The Essential Edgar Cayce (15 page)

CHAPTER THREE

HEALTHY LIVING

HEALTH IS A BROAD TOPIC; IT IS ABOUT FAR MORE THAN JUST a healthy body. Edgar Cayce’s holistic philosophy always emphasizes
total health
—the well-being of our bodies, minds, souls,
and
our relationships with others.

In this chapter, we explore the essential principles of integrated, healthy living; issues related to healing and specific treatment remedies will be addressed in chapter 4, “Holistic Healing.” Here, we start with the basics of a healthy lifestyle, and in that regard the first reading offers a succinct, powerful road map to balanced living, outlined in distinct steps, most of which are attitudinal in nature. By establishing the right mental orientation in life, we set the stage for healthy expression at every level of our experience.

Next, we examine how we stay physically fit. Cayce’s discourses on healthy living offer a wide range of suggestions, and, in fact, his contributions about
staying healthy
may be more significant ultimately than his unorthodox natural healing methods. While virtually all of us can benefit from solid advice about maintaining health, most of us may find Cayce’s readings about specific ailments interesting but irrelevant. The second reading, on fitness, originally for his son Hugh Lynn, is very relevant, and it contains wonderful advice for us all.

Finally, without addressing love relationships, we don’t get a full picture of Cayce’s essential principles for healthy living. A healthy body, mind, and soul make us better able to express love and creativity in our friendships, families, and work relationships. The third reading deals specifically with the elements that make for a healthy marriage. Although times have changed considerably in the decades since this discourse was given, the advice is valuable today.

A PATTERN FOR LIVING

A healthy life is not a random blessing but instead the result of living by certain universal principles. The first reading, 1747-5, given for a thirty-seven-year-old factory worker during World War II, beautifully describes a pattern for living that can help anyone meet the challenges of life. When there are disagreements, disappointments, or times of sickness, the real challenge is how we
respond.
If we meet these inevitable challenges in the right way, a healthy life is possible; otherwise, we fall into illness and
dis-ease
. The reading outlines the kind of response that fosters health and growth of the soul, and, ultimately, the resolutions of the problem.

Edgar Cayce’s opening statements set the tone. An individual’s beliefs and attitudes are the starting point for healthy living. It’s counterproductive to focus on any problem prematurely—that is, without an accurate understanding of the big picture. To attain such a solid spiritual foundation, some
sorting out
is required. You must be able and willing to predict where various assumptions and beliefs can lead. One has to “determine or choose within self that as may be adhered to,” as Cayce puts it here. One has to make decisions about core values and beliefs.

It’s easy to imagine Edgar Cayce giving any one of us this reading. His words suggest a way to get at the big picture, the spiritual context of our lives here on earth. Then he goes into more specific detail about the optimal way to meet any challenge. There are five essential elements to this approach:

Set ideals.
Very carefully select the values, priorities, and motives according to which you wish to chart your life’s path. Cayce suggests starting with a spiritual ideal—that is, a core value that becomes the prime motivator in your life; examples include
love, joyful creativity,
and
oneness with God
. Then, to make that ideal more accessible, set some mental and physical ideals—something you can sink your teeth into and work with in a concrete way. Mental ideals are the optimal
attitudes
and
emotions
that help you express your spiritual ideal—for example,
optimism
or
forgiveness
. Physical ideals are the
actions
that are the manifestation of your spiritual ideal—for example,
twenty minutes of meditation daily
or
remember to smile more often
. (For more about ideals, see the seventh point in “Cayce’s dozen” in the introduction.)

Apply what you believe.
Act on your own values. Even though a solid mental and spiritual foundation is the basis of the pattern, it’s not enough. If you stay in the mental realm exclusively, a given difficulty is not likely to be resolved. Admittedly, the mind is the creative faculty that instigates change, but unless you
do
what’s required of you how can anything be healed? As Edgar Cayce says here, “. . . for the holding of a problem does not change it one whit—it is what one does about it that makes the change!” Furthermore, the very definition of
sin
points to an absence of action. This elusive, controversial term gets a new twist with Cayce: Ultimately, our spiritual progress is evaluated simply on how well we act on what we know.

Patience is the key.
Patience is not only the keystone to Edgar Cayce’s metaphysical description of life, it’s also
the
essential characteristic that needs to be developed in all of us. In Cayce’s scheme of an orderly universe, humans live in a three-dimensional state of consciousness:
Time
and
space,
two of the dimensions, are complemented by
patience,
allowing us to effectively meet the demands, paradoxes, and limitations imposed by time and space.

The trick is understanding what patience as a dimension of living really means. We come to the word
patience
with our own preconceptions and misunderstandings, but as this reading cautions: “Patience, here, may be the answer—if there is the correct concept of what the proper interpretation of patience is.”

For Cayce, patience is considerably more than putting up with delays or tolerating obnoxious behavior. Instead, it is a matter of
seeing clearly,
recognizing the spiritual reality penetrating physical reality. Patience allows us to
understand the purposefulness
behind what’s going on in time and space. But when misguided people with materialistic views try to influence us, they keep us from this purposefulness—they create “the pit that separateth the soul from that patience.”

Accept responsibility to each other.
A healthy response for meeting any problem has a social dimension. The key here is responsibility
to
each other rather than
for
each other. Nobody can change anybody else; no soul can bear the blame for another soul’s error. However, each of us has a specific responsibility to others: To see in every person the qualities that we worship in our Maker. Unless we take on that effort, we have “not begun to have the proper concept of universal consciousness.”

