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Introduction

Simple Habits, Powerful Results

You know the feeling: too busy to do what you know you ought to be doing. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness of the world. And when that happens, spiritually centering activities are squeezed out. You don’t find time for a rejuvenating walk in nature or the quiet time to read something inspirational.

It’s a fact of modern life that time is at a premium for most people. Sometimes we may find ourselves asking, “How long will it take?” before we ask, “And what will it cost?” Extraordinary stress is created when we feel like there’re just not enough hours in the day to do what needs to be done.

Most of us find that when time is tight, life-affirming disciplines easily get overlooked or skipped. Perhaps there’s little or no time in the morning to think about your dreams, let alone write them down. When life is hectic you may not do a very good job following the nutritional rules that you know are best. And meditation periods—which ideally take fifteen, twenty, or more minutes of quality, stress-free attention—are forgotten or brushed aside.

Wouldn’t it be great if spiritual and psychological benefits could be reaped from even brief investments of time and attention? How might your life be transformed by simple, positive habits that could keep you spiritually connected? Edgar Cayce, one of the most important spiritual philosophers of the twentieth century, had recommendations for exactly how you can do it.

Cayce made his reputation as a healer—a man whose clairvoyant insights and natural remedies earned him fame as one of the founders of the holistic healing movement. But his remarkable prescriptions usually weren’t just herbal tonics, dietary changes, or nontraditional therapies. Frequently Cayce saw that the source of an ailment was a profound stress within the soul—a serious imbalance in lifestyle.

The people who came to him were individuals in the midst of suffering—be it physical, mental, or spiritual. They were dealing with the tensions and uncertainties of life in the Depression years and World War II, surely times of stress at least as great as our own overcharged, hurried era. Cayce offered each individual a program of positive habits that was designed to turn their lives around and get them recentered on what really counts. The same positive habits can work for people today.

The basic strategy of this book is to re-create the best of what Cayce had to say to people who sought a healthy, spiritually centered way of life. It’s a set of twelve positive habit patterns for balanced living—simple methods that take only small investments of time and energy, wisely used. That impact is nothing less than

• renewed vitality,

• a deeper sense of meaning, and

• a stronger connection to our creative Source.

Of course, some would say that all habits work against spiritual development—that the work of soul growth is really all about becoming more conscious, and so anything that is done habitually is counterproductive. But if we look more closely at the nature of personal transformation, we’ll see that there really is a place for constructive, life-affirming “habits.” That means patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that are done on a regular basis and serve to awaken us.

Here is an outline of twelve positive habits for modern-day, busy people who want to stay spiritually centered. These twelve patterns for living are examined in detail through the chapters of this book.

Positive Habit #1: Start the Day Right

The first minute of our waking day contains a potent opportunity. We set in motion a tone for the day by our mental orientation in those first sixty seconds. This chapter introduces the concept of personality and individuality. Much of the stress and discord in our lives comes from confusing these two sides of ourselves.

This chapter prescribes a direct method to affirm and connect with the individuality in the first minute of the day. In so doing, we make the transition from sleep to wakefulness one in which we’re most likely to have a centered, stress-reduced day ahead.

Positive Habit #2: Three-Minute Meditation

Although more lengthy meditations offer many additional rewards, even meditation sessions as short as three minutes can produce clear, positive results. This chapter describes the basics of how to meditate, along with specific suggestions for how to get the most from mini-meditation periods. Even on the busiest, most hectic day, there’s usually time for a three-minute meditation, and it can have tremendous value.

Positive Habit #3: The Inner Witness: Practicing Self-Observation

Many spiritual philosophies have taught that people in everyday life are oblivious to reality. We are “hypnotized” as some great teachers (such as Plato in the allegory of “The Cave”) have suggested. We are “asleep” as other teachers have claimed. The secret to waking up and becoming creative and vital is to practice the habit of self-observation. A life-changing effect can occur with this simple technique, done three times daily for even a minute at a time.

Self-observation (or “learning to stand aside and watch self go by” as Cayce described the process) is a practiced skill that brings forth a new kind of attention. A remarkable new sense of oneself begins to grow—a way of knowing ourselves that is detached from any problem, crisis, or worry. This method is the habit of occasionally being an inner witness to our own thoughts, emotions, and deeds. With simple instruction this potent habit can be learned and immediately put to work to transform our lives.

Positive Habit #4: The Pace of Life

Each of us can find an ideal pace for life. But establishing that positive habit starts with self-awareness. Observe yourself. Does life feel slow paced with inertia, idleness, or fatigue? Or, on the other hand, does your life feel rushed and tense, maybe with the sense that you’ll never get done all the things you’ve expected of yourself that day? For most of us, there are strong patterns as we slip into one extreme or the other.

With careful attention and right effort we can adopt an optimal pace for living. It allows relaxation and peace. But at the same time we find a way to get things done with right timing.

Positive Habit #5: Balanced Living

Life is a continual tug-of-war between competing opposites within ourselves. The trick is to develop the creative habit for finding the equilibrium point—the place of balance. This chapter explores balance from many perspectives, starting with nutrition. Cayce had a specific formula for a stress-reducing diet with the key being a particular balance between acid-metabolizing foods and alkaline-metabolizing ones.

