things—how to identify the concrete objects in the world around him.
How Do I Get God’s Love?
Over time, children pick up the finer subtleties of getting along with others. If they have the good fortune of loving parents, they soon realize that as one gets love, he must also give it. Love is like water in that only so much of it fits into a glass.
Before more can go in, some must be let out. So, if one doesn’t keep giving out love,
“mo” can’t come in.
People often wonder, How do I get God’s love? You get more of it by giving of your own to others.
Spiritual School
All in all, earth is a spiritual school.
Designed and set up by God, it lets each of us, each Soul in this world, learn more about becoming godlike—becoming more like God.
The whole purpose of you, me, and every-one else is to become more godlike. It is our 11
mission, or purpose, here. It’s the key to happiness.
People may believe they’re here to mark time until the trumpets blow on the last day. At that point, having pursued a frivo-lous life, they expect the Lord to catch them up to some better world, to let them em-bark upon a useless and self-centered existence there too.
No. The true purpose of life here, there, or anywhere is to become a Co-worker with God.
Our past lives have brought experiences to polish us in a spiritual way. Like it or not, you are now the best and highest spiritual being you have ever been in any lifetime. Take a look at yourself. Like what you see? Fine. But if you don’t like the face star-ing back at you in the mirror, keep in mind that this reflection is of your own creation.
You are today the sum of all your thoughts, feelings, and actions in past lives.
I once said that sincere people who attend an ECK event—like an introductory talk on the Eckankar teachings—come because of some dissatisfaction with their 12
belief or religion. Otherwise, why would they be there?
Yet they may be aware only in part of the pressing nature of their search. But Soul, the True Self, has heard and is yearn-ing to go home.
It’s simply a matter of time before a seeker’s search begins in earnest—perhaps a week, a month, a year, fifty years, the next lifetime, or later—it matters not. Yet this may be the lifetime that a seeker ad-mits, “I sense having lived many times in the past. I may be the best I’ve ever been, but I want more. Much more.”
“I Want to Go Home”
A child we’ll call Debra, for the sake of privacy, was born with a valve defect in her stomach. Doctors were at a loss whether she would outgrow the condition. All dur-ing Debra’s childhood, her parents had introduced her to strangers: “Our daughter was born with a stomach defect. She doesn’t keep food down very well.”
Negative comments like that added an extra burden to this poor child’s youth.
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One day the problem reached a crisis.
Debra’s parents found her turning blue and rushed her to a hospital. By luck and divine grace, she pulled through. The doc-tors who treated her predicted that the stomach valve, which they fixed, would cause no future problems.
Now, Debra’s older sister took a fiend-ish delight in making fun of her. Soon after Debra returned from the hospital, her sister picked a fight. Family rules kept the older girl from giving the younger one a physical beating, yet verbal abuse and name-calling did the job. They left no visible scars. On that particular day the younger girl simply got tired of the hazing and turned on her sister. She beat up her tormentor. Outraged, the elder ran and told their father. The wisdom of Solomon he had not, so he sent Debra to her room.
Debra was recovering from a serious condition, her sister had started the fight, but she’s the one banished to her room. She lay weeping on the bed, crushed by the in-justice of it.
“I want to go home,” she cried. “I just 14
want to go home.” In a spiritual sense her heart was saying, “I want to go home to God because of
Jennifer McCartney, Lisa Maggiore