What’s more, this social dimension has another feature. Because we serve as examples to those around us, people notice what we say and do, especially how we react to problems. The human tendency to imitate can be used to great advantage here because we have the power to inspire and lift others up by our example. “So live that thy friend, thy foe, thy neighbor, may also—through patterning his expressions after thee—find the way.”

Expect a responsive God.
Edgar Cayce reminds us of “the greater promise from the foundation of the world.” God hears our requests for help when times are difficult, and a response is speedily forthcoming—we should expect it and count on it.

Finally, Cayce’s advice to the factory worker reassured her of the benefits to be had by living in a healthy way. To live according to these five points, especially when life is troubling, awakens in us “that peace which each soul seeks, and brings with same healing.” Our modern world, decades after this reading was given, has its own stresses and turmoil, but the pattern for living—the road map—equips us to find the health we seek.

THE READING
✜

THIS PSYCHIC READING, 1747-5,
WAS GIVEN BY EDGAR CAYCE ON JUNE 20, 1942.
The conductor was Gertrude Cayce.

GC:
You will have before you the entity, [1747] . . . Ohio, who seeks a mental and spiritual reading, with information, advice and guidance that will clear the field for her regarding her stand on many things. You will give the entity that needed at this time, answering any questions that may be asked:

EC:
Yes, we have the body, the inquiring mind, [1747].

In giving for this entity a mental and spiritual interpretation of the problems as disturb the body in the present, many phases of those held as tenets or beliefs should be touched upon. But first we would give for the entity that which is the basis for this entity approaching the study of phenomena of every nature that has been and is a part of the experience in the present.

And from same there may be determined that which is not merely idealistic but that as may be a practical, ideal manner of application of the physical relationships with individuals of various degrees of development—of those mental attitudes which should be held in the study of the entity, in the interpreting for individuals of those problems and disturbances which arise in their experience.

Also there may be understood the spiritual and the ideal manner in which the entity may determine or choose within self that as may be adhered to, that as may be questioned, and that as may be discarded in the experience of the entity.

First—there is the consciousness to the body of there being a physical body, a mental body, and the hope or desire for and the knowledge of a spiritual body. These are one—just as the entity finds in the material plane, or the earth-consciousness, that it is of three-dimensional natures. Also, in the analysis of the various studies and approaches to the mental as well as spiritual understanding, the entity finds that there are three phases of man’s relationship or man’s comprehension. Hence in the earth there is, in reason, only the three-dimensional attitude. Yet there are the experiences of the entity, as well as of others, of more than three-dimensional concepts.

In the Godhead there is found still the three-dimensional concept—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Hence—if this is acceptable to the entity in its conception of that which has been, which is, which may be—these are still founded in that summed up in “The Lord thy God is One.”

Also, in the interpretation of the universe, we find that time and space are concepts of the mental mind, as to an interpretation of or a study into the relationships with man and to the universal or God-consciousness.

Then, there must be another phase in human experience that man also may complete this triune in his study of the mental, the spiritual and the material relationships in this material world.

Patience, here, may be the answer—if there is the correct concept of what the proper interpretation of patience is in the experience of this entity.

Hence these being chosen, they are—then—the basis upon which the reason, the expectation, the application, shall be in dealing with all phases of the experience of the entity in this material relationship.

As is understood, then—Father-God is as the body, or the whole. Mind is as the Christ, which is the way. The Holy Spirit is as the soul, or—in material interpretation—purposes, hopes, desires.

Then, each phase of these has its part to play, its part of influence upon the individual in its relationships to problems, to individuals, to its hopes and fears. For, each has its phase of expression in the activities of the entity.

Hence, as we find, these are then not merely ideals, but they are working, practical, everyday experiences.

Then, as the individual entity meets various problems—with this analysis of the problem—there is the questioning within self as to whether it is purely mental, purely the physical seeking expression, or the desire of the body-fears, the body-temptations, the body’s glory, merely the body’s satisfaction, or as to whether the problems are purely of the mental. The mind is the builder, for the holding of a problem does not change it one whit—it is what one does about it that makes the change!

Then, to know to do good and not to do it is sin. To know the truth and not give expression is faultfinding in self. Yet know, until an individual entity—in time or space, or in acquaintanceship or in the friendship of an individual—sees in every other entity that he would worship in his Maker, he has not begun to have the proper concept of universal consciousness.

For, the very fact of an individual having a physical consciousness, no matter his state or status in the material plane, is an indication of the awareness that God is mindful of that soul, by giving it an opportunity to express in the material plane.

And thou art thy brother’s keeper. Not that ye should impose or impel another entity by thine own ideas, any more than God impels thee. For, He hath given thee the free will, the birthright; which is as the mind, that makes for the alterations. Hence ye may give expression even as He did, who came into the earth that we through Him might have eternal life.

Then, what is thy attitude?

So live that thy friend, thy foe, thy neighbor, may also—through patterning his expressions after thee—find the way to that mercy which is manifested in Him, who gave “I stand at the door and knock—by thy biddings I will enter—by thy rejection I will leave—I hold no grudge.”

This requires that expression then, in time and space, of that patience of which He spoke, “In patience become ye aware of your souls.”

This, then, is the attitude that ye shall assume. Give that as is asked of thee in the interpreting of the problems; no more, no less. But ever be ready, as He, to enter, to help, to give when asked, when sought. For, as He hath given, which is the greater promise from the foundation of the world, “If ye call, I will hear, and answer speedily—though ye be far away, I will hear—I will answer.”