c) Try new ways of preparing familiar foods. Once you enjoy the taste of steamed veggies, you cannot go back to the old way of boiling them to death, as my Southern mother was so adept at doing. (Sorry, Ma. You know I love you, but you frequently killed the corn and green beans. I didn’t know this until the first time I actually tasted vegetables in their steamed preparation. “Wow! They are so crunchy. Is this what they really taste like?”)
d) Eat foods that fit your metabolic needs. This is really not a chore as much as a journey of exploration and education. Some people thrive on good quality protein and fat, and others need complex carbohydrates. Others need a balanced combination of the two. One of the most difficult changes for most people to make is their eating habits. Eating sensibly does not mean suffering. There are those fast-food addicts who insinuate that I must be some kind of culinary masochist, getting by on raw leaves and sprouts, and someone who expects you to do the same. Yes, Virginia, you can eat good foods in agreeable combinations and enjoy your meals.
e) Try creative food combining. After repeated practice, you will notice a significant difference in how you feel after a meal. Excellence in your dietary choices should make you feel somewhat energized and revitalized by a meal, not heavy and lethargic. This means sensible combinations of foods as well as the right nutrients for you.
Emotions also play a crucial role in health, facilitating hyperacidity in the body or creating stress reduction and homeostasis. Pathogens seem to love most hyper-acidic environments, and chronic stress is a prime culprit of acidosis. How you eat is just as important as what you eat. Perhaps you have a father who used to chastise you and your sister at the dinner table with “We will have none of that negative talk during dinner!” It turns out that dad was right; it is very harmful to the process of digestion to be hostile or anxious during eating. Slow down, take your time, and get your mind and body doing the same thing—receiving nutrition. Distressing conversations, either from a person, a TV, or a radio have no place during a meal. Your entire gastrointestinal tract will thank you for adhering to that “old-fashioned” common-sense principle.
The connection between the mind and the body is crucial in our exploration in understanding foods and health. To paraphrase what Edgar Cayce once said in a reading, “What you think plus what you eat make who you are.” So not only are you the result of your food choices, but you are equally your thought choices, as well. What do you feed your mind daily? Just as poor nutrition eventually leads to poor physical health, destructive mental habits lead to mental afflictions of one or another variety. These too can be transformed by starting productive habits. It is never too late.
The central point is not to become fanatical about foods but rather to be able to take a healthy, balanced approach to everyday living. Remember that health and wholeness mean the same thing.
It is vital to maintain optimal health through a sensible diet when you are recovering from illness or surgery, or if your immune system has been weakened for any reason. Understanding this also makes you a valuable source of knowledge if you ever serve in the role of caregiver to someone ailing. In this context, food acts as medicine.
As the sages of old knew, “It is much better to prevent an illness than to try to cure one.” Bolstering your immunity through a good diet, regular exercise, connection to Spirit, and through managing stress is one of the most valuable gifts you can give to yourself and one of the oldest bits of philosophical wisdom still applicable today, just as it was in the era of the Chinese Yellow Emperor in the middle of the third millennium B.C.E. But as it often goes, knowing is one thing, but doing it is quite another. We have disease to lose and wholeness to gain. It is not a matter of how long you will live but rather how you live long.
The Holistic Legacy of Edgar Cayce
WHAT IMPRESSES THE GENERAL PUBLIC ABOUT MR. CAYCE’S LEGACY is how a man uneducated in medical science, who did not attend school past the eighth grade, could give a psychic reading diagnosing someone’s health problem, often to a degree of accuracy that physicians of the day could not exceed. For people who actually followed through completely in applying the health advice, the cure rate was well above the statistical average.
Add to the health readings the litany of other topics covered by Mr. Cayce’s work in the over fourteen thousand documented readings he gave for more than five thousand people—covering some forty years—and the scope of his gift to the world expands exponentially. Sixty years after Mr. Cayce’s passing to spirit and we are still barely grasping the full implications of how we, as spirits in a physical world, can access a higher wisdom and implement that knowledge as pragmatically as the Cayce Source prompted.
It was his own self-healing that started his mission as the father of modern holism, along with seeking to heal his own son Hugh Lynn and his wife Gertrude. It was his ability to obtain healing information for diverse human conditions in such an extraordinary manner that impresses many. It is human nature that many perceive his legacy in a way that overrides the notion that Mr. Cayce’s most impressive feat was his commitment to service.
It is easy to forget the tremendous personal price Mr. Cayce paid from the very beginning, after discovering his gift, and too easy to dismiss the continual strife that he and his family endured because of his commitment to helping others in need and being the best servant. Even the price he paid physically, giving an excessive number of readings during his ailing health because there were people in need, was a kind of self-sacrifice emulative of the Master’s way.
Mr. Cayce was not a saint, at least not in the conventional sense, and his readings are not infallible, but perfection is not of this earth. We could take any profound document, from the U.S. Constitution to the Ramayana, and any person from Jesus to Gandhi, and find flaws if we look with a cynical eye. But if we, in the ethos of Zen Buddhism, accept the “perfect imperfection” of all teachings and teachers, we can begin to truly appreciate the legacy of Mr. Cayce’s work.
What is most amusing to study in retrospect is how the Cayce Source, as it is commonly called, repetitively rebuked Cayce for not heeding the Source’s advice for himself: for not spiritualizing his consciousness enough. After all, we suffer from the same predicament. May our desire to serve each other and do God’s will be as determined as Mr. Cayce’s was. It was his earnest wish to be of service to humanity with no thought of personal aggrandizement that was his most impressive feat.
What exactly did Mr. Cayce do to access the information called the Source? And what was it he accessed? To address this, we can only put pieces of the puzzle together to create a kind of philosophical Rorschach.
There seemed to be two events happening at any given reading. First, Edgar Cayce the man would lapse into a type of simulated coma, leaving his physical body, directing his consciousness towards his higher self. Once outside of time and space, other spiritual assistants such as a “keeper of the [akashic] records” would guide his higher self. The Akashic Records are an ancient Vedic era idea suggesting that all thoughts and events here on this earth are recorded upon a very fine substance called akasha, and these records can be accessed by those who know how to focus their mind and direct their spirit. Mr. Cayce accessed this huge library of events for multiple topics found in the readings. We can call this the introspective aspect.
Second, the readings were influenced by who was in the room at the time of the reading, including the person for whom the reading was given, the stenographer, and any friends and supporters. As Mr. Cayce left his body to get information for the client, he would also access the collective consciousness created by all attendees. It was akin to linking multiple databases together to have a better chance of getting clearer information about any given topic. If someone had knowledge of an aspect of the information needed for the reading, this psychic pool would be contacted to facilitate the desired goal of the request.