EDGAR CAYCE’S
TWELVE LESSONS
IN
PERSONAL SPIRITUALITY
EDGAR CAYCE’S
TWELVE LESSONS
IN
PERSONAL SPIRITUALITY
by Kevin J. Todeschi
Yazdan Publishing • Virginia Beach • Virginia
Copyright © 2010
by Kevin J. Todeschi
(Formerly titled Twelve Lessons in Personal Spirituality)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by:
Yazdan Publishing
P.O. Box 4604
Virginia Beach, VA 23454
ISBN-13: 978-0-9845672-1-8
Cover design by Richard Boyle
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993-2007
by the Edgar Cayce Foundation.
All rights reserved.
To Mary
for helping me to understand what’s at the core of personal transformation
Contents
The Importance of Meditation in Personal Transformation
THE LESSONS:
Author’s Note
The nature of our personal belief systems is appropriately described in the well-known story of the blind men and the elephant. Five blind men came upon an elephant in the jungle. One touched up against the creature’s side, another took hold of its tail, the third felt its trunk, another grabbed an ear, and the fifth leaned against its leg. Each of the blind men took it upon themselves to describe the true nature of the elephant to the others. The first said, “The truth of the elephant is that he is very much like a wall.” The second, who held the tail, said, “No, you are wrong, the elephant is like a rope.” The third felt the skin of the creature’s trunk and likened it to a snake. The fourth could not believe the erroneous perceptions of the other three and shook the elephant’s ear as he spoke, “Are you all fools? The elephant is like a giant leaf!” And the fifth cried out for each of the others to listen to him as he pounded the elephant’s leg for emphasis, “How can you be so wrong, for the truth of the elephant is he is much like a tree!?”
In varying degrees, each of us is like one of these five characters. Rather than standing back and becoming receptive to the possibility that there is much more to the elephant than we have currently come to grips with, we often become all the more focused on the reality of our individual perceptions. In an attempt to understand our truth, too often we put boundaries around what we believe in order to come to grips with it. Unfortunately, this approach blinds us to the insights and information that have become true for someone else—the very insights that might lead us even further along our own path and individual search for meaning.
Hopefully, a day will come in the not-too-distant future when each of us becomes a little more receptive to looking at the entire elephant.
Notes about the Edgar Cayce readings:
The Edgar Cayce readings are indexed by case number. For example, reading #262-3 refers to the third reading given in a series to case #262 (which was the original study group).
No attempt has been made to alter the language of the readings to be—what in common parlance is termed—“politically correct.” Therefore, when using such terminology as “the nature of man,” Cayce is not referring to gender; instead, the term would apply to all of humankind. In addition, the readings themselves appear to be rich with Christian terminology. However, Cayce often used terms and phrases that do not necessarily equate with their common usage. These differences are explained within the text. For example, “the Christ” can refer to Jesus, but it is also a pattern of consciousness which is the birthright of every soul—regardless of one’s religious denomination.
PREFACE
In September 1931 a group of ordinary people met with Edgar Cayce, an individual whom many consider to be one of the greatest mystics of all time. Although the meeting had been called in order for each of them to work more personally with Cayce’s psychic information, none of the group members could have possibly imagined the impact that meeting and their subsequent gatherings—nearly fifty meetings for the first twelve lessons—would have upon the rest of their lives, nor could the group have foreseen the effect of their work upon the lives of thousands of others even decades later.
Study Group #1, as they called themselves, worked for years to compile twelve essays in spirituality. Beginning with the lesson “Cooperation,” the essays were assembled in book form and published in 1942 as A Search for God, Book I. The group’s intent was to work with the material so it could be applied, understood, even “lived” in their daily lives. It was their hope that universal concepts might somehow be practically applied in such a manner as to bring a true awareness of the living Spirit into everyday life. In turn, they hoped that their relationships with those around them might somehow be positively affected through the process. The end result has been that these lessons in spirituality have been called one of the earliest and most effective tools for personal transformation introduced