Take a vacation? Nah. Soul travel's where it's at.

Today we went to the local Eckankar chapter. It's totally new age, man.

Anyway, so after a brief search in Corvallis's only mini-mall, we found that our destination was located above the Starbucks. We walked into a very small white room with 10 folding chairs set up in a circle. There was one older woman, one middle aged woman, and two couples, one of which had three kids, present at the service. It may have been a smaller crowd because of the time change, but we were told that the crowd varies greatly.

The room was decorated with pictures of spiritual leaders, including the current spiritual leader, Sri Harold Klemp. What a dreamboat! It's like he was taken right out of 1981, perhaps via soul travel. We were welcomed by everyone, and the couple without any children lead the service. We started the service by reading a very short passage from a book entitled "Animals are Soul Too." This passage was about gifts from God, which included termites because of how they enabled an asthmatic woman to realize that there was mildew in her AC, leading to her breathing problems. Next we sang the Hu song. Pronounce it hue, as in tint, and sing one long one at any given pitch until you run out of breath. Then you do it again. And again. Apparently, it is recommended to do this every day for 20 minutes, although we only did it for 1 minute. This was my favorite part of the service, as we were told to concentrate on our third eye, between our eyebrows, and meditate on the word. I could dig it.

After that, the kids went off into kid group where they learned a song. We were left with all 5 other adults to discuss gifts from God. The middle aged woman started off her story by telling us about how she was clairvoyant as a child and how now she uses her gift and works in hospice helping the sick and dying. It was during this discussion that we learned about the importance of soul travel to tell us about past lives, and to guide us through life. Kinda weird. Kinda new-agey. And I'm really curious.

We ended the service by singing the song that all of the kids learned. I got to play the tambourine. Perhaps this is telling of how anachronistic the religion is, but they had a ton of tapes we could take out from their library. I took out a book so that I can learn more about soul travel and go to their group discussion next month, but I'll have to find and then dust off my tape deck before I check out a tape.