Eckankar, Religion of the Light and Sound God, held a regional seminar, from December 16 to 18, 2011, at the Temple of ECK, Rumuigbo, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
The theme of the seminar was “The Call of Soul”, and the guest speaker was the Regional ECK Spiritual Aide, RESA, Eckankar Nigeria, Francis Omidiji.
The Seminar Planning Committee was headed by Chief Sotonye David Ali.
It featured workshops, roundtables, songs, drama, poetry and dances and had over six thousand attendees from all over Nigeria, including foreigners from Ghana, USA, Germany, Togo and other countries.
“This inner force that is used to find the answer is an urge you have no control over. It is the Call of Soul, “Francis Omidiji, the RESA for Nigeria, quoted from the book, ‘The Call of Soul’, written by the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master and Spiritual Leader of Eckankar, Religion of the Light and Sound, as he presented the theme of the seminar.
He said the Call of Soul brings your attention back to what is necessary without your control and must be headed.
The RESA said the Call of Soul emanated from “The Inner Master, from the Mahanta or the Way Shower. The Way shower is calling soul to pay attention to the assignment at hand. It is not our own making,” and described the December Regional Seminar in Port Harcourt as “our greatest seminar in Nigeria.”
He said the Temple of Eck is the House of Love and anyone entering it must have love in his heart.
“Whatever you think in life, you must believe it, because it will happen at a given date. You can call it the shape of the altar. As you shape it, so it will manifest. Our battle is the mind and you are the owner of the mind. The mind should not be our master. That means we should be able to control it. To postulate, to make something to be, you must have a feeling of joy and love to give it energy and to expect that at the end of the day, everything will be okay,” Omidiji, stated.
Quoting again from the book, “The Call of Soul,” he stated, “contemplation is a conversation with the most secret, most genuine and most mysterious part of yourself”, adding that the call of soul states that we must live the consequence of every act of ours and that “whatever you are doing, once in a while, you should be able to relax and listen to the call of soul”.
“Karma is a matter of vibration,” he went on to say, “and vibration can be adjusted, which means, if you believe you made a mistake, you can correct the mistake. What matters is to try as much as possible to be in harmony with people. Being in harmony means let God take over, and that is why you are reaching out to the call of soul, calling you to allow God to take over. When you allow God to take over, there will be no problem. You will take a particular action, Eck, Divine Spirit, the Inner Master, the Mahanta, will come and attend to you. You just discover that within you, there is something going on. What is expected of you is to pay attention to something that is going on. Simply spirit says you need to take action on so, so and so, and it is so subtle.”
He said life will be very smooth if you live it with the Inner Master and “the call of soul simply means the Inner Master, the spiritual Master calling your attention to take note of something,” and that “life will be very smooth and rosy if you work with the Inner Master”.
“Spiritual awareness is the objective of the call of soul for you to be spiritually conscious, to see certain things some cannot see,” Francis Omidiji concluded.
On Sunday, which was the last day of the December Regional Seminar, an Eck Worship Service was held with over 8,854 persons in attendance.
The theme of the service was “Soul Travel Journey to Heaven,” and it was presided over by the RESA in council, headed by Francis Omidiji.
Speaking during the Eck Worship Service, Francis Omodiji said Eck worship service, “is designed by the spiritual leader of Eckankar, Sri Harold Klemp, the Mahanta, the Living Eck Master, for the purpose of showing humanity the route to God and the new route to God is through the singing of that love song, the HU”.
He said “Soul Travel is not only a journey to Heaven. It could be a journey to many places. But the fact is soul doesn’t travel. What happens is a change of consciousness, a shift of attention.”
The Regional Eck Spiritual Aide, RESA, said “soul has the ability to shift attention. In Eckankar, Religion of the Light and Sound of God, we call this expansion of consciousness, that is, you expand yourself, not the physical you, but the spiritual you.
“There are many benefits of you trying to soul travel on daily basis. One, you know things not possible for the physical sense to pick. Soul may be in form of the tip of my finger, in form of light. You just see a small light. At the same time soul can expand to cover the whole map of Nigeria. That is one of the benefits of Eckankar, to be able to go into the inner to pick information that physical senses could not pick.
“Another benefit of soul Travel is to be able to make contact consciously with the Spiritual Helpers. The Eck Masters are spiritually helping us. A lot happens in over inner life, but most of them blocked by the spiritual Masters to avoid shock. Try to make use of the Spiritual Exercise of Eck to experience Soul Travel.”
Speaking after the RESA, Obi Udengwu, a member of the RESA in-council, stated, “The Spiritual world is like a book and those who don’t Soul Travel, read just a page. You can read the entire book if you Soul Travel. The grace of God does not descend on us in the human state of consciousness. We need to rise in consciousness to that point where we will appreciate the grace of God. With Soul Travel, you go beyond the limitations of the physical form.
“We are a smaller universe within the bigger universe and everything in the bigger universe is replicated in us. So we do not travel to anywhere. You only project your inner awareness to wherever you want to go. Wherever thought moves, there you are. You cannot imagine what does not exist. So whatever you can imagine exists and is possible. Creation is finished. Soul Travel is our natural endowment, gift and if you are not exercising it, then you are limiting yourself”. ###
Kenneth Amabipi
