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ALTON - River Bend Yoga will host two upcoming workshops titled “Animals are Carriers of Divine Love.”
From 1–2 p.m. on Oct. 3 and Nov. 7, 2024, community members are invited to River Bend Yoga to learn more about how animals have souls and demonstrate unconditional love. Flora and Sheila will encourage attendees to share their experiences with animals, and they will talk about how these relationships are viewed in Eckankar, a new religious movement that promotes connection between souls.
“Animals are unconditional love,” Flora said. “That doesn’t happen in many parts of the world unless you have this open love for someone and love them totally without asking any questions. I would say 99.9% of the time, animals are totally unconditional love to their people.”
The conversations encourage people to share stories about times when animals have demonstrated “divine love and kinship.” At previous workshops, people have talked about experiences where animals brought them a spiritual message or helped them through a difficult time.
Flora told the story of one woman who was consistently visited by a cricket. Flora advised her to look into the spiritual meaning of crickets, and this insight deeply resonated with her. Another attendee shared that she was once awoken by her dog in the middle of the night, only to discover that her mother’s oxygen machine had stopped working. The dog’s timing likely saved her mother’s life.
ECKists believe that all living things have “soul.” This means animals can connect with humans, and humans can learn from animals. Sheila noted that the relationships between animals and humans are “really reciprocal.”
“All animals, anything that comes into your sphere of awareness, is there for your spiritual good,” Flora said. “Everybody, every being, is a soul. And that’s the gist of it, getting to that unconditional part. You are soul. I am soul. My dog is soul. Your dog is soul. We’re all souls in this world to learn about that unconditional love we talked about, giving and receiving it. So we talk about how that’s done through healing.”
The workshops on Oct. 3 and Nov. 7 will encourage people to think about how they relate to and learn from animals. Sheila and Flora will also talk about reincarnation and ECKist leader Harold Klemp’s book “Animals are Soul Too!,” which shares more about how animals and humans can connect with each other.
Attendees will also sing the HU song, an ECKist practice meant to help connect people with God. Flora and Sheila said that the HU song brings them both peace in tumultuous moments, and they look forward to sharing that experience with other people.
“The important part is tapping into that instead of just being frantic,” Sheila added. “It’s, okay, I’m going to hit my spiritual reset button, whether it’s prayer or meditation or contemplation. For us, it’s the HU. It’s a reset button.”
For more information about ECKist beliefs on animals, Flora and Sheila encourage people to visit www.AnimalsAreSoul.blog. The “Animals Are Carriers of Divine Love” conversations are planned for 1–2 p.m. on Oct. 3 and Nov. 7, 2024, at River Bend Yoga.
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