Читать книгу The Alkalizing Diet - Istvan Fazekas - Страница 10

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. This could also, at times, affect the language that was used or the quality of the reading.

Many things had an influence upon the quality of the readings—Mr. Cayce’s physical health (and foods he would take), the sincerity and motive of the person asking for a reading, and the surreptitious motives of people in attendance, to name a few. We can call this the transpective aspect.

Often there was an intertwining of these two views, the introspective and the transpective. The database that Mr. Cayce would read into seemed to get more accessible as time progressed; the more you do something, the more proficient you become. The quality of the readings also benefited from the focus and sincerity of the inquirer.

Most of the Cayce readings, over 9000, are centered on physical healings. After all, if you are seriously ill, getting better is your number one priority; who you were in 1569 can wait until the bleeding stops.

The three main areas that comprise our self—body, mind, and spirit—are addressed consistently as being a unity (not a trinity) in the Source’s physical healings. You need the soul to heal the body, to paraphrase the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates of Cos, and this is apparent when understanding the subject of healing.

Concerning the readings for the body, there are four subcategories that the Cayce Source consistently returns to: assimilation, circulation, elimination, and relaxation. These can be corroborated to a high degree by traditional Chinese medicine and Indian ayurveda.

Assimilation includes the type of nutrients taken, the combinations in which they are taken, and how the body digests the various properties. The mind was consistently mentioned as being needed for quality digestion. In other words, you cannot have your mind refracted upon five different tasks or ideas while you are eating and expect to get the most from your food, especially if focused upon the negative. This is contrary to the contemporary notion that multitasking is the best way to get work accomplished and that eating when upset may actually make you feel better.

We can pause here for a minute to contemplate the teachings of the great Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. His teachings prompt us all to cultivate mindfulness for ourselves so that, in classic Buddhist tradition, you are aware—aware of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and to whom you are doing it. The majority of busy urban people are vague on all three points and probably do not consider the act of eating to be part of a spiritual practice. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches a simple and profound mindfulness exercise relating to eating¹:

“Contemplating your food—

‘This plate of food,

So fragrant and appetizing,

Also contains much suffering.’”

Mindfulness here means awareness. Awareness means empathy with those around the globe who sacrifice themselves as laborers often under harsh conditions so that the luxuriant marketplaces of the industrialized West can offer African chocolate, South and Central American coffee, and Southeast Asian rice. When you pray for your food mindfully, you are praying for those people who labored with difficulty as well as all the people in the profit line, from farmer to exporter to grocery buyer. In Buddhist tradition, this is getting your heart and stomach right or, to employ an American vernacular, “gettin’ all your cows headed on the same trail.”

According to both the Cayce Source and ancient Eastern wisdom, you are less effective in any one thing when your attention is bifurcated or trifurcated, as it were. Your body needs your mental attention when you are taking nutrients, if you wish to get the most from your food. Assimilation equals absorption of the food and of the vibration of the plant or animal.

Some Eastern teachers have noted that the widespread violence in the U.S. is energetically linked to (1) the violence that is in the meat supply that we abundantly consume (what we feed our bodies) and (2) the violence that we feed our minds with video games, television, and movies. One somewhat alters the vibration of the meat (or whatever nutrient) by practicing this mindful awareness recommended by Thich Nhat Hanh and in so doing makes the act of consuming a type of prayer.

The Cayce Source approaches this same issue from a slightly different slant. The basic idea is that God is everything but becomes altered or distorted through the activities of mankind. All material things have their inception as an idea, just as all physical phenomena are ideas of the Creator. Humans take these ideas and filter them first through an individual perception and then through a given cultural perception. The actual thing is always at least twice removed from its original nature. To see something as it truly is, we have to transcend both our cultural and personality biases. Although not impossible, it is not an easy task.

When matter comes into being, what has taken place? The Spirit ye worship as God has moved in space and time to make for that which gives its expression; perhaps, as wheat, as corn, as flesh, as whatever may be the movement in that ye call time and space. 281–24

The movement referred to in this reading is what I alluded to, regarding both types of bias—both occurring “in space and time.”

Assimilation is akin to digestion, and we cannot digest that which we are unable to receive. We cannot receive that which we are unaware of and ungrateful for. The timeless myth told by our assimilation is this: “[The Lord] has given food and provisions to those who worship and revere Him.”² and “Heavenly Father, receive this, make it holy. Let no impurity of greed defile it. The food comes from Thee; it is for Thy temple. Spiritualize it. Spirit to Spirit goes.”³

Circulation is what happens after assimilation, when nutrients hit your blood stream. It also refers to the larger context of cardiovascular and lymphatic circulation. You may think of the lymph in your body as the “white blood” with special vessels that transport lymphatic fluid through lymph nodes, which are especially congregated in your armpits and groin area. It is one of the numerous ways your body cleans out your tissues and blood stream. The lymph system does not have a pump like the cardiovascular system does, so muscular movement is needed to move lymph through the body.

One of the ways recommended to manually accomplish this pumping is through therapeutic massage. Massage therapy was recommended in the Cayce readings for numerous purposes, often to enhance the circulation of blood and lymph, to coordinate glandular and nervous activities, to work medicinal solutions into the body, and to compliment osteopathic adjustments.

Increasing circulation is one of the many things for which a good, therapeutic massage session can be beneficial. This is especially significant for anyone who is sedentary due to age or illness. The truth is that you will move about as much lymph in approximately eight to ten minutes of regular exercise as you would in fifty minutes of massage. However, if you cannot be ambulatory, massage is a useful substitute.