Another essential ingredient to this positive habit for balance concerns self-interest versus interest-in-the-needs-of-others. Either extreme is sure to be a stress builder in the long run. To create a tension-free life one must find the point of equilibrium between inner growth and service. This chapter examines specific ways in which one can hold on to both sides in this pair of opposite impulses and achieve a healing synthesis.

Positive Habit #6: Self-Assertion and Healthy Will

Many of our stresses come from a simple fact: we don’t understand or make positive use of our free will. Cayce often stated clearly that the right use of will was the pivotal factor in getting one’s life on track. The failure to follow this positive habit is an invitation to an array of disappointments and frustrations.

One special point of emphasis in this chapter is the proper application of self-assertion. In his spiritual advice to troubled, unhappy people, Cayce sometimes advocated increased self-assertion. However, that positive habit wasn’t an invitation to aggressive, self-serving behavior. Its true, life-centering potential depends upon a correct understanding of the quality of the human soul called free will.

Positive Habit #7: Picture Yourself: Using Creative Visualization for Change

The human mind is an extraordinary tool for change, and change is often the key to shaping a spiritually centered life. Anything about ourselves that we want to transform is within our reach if we use the mind skillful. One powerful method is the creative use of visualization. If specific mental imagery is linked to a clear motivation and purpose, then physical life responds. Cayce often prescribed visualization as a powerful tool for the reduction of stress and for the promotion of healing. This chapter will explore specific ways to practice creative imagery, as well as outline things to avoid when making use of this potent method.

Positive Habit #8: Tolerance: The Magic Ingredient in Human Relationships

Many of us find that the single most difficult aspect of living is human relations. If we could solve the riddle of getting along with people, the ideal of a spiritually centered life would be within reach.

In describing a positive habit to transform our relationships, Cayce pointed to one attitude above all others as the key: tolerance. In essence, tolerance is the face of love. It is the way that we give other people the freedom to be themselves, while at the same time deepening relationships through caring. This chapter takes a careful look at what tolerance really is (and what it is not). Practical hints point the way toward making this attitude the natural and immediate habit in every one of our relationships.

Positive Habit #9: The Sixth Sense in Sleep

Much of what knocks us off center is our confusion and the need for reliable answers. People who came to Cayce for advice were often tension-filled because of their inability to get solutions to everyday problems. Those tensions and stresses sometimes became an even bigger problem in and of themselves, leading to a host of physical ailments. But Cayce encouraged the development of a positive habit to tap into one’s own innate ability to get reliable answers, especially through a so-called sixth sense that lives (usually unconsciously) within us all.

Each night as we fall asleep, our minds shift gears and begin to make use of the sixth sense. This additional perceptual ability is highly intuitive. It can tune-in to other people and operate telepathically. It can perceive likely events of the future. In addition, this sixth sense can tap creative wisdom and resources of one’s own higher self. One direct way in which we experience this extended sense is in our dreams; but it is active all night long and isn’t confined just to dreaming. This chapter will describe how the sixth sense works and give instructions for simple ways to become more alert to the valuable information it can provide daily.

Positive Habit #10: Keeping Daily Rhythms

In a world that often seems fast-paced and hectic, what can we do if we want to maintain healthy, balanced lives? What can counteract the many influences that throw us off kilter, disorient us, and drain our energies? Often it’s the unpredictability of life that exhausts us. Things happen that weren’t part of what we expected. Too easily a day can become disjointed, and we can end up feeling as if circumstances are in control, instead of our being in control of them. The positive habit of creating a daily rhythm can begin to make a big difference.

Rhythms are a close cousin to cycles. Both involve the regular occurrence of certain influences or activities. They are dependable, positive patterns in life. They remind us that we live in an orderly universe.

This chapter will focus on a daily rhythm that Cayce frequently prescribed: “After breakfast work awhile, after lunch rest awhile, and after dinner walk a mile.” The reader will be invited to adapt that formula to his or her own lifestyle, then make a commitment to that rhythm as a lifecentering pattern.

Positive Habit #11: The Three-Step Body Tuneup

Here’s a positive habit from Cayce that focuses directly on health practices which promise to transform us. These three simple methods take only a few minutes a day and minimal effort, but they have led to big changes for many people. First is adequate intake of water. Second is an easy head-and-neck exercise that helps reduce the tension and stress that we store in our neck and shoulders. Third is an exercise in attentive eating for one meal per day. Taken together as a three-step body tuneup, this positive habit is Cayce’s most easily applicable set of physical recommendations for reestablishing a centered life.

Positive Habit #12: Wrapping Up the Day: Bedtime Imaginative Recall

Just as Positive Habit #1 dealt creatively with the first waking moments of each day, Positive Habit #12 focuses on the final two or three minutes. The positive habit is to go back through the events of the day and observe in one’s imagination the impact of one’s deeds, words, and thoughts. Properly done, this review is completed with a spirit of objective love rather than with any sense of guilt or criticism. By consciously taking note of the lessons learned and the intentions left unfulfilled, we are likely to find a deeper and more restful sleep. And we may also find ourselves better equipped to meet the challenges of the new day.

Exploring these twelve positive habits of spiritually centered people is actually an adventure that can be undertaken in any order. Each chapter of the book—each positive habit—is presented in a stand-alone fashion and you can feel free to read the chapters in whatever order appeals to you. The key, though, is to apply the ideas. The habit works only if you’ll put attention and energy into letting it work its magic on you.