Encounters with Inner Spiritual Guides

freedom. This could be the most important day of your life if this is the first time you've heard of the ECK Masters, because if you've been searching for something more than philosophy, metaphysics, or you have unanswered questions, these spiritual adepts can help you open the doors to answers by revealing the ways of the Lifeforce, the God Current, also

known as the ECK. In the book, Those Wonderful ECK Masters, the spiritual leader of ECKANKAR, Harold Klemp, writes, "The ECK spiritual guides can seem to simply appear out of the mists of time to help any Soul seeking love, truth, and the awareness of God. They come by day, by night, at times of great trouble or need, or in disguise to bring comfort to an old friend.

Perhaps someone like you." Going to be a great adventure today, because a lot of people have had out-of-ordinary experiences, and they're looking to confirm -- What just happened here? Did I really just have an experience with a divine being? So if you've had any of those, or maybe even not, you'll relate to the startling experiences of our guest. She's Heather Davari. She's a writer, wife, mother, an insightful spiritual adventurer whose favorite topic to discuss is spirituality.

to be adventurous in life. I went to school -- left home and went to school -- and when I graduated, I went on the road, traveling for work. I just wanted to get out there and embrace life. And for a while I had this formula that really worked for me: If I worked hard and I thought positively, then things would generally fall into place. And that was success to me, you know. Things were more or less on an upward trend in my

life. So in my late 20s, I felt bold enough to kind of make a cross-country move all by myself to the West Coast. And this is where the tides turned drastically. That formula just stopped working. Immediately, things became very difficult. Housing was hard to find. I ran out of money very quickly. I couldn't find a job in my field. And now I had to do these odd jobs to survive, like walk dogs and clean friends' houses. I just was getting by. And frankly, this was quite a blow

to my ego. This sounds like a normal adjustment period when you move, and it would be, but it lasted over the period of ten to twelve years. There wasn't any stability. And when I did finally start something I thought would be great, I got excited, I put my heart and Soul into this work, and then I got fired. I got fired three times, Doug. I think I got into like four car accidents. Oh! Ten years is a long time to stay positive when things just

weren't working out. The time came when the people around me were having kids and getting married and buying houses and I was single and in debt and . . . What is going on with my life? Why is nothing working out? Something must be wrong with me. And I had this shame. I felt like I was failing. Now, during this time period, I also was continuing to seek spiritually. And the harder life got, the more feverish that need for truth became. I needed answers. I had no idea how to fix what I

felt was so broken. I looked into Christianity and Buddhism and Judaism, and they all had wisdom, but it wasn't what I was looking for. So I kept looking. And that led me to taking a community class in meditation and healing. And on the first day, our teacher said, "You're going to be working with a healing master," and he meant an invisible spiritual healing master on the inner. So we wouldn't see them in the classroom. But we were supposed to intuit what they looked like

and then draw them. So I thought, Okay, interesting, I'll play along. Came up with a picture of who my healing master would be, and who I drew was an older Chinese gentleman from another era. He had a very interesting red hat on; long red robes; very long, kind of thin, snow-white beard. And I worked with him throughout my class. And when the class ended, I didn't think much about it after that.

When I walked in, I noticed there was a gentleman on a video talking about a Spiritual Exercise. It's the first time I ever heard that phrase, spiritual exercise. And he talked about the Fifteen Times Exercise.

I had come home. After the service, I learned that students of ECKANKAR could receive an annual discourse and I would be able to take classes every month. That's all I needed to hear. I signed up that day online. I was in. My mind had these little doubts, but my heart just knew I was in the right place. One of the first spiritual exercises I learned was to sing this ancient mantra, HU. And boy, I have to tell you, from that point on, the doors just blew open. My inner life

completely changed. My dream experiences became brighter, they became more vivid, and I began seeing these spiritual teachers that you mentioned. One

night I had a dream that I was sitting on a dirt floor in a small round hut playing this ancient stringed instrument, and the hut was filled with this beautiful golden light. But as I was playing this ancient instrument, I couldn't quite strike the right chord. It sounded pretty bad. And then I became aware of this older Chinese gentleman next to me, and I somehow knew he was my teacher. And he said, "Keep

practicing." And right after that I struck a note and it just reverberated beautifully throughout this hut, and I woke up. It's hard to describe the feeling. There's so much love coming from this teacher and from this dream, because it just felt almost more real than the reality right here with us right now. So I should say, I was an avid dreamer before this. I love to dream. I could remember my dreams. I didn't always like what I dreamed, but I had a lot of experience with my dreams.

But this dream was different than anything else I had ever had before I started practicing the HU. And when I woke up, I had just an incredible amount of love and joy. But I also had this understanding that . . . just keep practicing these spiritual exercises, like the HU, and I'll strike the right

chord, so to speak. So not long after that dream with this ancient mystery teacher, I showed up at a Southern California ECK Center, and when I walked in the center, I could see these drawings, these beautiful color portraits of what looked like spiritual teachers. And it was explained to me, "These are the ECK Masters. They work as coworkers with God." They all had different types of clothing, and they were from different areas of the world, and there was a female, which I really

appreciated. And then I noticed this one gentleman wearing a red hat. Older Chinese gentleman, long white beard, long red robe. I'm kind of looking at this guy, and somebody said, "That's Lai Tsi." I'm like, This is the guy from my dream! And then my mind suddenly remembered, this guy looks an awful lot like the healing master that I drew a year ago in that class. And this wave of love came in, because it was kind of unbelievable. So, first I'm having a dream

experience. Now who am I to have a dream experience with this Spiritual Master? And then was this person with me long even before I knew about ECKANKAR? I can't remember anything about that service. All I can remember is getting in my car, going home, and flipping like mad through my file cabinet to find this picture that I was praying I still had. And I found it. And it was that same person. He has kind of an unmistakable hat. Lai Tsi has his red robe and his beard and I couldn't believe it.

