Sharon Kunin, wife of Sri Doug Kunin, the new Living Master, is a senior ECK cleric and spiritual educator with Eckankar. For over 40 years, she has worked at the organization headquarters, and currently serves as their spiritual program administrator.
Sharon has travelled globally as secretary of Sri Harold Klemp, the erstwhile Mahanta, as he helped people discover their own connection with the Divine Spirit at conferences.
Excerpts from the interview with Sharon Kunin:
Parveen Chopra: What has been your personal experience with Eckankar?
Sharon Kunin: Before finding ECK, I was a Hound of Heaven. I would think, what is the point of being here if I can’t find out why I’m here? What is my purpose? I then would say to myself, ‘I’ll just have to wait until my kids are grown and after that head out to the Himalayas to find a holy man’. But when I discovered the teachings of ECK, I recognized immediately, this is my home. This path says so much of what I already felt to be true.
Parveen: How did you and Sri Doug meet?
Sharon: We both worked for the organization on projects together. Then in 1998, life brought us to a point where a deep and loving partnership of the heart developed and we married.
Parveen Chopra: With Sri Doug as Living Master now, how is your role going to develop?
Sharon: I support with all my heart and being wherever this road takes us, because there is always one more step to go. And that’s part of the livingness and growth of the Path of ECK. We are always placed into positions in life for our education.
An intriguing founding principle of this path is that the Creator begat Souls to know Itself better. How does each unique atom of God, invested with divine creativity, the God spark within them, how do they learn to love as God loves in the world of duality.
Everybody will do it in a different way. Each Soul is destined to be a specialized instrument of divine love. Therefore, all the worlds expand. There is never an ending to this. The Mahanta and the ECK Masters are all continuing to take further steps in their service.
My role is to support. There’s much to learn and a lot of work involved. And it’s all good, because it’s all God.
Parveen: Is there a policy that a woman cannot be a Mahanta?
Sharon: I love this question. First, it’s important to say that women become ECK Masters. This has always been true.
Yet, it’s also true that only a male serves as Living ECK Master.
The Soul is neither male nor female. But a Soul chooses a male or a female body before it incarnates and if its destiny is to be the spiritual leader of Eckankar, then it takes on a male body.
We already can easily accept that if a Soul’s desire or destiny is to have the experience of giving birth, it requires a female body. Likewise, the atomic structure of the male is necessary to carry the mantle of the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master. A satisfactory scientific explanation for this is not available currently.
Parveen: You were born a Christian; how have you reconciled that with the Eckankar teaching?
Sharon Kunin: My father was a Presbyterian minister. Christianity left me with a lot of unanswered questions. I was a seeker as a child. I had a strong relationship with God, and knew that God’s love was not as limited as these teachings presented. I knew there wasn’t such a thing as God overlooking whole segments of the population for taking people into Its heart.
As a child, I already knew that there was more to life and more to God’s love in the world. I craved to have the presence of God in every single moment of life and that Presence should be available to everyone.
As for reconciliation, in Eckankar, we believe every path and religion has value. If it takes people closer to God in the way that meets their spiritual needs, that’s what they should be doing.
We would break a spiritual law if we were to try to convert people. If people are comfortable in their religion for whatever reason, even if it’s just culturally to make their family happy, of course they can continue to go to their own kind of service or programs.
We do have people who are studying the ECK works and studying their dreams and having spiritual experiences outside the realm of their current religion, but they’re perfectly happy participating in both.
Parveen: How do you view the surge of evangelicalism and Christian nationalism in America lately?
Sharon Kunin: The Temple of ECK in Minnesota is for everyone who loves God, and we honor being with other people who love God their own way. We don’t see a problem as long as they respect the spiritual freedom that we have to think differently, and so we make our peace.
Spiritual life is the source of everything I do: Rodney Jones
In his professional life, Rodney Jones is an acclaimed jazz musician. In his spiritual life, he serves as a cleric and spiritual teacher with Eckankar and a frequent guest speaker at their events globally.
Ashish Virmani: How has your spiritual practice served as a springboard for your professional accomplishments?
Rodney Jones: My spiritual practice is Contemplation. I go within and sing the HU, an ancient name for God that is also a love song to God. I open myself to experience what spirit would like to show me. I am refined, as Soul, by this practice. For me, the spiritual life is not something I do on the side. It is the source.
When I make conscious contact with the Inner Light and Sound, something wakes up inside me. A love I did not manufacture. A wisdom I did not study for. A creativity that feels like it comes through me, not from me. The more that love flows in, the more it naturally wants to flow out. It shows up in how I treat people. How I teach. How I listen. How I try, in the middle of an ordinary day, to be love.
That same current lives inside my music.
Ashish: What brought you to Eckankar? And what has been the learning?
Rodney: As a Christian minister’s son, I was around spiritual ideas early. But even as a kid I wanted the “why” of life. I wanted to know what is real, not just what is said.
When I was 12, I came across a book, Eckankar: The Key to Secret Worlds by Paul Twitchell, Eckankar founder. It lit up my imagination, it offered spiritual exercises. A way to test the Truth for myself. I tried what the book suggested, and had inner experiences. I saw an inner light. I heard an inner sound. Something shifted. It was not emotional hype. It was a real change in awareness. And even at that young age, I knew I had touched something sacred.
Spiritual parenting to strengthen children’s inner guidance: Crary Brouhard
Crary Brouhard is a seasoned member of the ECK clergy and a key member of Eckankar’s Youth and Family Services team.
Ashish Virmani: How does Eckankar support the spiritual growth of youth and families?
Crary Brouhard: The teachings of Eckankar have an inner and outer component. All the outer resources point the individual inward, to the truth in their heart.
Resources available to support youth and families include:
- Spiritual discourses and books for parents and children to read together.
- Youth Satsang classes where kids explore ECK principles with their peers and share their spiritual experiences.
- The AdventuresInEckParenting.org website with a vast collection of online resources for parents.
- Youth Events at Eckankar Soul Adventure Seminars, like the one held recently in India.
Ashish: Please share some experience of parenting with spiritual awareness?
Crary: Sure. My daughter and I were on our family vacation when she asked me to buy her a blanket. At first, I told her no. She said, “Mom I really feel like we need the blanket so we can have a proper picnic at the national park tomorrow.” Then she pulled out a blanket and said “Look, this one is perfect.” That is when I got an inner nudge—buy the blanket. It will be worth the $10. My daughter was thrilled!
At the park, we had our proper picnic on the blanket. Hours later we were driving around when our car got stuck on a sandy road. My husband tried to drive but the front wheels of the car dug deeper and deeper into the sand. We were stuck in the middle of a desert with no cellphone network.
Getting nervous, I got in the car and sang HU a few times and inwardly asked for help. I saw myself as a new driver; when stuck in snow, I was taught to turn the wheel and put something behind the tire, and reverse out. How different can sand be from snow? But what would I put under the wheel? Then I remembered the blanket! I placed it under the wheel of the car. My husband and son pushed the front end of the car as I gently pressed the gas pedal to reverse out of the holes. Soon, we were able to drive away.
This was a simple yet profound spiritual experience for me. When such an experience happens in my life, I share it with my children to underline the spiritual principle so they can understand it. In this particular incidence, my daughter and I both listened to our inner guidance to buy the blanket for what we thought was a picnic, but really it saved us from spending hours stuck in the desert. This experience showed my children every answer to every problem already exists within us, if we can center ourselves to discover it.
Singing HU helped me calm down enough to discover the solution to our problem.
For more information, go to https://www.eckankar.org/
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