Circulation is crucial to healing. If you want to facilitate healing in the body, create sufficient blood flow; to increase healing, enhance blood flow.

Understanding this on the esoteric level, circulation is how you are in the world after assimilation. In other words, what good are you for the tribe? Another way of thinking about this is that assimilation is nourishment and survival, while circulation is activity and service. The heart is the center, the master, of the circulatory system. The timeless myth told by our circulation is “What comes around goes around,” and it is a powerful story.

Well-functioning elimination is one of the most crucial processes necessary for good health. The Cayce readings refer to poor elimination as the cause of disease in many of the physical readings. This problem has been exacerbated since the early part of the twentieth century due to our increase of food additives, sedentary occupations, television culture, refined starches, and abundant processed food on our plates.

A fundamental way that your body removes dead cells is through bowel eliminations. Waste products accumulate faster in a system that is not having a daily bowel movement. This toxic backup, especially if chronic, is central to the start of numerous health problems. Here are four easy-to-do tasks that you can implement to naturally kick-start your body’s valuable elimination functioning:

1. Eat more roughage, now called fibrous foods, twice a day. These include leafy greens, figs, dates, prunes, plant stalks and roots, flax seed meal, and oat or wheat bran. Even just taking raw fruit twice a day is a good start.

2. Drink more water! Somewhere between two and three liters a day. The more fiber you add to your diet, the more water you need to drink.

3. Massage your own abdomen, moving in a clockwise direction pressing in with a circular motion. You should try and pull in your abdominal muscles at the same time. You can also find a massage therapist who is trained in abdominal massage. Once you know what it feels like, you can perform the same maneuvers on your own body. It is safe and natural, and it works.

4. One of the oldest natural laxative tonics is hot water and freshly squeezed lemon first thing in the morning. This can be enhanced with fresh basil or cinnamon bark for an additional medicinal kick.

The other eliminative organs crucial to good health are your lungs. It is important to breathe deeply throughout the day, especially exhaling. All the Asian health arts from Taoist Kung Fu to yogic Pranayama focus intently on breathing. Ancient Chinese tradition speaks of the “elders who had long life because they breathed deeper than we do.” This was written some twenty-three centuries ago, so we really have a lot of catching up to do. In Genesis 2:7, God “breathes into his [Adam’s] nostrils the breath of life.” Everything depends on breath. In many languages, breath and spirit mean the same thing or share the same word or character.

This is emblematic for the fact that we rely on the unseen for everything—body, mind, and soul. The timeless myth of our elimination is “Let go and let God” and “In this world and the next / There is impurity and impurity: / When a woman lacks dignity / When a man lacks generosity / But the greatest impurity is ignorance / Free yourself from it / Be pure.”⁴

The fourth subcategory of physical health to attend to diligently is relaxation. Our modern vernacular would express this as stress management. Knowing how to eliminate the unnecessary stressors and manage the ones that you cannot change is a necessary habit for good health in our frenetic, ever-kinetic Information Age.

The Cayce Source returned to emotions repeatedly as potential sources of disease. This knowledge is also an integral part of understanding health and healing in traditional Chinese medicine and Indian ayurveda. Our modern technophilic system is the first medical model that separates the functioning of the body from the mind. With the increasing study in a relatively new medical discipline that explores the relationships between the mind and the immune system, psychoneuroimmunology, the post-industrial medical behemoth is coming back to ancient traditions. Welcome back aboard. The rather regrettable effect of this happening within the confines of a chemocentric medical culture is that pills will likely be the resulting solution to the problem of the month. Let us hope this will change with the entrance into medical school of more holistically oriented healers and future medical pioneers. I am hopeful it will.

We know chronic stress is a killer, whether it is physical or mental. The Buddha has famously stated that your mind is the most important aspect of your personality to develop, since your world is filtered through the quality of your consciousness. Here are some words of wisdom from a being who figured this out:⁵

1. “Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.”

2. “Are you quiet? Quiet your body. Quiet your mind. You want nothing. Your words are still. You are still. By your own efforts waken yourself, watch yourself, and live joyfully.”

3. “To straighten the crooked you must first do a harder thing—straighten yourself.”

What can you do about managing stress? Ask yourself, “In a hundred years, will this really matter?” The Cayce Source enjoyed the phrase, “Watch oneself go by.” This is another way of getting perspective, of stepping outside of your little drama and seeing that you are not really the earth’s axis. The world goes on, with or without you. While you are here, do your best, not someone else’s worst; be kind and patient; surrender to Spirit. Learn to meditate—the best means to get to know the real you, the one behind all the “sturm and drang” of this world created by the mind.

The timeless myth of our relaxation is “Be still and know that I am God.”⁶

The legacy of the Cayce Source is manifold. For the purpose of understanding health and healing, it is valuable to keep in mind the basics:

• Good foods are needed for good health.

• Watch what you feed your mind even more than what you feed your stomach, but have a sensible diet.

• Pay attention to the big four: assimilation, circulation, elimination, and relaxation.

• You cannot genuinely heal the body without engaging the soul, so engage the soul daily.

• Be of good use in this world—serve your fellow humans. The difference you make, no matter how small, is great in the eyes of God.

• In giving, you get; in surrendering, you are supported; in loving, you are loved. To paraphrase the Dalai Lama, “You should help each other, but if you cannot help each other, do not hurt each other.”