I realized that I had had the protection and the love of these ECK Masters long before I even knew about ECKANKAR.

Soul. That was big for me. I also began to understand that these experiences that I called failures that were just gutting me, that I allowed to get me, and instead of seeing them as huge failures, I began to see these life experiences, no matter how rough, as lessons, as spiritual lessons, and that took all of the weight out of them. And I felt like I could breathe again. And it just gave me the confidence and courage to get up and face life again and expect

the best. It's not like all of my troubles went away when I found ECKANKAR and the ECK Masters. They were there to show me that I was loved and inspire me. Their presence just helped me move forward.

kind of like, Huuu . . . Huuu . . . and then just going into contemplation quietly. So we did that for about ten minutes, and then all the sudden there was rustling going on over there, and I'm like, "What? What's going on?" She's like, "Oh, my God. I just saw somebody." I said, "What did that person look like?" She says, "This old Chinese guy with a little red hat and a white beard." And, whoa! I said, "Oh, I know who that is." I said, "It's Lai Tsi." She's like, "Yeah, yeah,

yeah, sure. I mean, who knows? I could have made it up or whatever." I said, "No, really. Let's go to the ECKANKAR Center." This was in Santa Monica. And so we drove down to the ECKANKAR Center there. It was up on the second floor of a small building. And we go into the ECKANKAR Center, and just like you described, on the wall there are these drawings of the ECK Masters. And she's looking around and I said, "Oh, yeah.

Right here. This one." And she goes up six inches away and looks at a picture of Lai Tsi. Her jaw dropped to the floor. And then all the sudden, her mouth closed. She had this expression on her face of "I don't know what's going on, but . . ." and she bolted out, down those stairs, out to the street. She's breathing. I say, "It's okay. It's okay. They're just here to help us learn the next step." And it was interesting, because it was also confirmation

for me, right? This was my early days of ECKANKAR and I'd had experiences and it was just doubly confirmation that the reality of these spiritual teachers -- it depends on your own experience, to find that validation. So it's just amazing to me that you have that story, and I got to witness someone going through what you had, in a sense.

hear from an ECK Master right now. He's the Mahanta, The Living ECK Master, Sri Harold Klemp.

love. And these ECK Masters are high in consciousness so that this love comes pouring through. And there is no way they can block this up. They must give and give and give. They become a self-fulfilling law of love. And wherever they go -- sometimes it's just listening to other people tell about their heartaches, tell about their smashed dreams -- but at other times it's to help people achieve goals as they are unconsciously striving to become

coworkers with God. The ECK Masters work in complete consciousness, in full consciousness of their relationship with God. Most people do not have this consciousness of their relationship with God. They have beliefs. But beliefs and awareness are not the same thing. People who belong to religions believe in the creeds of their religion, and the creeds may be right or wrong to any varying degree, but the ECK Masters know what their

relationship with God is. They are not God; you do not become one with God even though you are Soul, a Light of God. You become one with the Holy Spirit.

You mentioned the Fifteen Times Exercise earlier. How does that work?

wise, and free. I am healthy, happy, wise, and free." That's the beauty of these exercises. You can make them your own.

exercises. I can make whatever I want really.

segment. And we'll share just a simple spiritual exercise, because HU is often this spiritual ignition switch, this kind of spiritual spark plug that gets things going no matter what your background or faith or beliefs or non beliefs, atheist -- because it tunes us in to the Lifeforce that's part of everybody, this Golden Thread. So now you get to try this out on your own, a simple spiritual

exercise singing HU. And when we sing HU, just remember you're saying to whatever you view to be the higher power -- Divine Spirit, God, whichever spiritual guide you look to in your life -- it's basically saying, "I'm opening myself up to the highest love and wisdom you can offer. Give me the understanding and the wisdom to meet the waves of life and the problems, troubles, and whatever else. Give me the

strength to meet life. So that's basically what we're doing when we do a spiritual exercise of ECK. And the HU is a way of putting you back in line with this divine element that's part and parcel of who we are. So we'll sing HU. Huuuuuu So as you gently come back, you can jot notes down of what you felt or experienced. You might have seen a light; maybe it was a blue light. And that's a sign of the Mahanta's presence. And the blue light makes no distinctions between religions.

People are simply Soul, each one of us. So Heather, you've had some tremendous experiences and realizations. As you're on this spiritual journey, what's life like for you today?

with whatever comes. There is no limit in the way that the Holy Spirit speaks to us, and that's really one of the fun parts of this path is just to see how God's Love is everywhere, and it's a real Soul Adventure.

your spiritual unfoldment. We also have links to the book Those Wonderful ECK Masters by Harold Klemp. It's also an ebook. And there's just incredible stories and experiences in there that are sure to uplift. And we sang HU today. Heather, do you have a resource to share?