The Awakening, Part 3

This is the third installment of a three-part series. If you have not checked out this post in a while, please start with Part 1.

After encountering Marty for the last time, I was shaken. I had never seen an aura before, let alone seeing one from down a long hall with hundreds of people in the way. I was left with two thoughts: (1) maybe my gut feelings were right, and there was something to this Eckankar, and (2) perhaps God had used me like John the Baptist to awaken a spiritual giant.

I felt honored to be part of Marty's awakening, but I was leery of how Marty just dropped everything to answer his calling. I was only 21, and I liked to have fun. I was not ready to drop everything and run off to some ashram. I only had the one book, and many unanswered questions, about Eckankar, but I felt that maybe God does have a plan for me. I was also afraid. I left Eckankar: Key to Secret Worlds on the shelf, and went about my life as a student.

In February of 1979, I was a supervisor for airline catering at the Rochester, NY airport. I got to know an employee named "Mike W". He was a loner, and kind of an odd duck, but he was also very intelligent. Mike ran our airline liquor department so he was alone in this room filled with mini-bottles of liquor. I would sometimes check on him, and talk to him. I found out that he was an initiate in Eckankar. This floored me, because I had never met anyone else who had even heard of Eckankar, let alone someone who had been practicing it for ten years. We became close friends, playing chess (he always beat me, and I was pretty good), and talking about Eckankar.

One day he was riding in my car with me; it was a very cold and gray winter day. He told me that everyone is divine because everyone is soul. The major religions had everything backwards. "You are not a physical body that owns a soul, but you are soul, and you take on various bodies to gain experience."

To him, soul and the Holy Spirit (The Eck) were one and the same. I asked how could this be when there are billions of different people. He maintained that we are all manifestations of the same great power, but we all operate from different states of consciousness. He also maintained that each person is not only in control of his or her state of consciousness, but that they are also supreme ruler of that domain.

"Each person is God! That is why love is so important. We exist because God loves us. Without love, there would be just God. By loving God with all your heart, you complete a circle of love, enabling you to inherit your birth right, The Throne of God!"

I drove silently, mulling over his words, when I noticed up the road, off to the side, was a police car. I thought to myself, "If I'm in control of my state of consciousness, I don't want that to be a police car!" We came up to the car and, to my shock, it wasn't a police car, but instead it was a convertible with the top rolled back...in February! I immediately thought to myself, "that wasn't a police car after all!"

Mike then looked at me and grinned. "That was pretty neat what you did to that cop car."

I said, "You saw that?" He said, "Yes...look over there!" I looked where he pointed, and there was the cop car, driving though a parking lot. "You didn't destroy it, you just moved it from one spot to another."

"But what of the cops, won't they be shaken up, sitting along side the road one second, then popping up in a parking lot the next?"

"Remember", he said, "they are in control of their own state. They believe they drove over there."

"Well I'm glad you saw what happened because I was convincing myself it wasn't a cop car after all."

"We all do that all the time, perform miracles or little feats of magic, and then we convince ourselves we didn't do them."

That was the day of my awakening. I realized that I don't have to run off and join an ashram. I didn't have to go to church. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to be anybody but myself.

I just have to love God, love my neighbor, and love myself. The rest will be taken care of.

May the blessings be.

Part 1
Part 2
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