Face of God

All of us are on our own unique way back to God. It doesn’t matter what path we follow. I’ve chosen ECKANKAR as my path, but I could just have easily chosen Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam. There are many religious paths including being an agnostic or atheist. Soul needs to experience every one of these throughout its many reincarnations.

In ECKANKAR we learn to trust our intuition. We tend to call them inner nudges. An inner nudge is like an idea. You wake up after a good night’s sleep and you get an insight to a problem or something troubling you in your life. This trouble could be another person, a financial issue, or even a physical ailment. Whatever the problem is, most people can figure out a solution to their problems.

One problem hinted at in this quote is the responsibility to self. We must carry our own load. There are some in this lifetime who need outside support. The disabled need help in this lifetime. The chronically ill need help. But for most of us, it simply means we have to find a way to make a living.

But there is more to standing on our own feet than just making a living. It is also about serving our societies, our families, and our friends. We must take responsibility for our actions in this life and previous lives.

Some religions profess to offer salvation by accepting a savior. You could be a mass-murderer and if you accept salvation, you are all good. This could not be more wrong. No one escapes karma. Many think they are getting away with doing wrongs. Sometimes this thought is supported by a life where a person just gets away with everything without paying the piper. This illusion is dissolved when they come back and have to pay for all their wrong doings in previous lives.

We have all hurt others and have been hurt by others. Karma does not forget, despite our inability to see what we did in a previous life. It is set up this way, because we must learn from scratch in each lifetime. Slowly, we start wondering why our lives are this way or that. Why am I cursed with such bad luck? You are not cursed. You are simply paying back things you did before. No one escapes this.

When we finally realize the truth of this, we start to live our lives in a more responsible way. We avoid hurting others if we can. We avoid selfishness. We begin to see that service to others, including ourselves, is key to resolving our karma, so we stop building our karmic debt. In fact, we start to clear up some things and make it easier on ourselves when we return yet again.

I hope all of you have a terrific Sunday!

May the blessings be…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Sunday – Karma & Reincarnation

Tags

e-booklet, Eckankar, Intrigue, Karma, Learning, Mystery, Reincarnation, Spiritual Freedom, spirituality

ECKANKAR: The Path of Spiritual Freedom released some free e-books for public consumption. I wanted to let you know, in case any of you would be interested in reading them. Each week I’ll post one of the links to these books here, so it will save you some time trying to find them on the website or a Google search.

Here’s a link to the main ECKANKAR website: https://www.eckankar.org/

Here’s the link for anyone interested: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.eckankar.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Karma-Reincarnation.pdf

Many things happen in our lives that have no explanation. The question: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” comes to mind. Part of the problem is that we are only thinking one-dimensionally. Imagine living millions of lives, but failing to remember them in this life. How many times have you been hurt? How many times have you hurt others?

ECKANKAR proposes that this reality we live in was designed by God as Soul’s classroom. Soul (You) is here to learn, mature spiritually, so it can one day return home. Karma and Reincarnation answers a lot of these questions and also provides you with a way to find out for yourself about your Karma, your past lives, and why your life today is the way it is.

Well, that’s it for today.

Have a great Sunday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Bonus Content – ECK Wisdom Series on Health and Healing

Tags

God, Healing, health, Karma, Public, spirituality, ZOOM

Hello all! I am running another spiritual discussion on Health and Healing, using the ECK Wisdom Series Booklet Health and Healing. If you’d like to join you can register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckfumpqDMuH90HkN17U7X9zdvhX-F7rjWT

This link will send you an email with the ZOOM link itself for the session, which is on May 20, 2021 at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time. Many of you are outside the United States or are in different parts of the country, so make sure you adjust for the time difference.

I hope some of you can make it. It will be nice to meet some of you in person.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Law of Grace

Tags

Discipline, earn, God, Grace, heaven, Jesus, Karma, realization, Work

Jesus said, “Come unto me and be lifted up.” Many assume God’s grace comes to us merely by asking for it. It does, but only when we make some effort to attain it. You only get what you earn. Nothing is given freely.

It is so easy to see really bad people doing bad things and wondering why they never have to pay the price. They do. Karma has no time limit when it comes to paying back our debts. Karma always wins. People think they are getting away with cheating on their taxes, cheating on their loved ones, or pretending they are doing something noble, but in the end, Karma always comes back to bite us–in this lifetime or the next or the next or the next.

“Soul exists because God loves it.” – Sri Harold Klemp. These words have changed meaning as I have matured on the spiritual path of ECKANKAR. Gods love is much different from the love you have for your pets or loved ones. It is an impersonal and powerful love. As I have mentioned earlier, the body Soul occupies (the one you exist in today), is meaningless to God. It is only a shell that Soul uses to learn while it is here.

God’s love is for Soul, which is imperishable. But Soul must work, discipline itself, and put effort into realizing the grace of God that is already there, ready for the taking. How do you realize it? You have to attain a state of consciousness that aligns with the ECK, or what many call the Holy Spirit. Imagine loving your enemy, as Jesus did and said. This is God’s love. God doesn’t care whether you are an evil person, a good person, a hard worker, or a sloth. God’s love comes to everyone equally. IT doesn’t play favorites. Some of the ignorant may think he chooses them over another, or favors them over another, but these are absolute falsehoods. God’s love is equally distributed to all.

God’s love comes like a wave. This wave goes out into creation and returns back to IT. Everyone gets God’s grace, but few recognize it, because they lack the ability to realize it. What does realization mean? It means that you believe in something and accept it wholeheartedly. You know. There are few in this plane of existence that have attained God realization, or the actual experience of God, but it is attainable. Those that have, have a different experience of life than the rest of us. They see the beauty in the simple things. They see God in everything.

