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As an ECK leader, you quickly learn that there are at least two sides to most stories, so you seek them out.

But some stories also have an undercurrent. It adds richness and character to a situation’s dimensions, so look for it. If one exists, the Mᴀʜᴀɴᴛᴀ may then open your eyes to see it.

“Glenda’s” outer story is that at age nineteen she suddenly stopped going to ECK events. Perhaps her mother, an H.I., was the only one to know the reason. But Glenda had kept up her ECK membership. She’d put her spiritual life in a bottle, corked it, and set it on a shelf.

For later.

Every so often the ECK would knock on her door and politely ask, “Do you want to stay on the path? You know you can start doing your spiritual exercises at any time.”

Glenda declined the Master’s offers.

Why had she so abruptly quit all ECK activities? What was the real story behind the outer appearance? She simply wanted time to deal with her arrogance and anger. As a nineteen-year-old, she’d been angry over not receiving an automatic Third Initiation. Didn’t she deserve it as a reward? She had studied and participated in ECK all along.

Then she graduated from college and moved back home. Her mother was fully supportive of her daughter’s “sabbatical.”

One day, Glenda got a strong urge to attend a HU Chant with her mom. There, she remembered how good it felt to just sing HU. Her heart opened. It was as if she were taking that bottle from the shelf and uncorking it, then trying a sip of its contents. She liked the taste.

That HU Chant replaced her anger with a moment of understanding. She learned that there was no need to worry about her level of initiation.

In the grand scheme of her spiritual life, ECK initiations would come when she was ready. Nor was the elapsed time between them significant. The duration was no reflection of her worthiness or ability to accept divine love and guidance into her life.

Glenda noted, “The last year has been a breath of fresh air from everything I was going through.”

Soon after, she attended her first ECK seminar in years. Her arrogance had fled. The sabbatical was over.

“Nancy’s” story also has an undercurrent of sorts.

She is the Arahata of an ECK Satsang class in a distant Canadian city. She usually has the class in a hotel and stays overnight before driving home the following day.

After class one day, she was accompanying two class members to the hotel’s parking lot. A distraught and shaken man with a stutter approached them. He’d lost his carry-on luggage on the train in the city. His wallet was in it.

A journeyman lineman for the power company, he had missed his flight home.

He’d tried to talk to three others, but they had become angry with him and had stalked off. Now he said repeatedly, “Please, don’t get angry at me!”

He needed forty dollars to buy a bus ticket home. Nancy rushed back to her room and grabbed a hundred dollars to give him. But as she ran back out of the hotel, another man approached her. He’d left his wallet at his girlfriend’s place and had run out of gas. He needed to buy a jerrican and gas.

The whole time he kept repeating, “I’m not a vagabond or a bum, but I might need thirty or thirty-three dollars.” She handed him forty dollars. He thanked her. Could he have her address, to repay her?

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

Turning on her heel, Nancy then dashed to the waiting lineman, whose stammer had now gone. She handed him the remaining sixty dollars. “You’re a godsend!” he said over and over.

Nancy thought, At least he has twenty dollars to get something to eat for the long ride home.

Back in her hotel room, she understood that the power of the ECK had drawn these two men, who were truly in need, to the three ECKists.

Given time, you’ll quickly pick up on the undercurrent of situations.

—Sri Harold Klemp

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Being an ECK Initiate expands the scope of your vision. Your inner hearing is much like a muscle you can strengthen by listening for the inner Word of the Mᴀʜᴀɴᴛᴀ.

Look for such occasions of inner knowing as you go about your day.