With this in mind, anyone can have a period of meditation by following a few simple steps. First, get into a comfortable position. It’s probably best to sit in a chair, keeping your spine straight, your feet flat on the floor, and your eyes closed. Find a comfortable place for your hands, either in your lap or at your sides. In order to help with a balanced flow of energy throughout the physical body, the readings suggested keeping your palms down against your legs or closed against your stomach. Slowly take a few deep breaths and begin to relax. Breathe the air deep into your lungs, hold it for a moment, and then slowly breathe it out. With your mind, search your body for any obvious tension or tight muscles. You can try to relieve the tension by deep breathing, imagining the area is relaxed, or by gently massaging any tightness with your fingertips. When you have become comfortable and more at ease than when you first sat down, you are ready to move on. If you wish, the Cayce readings recommended a breathing exercise to assist in even greater levels of relaxation and attunement. Very simply, it is as follows:
First, breathe in slowly through the right nostril (covering the left nostril with your hand and keeping the mouth closed), then pinch your nostrils and breathe out through the mouth. Repeat this for a total of three times. Second, with your mouth closed, slowly breathe in through the left nostril (covering the right), then cover the left and breathe out through the right. Repeat this, as well, for a total of three times.
When your breathing exercise is complete, begin to focus your mind on one, single, peaceful, calming thought. Instead of thinking about what went on at work or what has to be accomplished with the remainder of your day, try focusing on a single thought such as “I am peaceful” or “I will be still and feel relaxed.” You can also use a Bible verse (such as the Twenty-third Psalm or the Lord’s Prayer) or a thought with a spiritual focus such as “God is Love.” These thoughts are also called affirmations.
The first “stage” of actual meditation involves thinking about the message of your affirmation. In one of the examples cited above, you would think about the words I am peaceful. After a few moments of thinking the words, you should be able to move onto the second stage of meditation, which is feeling the meaning behind those words. For example, you could continue saying the words “I am peaceful”; however, the feeling behind these words can be much more meaningful than the actual words themselves.
In this second stage, try holding the feeling in silent attention, without needing the words of the affirmation. Gently bring your focus back to the words of the affirmation every time your mind begins to wander. That is to say, first begin thinking of the words of the affirmation, and then try to concentrate on the feeling behind them. Don’t let yourself become discouraged when you find yourself thinking more about distractions than you are focusing upon the affirmation. It will take time to teach yourself to be able to think about only one thought. Spend anywhere from three minutes to fifteen minutes trying to hold the affirmation silently. These longer meditation periods will become natural after you’ve had some experience.
To end your meditation, consciously send out good thoughts or prayers to other people or situations in your life. It is at this point that you may wish to open your palms to enable the energy of meditation to flow through them. If you have been focusing upon peace, then try to send a sense of that peace to someone about whom you’re concerned. As you begin to practice meditation daily it will become easier, and you might also notice that the sense of peace inside of you during meditation will begin to carry over into a greater portion of your day.
Sometimes certain physical sensations may occur in meditation: energy rising up the spine, gentle movements of the head and neck in a circular or side-to-side motion, etc. These sensations are simply a result of the movement of energy (often called the “kundalini” or even “spiritual energy”) rising through the endocrine centers of your body: gonads, leydig, adrenals, thymus, thyroid, pineal, and pituitary.
Through the regular practice of meditation you can begin to heal yourself on many levels. As you focus upon a positive affirmation you may find that your negative habit-patterns will begin to change to be more in keeping with your positive affirmation. It is while practicing the silence of meditation, by relaxing your physical body and by quieting your conscious mind, that you can set aside your daily concerns for a moment and attempt to attune yourself to the spiritual side of who you really are. In fact, meditation is simply attuning the mind and the body to its spiritual source:
Meditation is emptying self of all that hinders the creative forces from rising along the natural channels of the physical man to be disseminated through those centers and sources that create the activities of the physical, the mental, the spiritual man; properly done must make one stronger mentally, physically, for has it not been given? He went in the strength of that meat received for many days? Was it not given by Him who has shown us the Way, “I have had meat that ye know not of”? As we give out, so does the whole of man—physically and mentally become depleted, yet in entering into the silence, entering into the silence in meditation, with a clean hand, a clean body, a clean mind, we may receive that strength and power that fits each individual, each soul, for a greater activity in this material world. 281-13
As we take the time, each day, to put away from our thoughts the countless cares we seem bombarded with, we can begin to reestablish an awareness of our own spiritual nature. In one respect, prayer is talking to God, but meditation can be like listening to that portion of our being which is in constant communication with the Divine.
The most important relationship we all share is the one we have with God. In exploring that relationship, we come to know ourselves as well as our connectedness with one another. One of the most beneficial ways we can come to know that relationship is through the regular practice of meditation.
Note: At the beginning of each of the following twelve lessons you will find a MEDITATION AFFIRMATION designed to help you get the most out of the material. It is recommended that you memorize each affirmation and use it in your periods of meditation as you explore that lesson.
LESSON ONE
COOPERATION
Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. I Corinthians 12:4-6
MEDITATION AFFIRMATION
Not my will but Thine, O Lord, be done in me and through me. Let me ever be a channel of blessings, today, now, to those that I contact, in every way. Let my going in, my coming out be in accord with that Thou would have me do, and as the call comes, “Here am I, send me, use me.” 262-3
COOPERATION
Introduction
The first lesson—as has been given—learn what it means to cooperate in one mind, in God’s way; for, as each would prepare themselves, in meditating day and night, in “What wilt thou have me do, O Lord?” and the answer will be definite, clear, to each . . . will they seek in His name . . . 262-1
When individuals become interested in devoting more time and energy to personal spirituality, they may think about meditation, or prayer, or becoming more involved in their faith or a specific religion. Certainly, each of these activities can be extremely important in helping to bring an awareness of the Living Spirit into our lives. What may be surprising about the Edgar Cayce readings’ approach to personal transformation is the fact that it suggests one of the first steps to really understanding our heritage as spiritual beings is through a lesson entitled “Cooperation.”
Certainly, all of us think we know what the word cooperation means, and therefore too readily we may believe that there is nothing more to learn in this regard. It seems pretty apparent that we either know how to cooperate with another person or we don’t. However, from Cayce’s perspective, cooperation is not simply trying to work with another individual; rather, it is a state of being that sets aside