Well, I’ll end this little talk here. I hope all of you have a terrific day!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Law of God

Tags

higher worlds, Karma, Law of God, Ocean of Love and Mercy, Past lives, physical plane, Reincarnation, Soul, Spiritual Saturday

The Law of God: Everything has its origin in Spirit; divine truth is one and unchanging. A Cosmic Sea of Words: The ECKANKAR Lexicon.

The physical plane where we currently find ourselves is a classroom for Soul. Each time we return we learn new things, which add to the maturity of Soul into a greater being. In ECKANKAR, there is one key tenet of our belief system. It is: “Soul exists because God loves it.”

Many ask: “If God loves us, why do we die, why do bad things happen to good people?” The answer is simple: If you take reincarnation into consideration, every debt we create, regardless of lifetime, must be paid in full. This means that the evildoer of today will pay back his or her debts at some point in this lifetime or the next. There is no escaping the Law of Karma. The Law of Karma states that everything comes back in the end. The lessons we learn take many lifetimes to embrace and accept.

Another question: “If we do reincarnate, why do we not remember our past lives?” Some people remember their past lives in dreams, but can’t connect with that truth, because each lifetime we come here fresh. We must start anew each time we return, until we finally begin awakening to the reality of our past lives and can gain access to those records, which are not accessible to most. Can you imagine how disconcerting it would be if you had a recollection of every past life you’ve ever lived? It would be impossible to exist like that. God designed this place so that all of us start again and again, gaining what we need in this lifetime, and take small incremental steps back to our true home. This home is called the Ocean of Love and Mercy in ECKANKAR.

Trying to capture the idea of GOD, heaven, or other spiritual truths, is difficult when we are trying to understand the nature of worlds that do not abide by the Matter, Energy, Space, and Time of this place. In the upper worlds, there is no matter, energy, space, or time. Do you see how difficult it is for the mind to grasp these things? More on this in upcoming posts.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursdays – The Year of Thanksgiving

Tags

Awareness, consciousness, Experience, family, Friends, Karma, spiritual growth, Thankful, Thanksgiving

My religion labels every year with a theme that runs in 12-year cycles. This year’s theme is The Year of Thanksgiving. We place special emphasis on being grateful for the gifts of God. These gifts are awareness, consciousness, and spiritual freedom.

My gratitude is boundless for the blessings of this life. The people I have met, those that took the time to teach me something, and especially for those that called me friend. I’m grateful for my family, friends, and every person who has given me some of their time.

I’m also grateful for every win and loss. They are both necessary for growth. We grow when we lose. We grow when we struggle. We grow when we have to search for answers to our problems.

I’m also grateful to be an ECKist. The spiritual insights I have gained have been wondrous. It’s hard to put these things in words. It is the knowingness that is most precious.

For these things I am grateful. Life is a gift. Life is precious. Life is a privilege.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Love is Given; Love is Received.

Tags

Flowers, Gratitude, Joy, Karma, Love, Mother's Day

Begin with the love you have. Love gratefully. This love expands your heart into a greater vessel which can hold yet more love.

—Harold Klemp
The Language of Soul

Today’s posting will be a little short, because there’s not much I can add to this quote to improve its message. The only thing I can say is that you get love when you give it. Sometimes the timing is a little off, but if you are aware enough, you’ll recognize this when it happens.

Here’s a brief story to illustrate my point. My wife and her daughters aren’t communicating right now and it is just killing my wife. She misses them. I don’t blame her. They are my stepdaughters, and they are going through that phase that all young people go through. You know that phase when your parents know nothing, are behind the times, etc.

Anyway, my wife went to the market on Mother’s Day and realized people were buying flowers for their Mother’s that day. She picked up a bouquet and went to the checkout line. As she waited a young man came up behind her and struck up a conversation. During the conversation, the young man offered to buy my wife the flowers she had picked out, stating that his Mother died a few years ago, and he wanted to buy someone a Mother’s Day bouquet because he didn’t have a Mother to buy them for anymore. This act of love reduced my wife to tears, right there in the shopping line.

Some would say this is coincidence, but I say that there is no such thing. That man needed to show his love by buying a bouquet of flowers for my wife, and she needed those flowers, because her daughters didn’t get her anything. Love was given; love was received.

I hope you enjoyed my little story and this quote today.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Reaching an Accord

Tags

Challenging People, Dreams, Harold Klemp, Karma, Past lives, Reaching an Accord, Soul Travel, spirituality

One of the biggest lessons we can learn in life is to do everything possible to reach an accord with the individual we are having trouble with.

—Harold Klemp
The Language of Soul

Human beings are social creatures. We enjoy interacting with one another, making friends, and hanging out. Every once in a while, you run into that one person that just rubs you wrong the moment you meet them. Have you ever run across someone like that?

If you believe in karma, you already know the reason for this disagreeableness. Karma does not pertain only to this lifetime, it spans lifetimes. So, whenever you run across someone you immediately dislike or a person who dislikes you, this is typically the culprit.

How do you solve a conundrum of this sort? Go into prayer, meditation, or contemplation, and ask: Why is this happening? Then pay attention to what comes during your period of prayer, meditation, or contemplation. You can also pay attention to your dreams. The answer can come through there too.

The problem associated with karma is when you earned it with another person. Some of it you earn during this lifetime. The rest of your karma comes from previous lives. Once you know what’s going on, you can work with it.

For those of you who don’t believe in this sort of thing, that’s ok. There are numerous articles online you can read that can help you with challenging people.

If this topic intrigues you, here’s a book you may want to read. It’s called Past Lives, Dreams, and Soul Travel, by Harold Klemp, the author of the quote above. You can get the Kindle version for $8.49.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope you are having a terrific weekend!

Until next time…

Dave