The first stage of meditation involves thinking about the message of your affirmation. With one of the examples cited above, you would think about the words “I am at peace.” 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 at peace,” but the feeling behind these words can be much more meaningful than the actual words themselves. An analogy can reveal how a feeling is more all encompassing than a thought. Consider saying the words “I love my child” versus the feeling behind those words. From Cayce’s perspective, whenever individuals are able to hold the feeling of the affirmation throughout their entire being, they are truly meditating and building the focus of the affirmation within themselves.
During this second stage of meditation, the individual should try to hold the feeling of the affirmation in silent attention without needing to repeat the words. Whenever the mind begins to wander, simply bring your focus back to the words of the affirmation. Once again you would begin by thinking the words of the affirmation and then by trying to concentrate on the feeling behind those words. Individuals shouldn’t become discouraged if they find themselves thinking more about distractions than they are focusing upon the affirmation—it takes practice. To begin with, an individual might want to spend anywhere from three minutes to fifteen minutes trying to hold the affirmation silently. Longer meditation periods will become possible with practice and experience.
With regard to closing a meditation period, the readings emphasized the importance of consciously sending out prayers and good thoughts to other people and situations in life. At this point an individual may wish to open the palms to enable the energy of meditation to flow through them. Since we do not always know what may be best for an individual’s personal growth and development, it is best to simply pray that the individual be surrounded by light, love, and God’s will–presence and protection rather than praying for something specific. As we begin to practice meditation daily, it will become easier. We might also discover that whatever feeling we have been focusing upon in meditation will actually begin to carry over into greater portions of the 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 and attempt to attune yourself to your spiritual source.
Perhaps more than anything else, meditation, prayer, and the use of spiritual affirmations are tools for attunement, and personal attunement is at the core of understanding our true spiritual essence. In Cayce’s worldview, the end result of soul development is that all individuals will eventually realize their true spiritual self and their connection to the whole. Actually, the readings told a thirty-six-year-old lawyer that this realization was the ultimate cause of each individual’s creation in the first place:
Reading 826–11
What then is the purpose of the entity’s activity in the consciousness of mind, matter, spirit in the present?
That it, the entity, may know itself to be itself and part of the Whole; not the Whole but one with the Whole; and thus retaining its individuality, knowing itself to be itself yet one with the purposes of the First Cause that called it, the entity into being, into the awareness, into the consciousness of itself.
For decades, individuals from every background and religious tradition have found the Edgar Cayce information on meditation, prayer, and affirmations extremely helpful in their own personal growth and attunement. This book of excerpts from the Cayce readings has been compiled to provide an understanding of meditation and prayer and the co-creative potential all individuals possess in coming to know themselves and their relationship with the Divine. With this in mind, it may be read for insights into personal attunement or even as a daily devotional. This is the approach to meditation, prayer, and affirmations that is found in the Edgar Cayce readings.
Kevin J. Todeschi
Executive Director & CEO
Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. / Atlantic University
1&2 Note: Both the Study Group and the Prayer Group activities of Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. continue to this day. Visit www.EdgarCayce.org for additional information.
3The Edgar Cayce readings are numbered to maintain confidentiality. The first set of numbers (e.g., “1861”) refers to the individual or group for whom the reading was given. The second set of numbers (e.g., “19”) refers to the number of the reading for that individual or group.
1
General Insights on Meditation and Prayer
The Importance of Meditation
(Note: Because of the way in which this reading, given to the original prayer group, specifically addresses the overall topic of this chapter, it has been included in its entirety.)
TEXT OF READING 281-41
This psychic reading given by Edgar Cayce at the Hotel Warner, 34th & Ocean, Virginia Beach, Va., this 15th day of June, 1939, with forty present from outside Norfolk and Virginia Beach area. [The Reading was stenciled from GD’s shorthand notes and mimeographed with this heading for use in the Eighth Annual Congress Booklet.] (When Book I, SFG was published in 1942 this reading was included in the chapter on Meditation.)
PRESENT
Edgar Cayce; Gertrude Cayce, Conductor; Gladys Davis, Steno. Hugh Lynn Cayce, and local members of groups, etc.
READING
Time of Reading 4:00 P. M.
GC: You will have before you those assembled here who seek information on meditation which will be helpful to them and others.
EC: In the mind of many there is little or no difference between meditation and prayer. And there are many gathered here who, through their studies of various forms, have very definite ideas as to meditation and prayer.
There are others that care not whether there be such things as meditation, but depend upon someone else to do their thinking, or are satisfied to allow circumstance to take its course—and hope that sometime, somewhere, conditions and circumstances will adjust themselves to such a way that the best that may be will be their lot.
Yet, to most of you, there must be something else—some desire, something that has prompted you in one manner or another to seek to be here now, that you may gather something from a word, from an act, that will either