Inner Guidance by Anne Archer Butcher Read Free Book Online

give to the last two classes. I told him the yearbook group would be coming to use the room at the end of the school day, but that another teacher would be monitoring them. I avoided looking him in the eye and kept our conversation to a minimum.
    He asked no more questions, and I left.
    W hen I arrived at school the next day, I was anxious, concerned about Mr. Adams. Some of my students greeted me just inside the doors of the school, so I asked about the substitute and what had happened in my classes after I left.
    “Did he follow the lesson plans I gave him and provide everyone with the handouts?” I asked as casually as possible.
    “No, he didn’t do any of that,” one student answered.
    “Then what did he do?”
    With a big smile, this student tried to explain what had happened. “He asked us all about you and the quotes on the board and wanted to read our journals.”
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    Inner Guidance: Our Divine Birthright
    “What!” The students were generally very private with their journals. I could hardly believe they would offer them up to this complete stranger. “Did you actually let him read your journals?”
    “Yes, and he loved it.”
    I moaned. “What makes you think that?” I asked with a heavy heart, ever mindful of the conservative community in which we lived.
    “He said he had heard about things like this before, but he had never seen it himself. After school he left, but then he came back while the yearbook class was meeting and brought you a present.”
    “A present?” I asked suspiciously. “What kind of present?”
    Another student volunteered. “We don’t know what it is. He had wrapped it up, and he put a letter on top and sealed it.”
    By now we had arrived at my classroom, and there on my desk lay the gift from Mr. Adams. With the exu-berant encouragement of the students, I opened the letter first.
    In it, he explained that there are unseenspiritual masters who work with people inwardly for years before they ever reveal themselves outwardly. He said that he had read about this kind of thing but had never fully comprehended it until he visited my classroom. These masters guide, protect, and instruct us for our spiritual evolution. He said he was delighted to see the quotes around the room and told me that he thought I would be pleased with the underlined passages in the book he was giving me.
    I ripped open the package next and turned the book faceup so I could read the title. It was ECKANKAR—
    The Key to Secret Worlds .
    “Eckankar? I have never heard of this,” I said quietly.
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    A Dramatic Welcome to a Life-Changing
    Teaching: Inner Guidance Answers the Call of Soul 37
    “I have never heard this word before at all. Does anyone know this word, Eckankar ?”
    Puzzled students shook their heads. No one had heard of this word. There was hushed anticipation all around as I opened the book to the pages that Mr. Adams had marked for me. I read the boldly underlined passages on certain pages. Then I looked around my room, on the walls and on the chalkboards. There they were, almost word for word—quote after quote. And yesterday I had duplicated one of these very same passages on the board, right in front of the substitute teacher.
    An inner voice of reason came from one of the students. “Let’s read it! Maybe the answers are in the book.
    Shall we read it?” she asked cheerfully.
    We all agreed, and read it we did. I stopped writing on the board and started reading aloud from this book at the end of every class. We read after class and before class. We read the chapters over and over again.
    In conducting our spiritual research, we had collected a large number of mystical and metaphysical books which now lined shelves in the classroom. Yetwe all agreed that nothing even came close to this new book.
    Each riveting chapter brought wisdom, insights, and ideas that we had only begun to