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1

The Beginning

Grasping the totality of a newborn infant is a remarkable event when seen through the lens of the Edgar Cayce readings. When we first look into her eyes, we are seeing not only someone who has chosen us out of all the possible parents of that time but also someone who has knowledge of how family life will unfold over the time shared with us.

You are looking at the temple of a soul that has chosen a clear purpose for reincarnating and has determined that you are her best guide, for whatever the reason.¹

As you hold her, her mind is desperately talking to you to make things known that she feels are important for you to remember. Eons of experience are available to her mind. How frustrating it is for her to hear that she is a helpless infant. How frustrating it is for her to be held captive in this clumsy thing that many people say is her! This thing people call a body is utterly useless except for making noises and randomly moving about. What has happened to all that lovely freedom of moving with just the slightest of thoughts? What, she may be wondering, was I thinking when I agreed to this!

Her brain is another issue entirely. It is undeveloped in many ways, with a potential to pull together the threads of her experiences in many patterns. We know a lot about the stages during which it can pull together these different kinds of threads. However, we are not so clear on how the threads are woven into that tapestry we call life.

We know that the brain has about one hundred billion neurons when a child is born, far more than an adult has. Even at age three, the child still has double the number of neurons as the adult. The child’s brain also uses more than twice as much energy.² Clearly, both the potential and the actual activity of the brain are enormous in the very young child.

We further know that the brain has stages during which there are sensitive periods for specific kinds of learning. Language, for example, can be most easily learned up until puberty. From birth to age three, the brain is sensitive to all kinds of learning, making this the most important time in a child’s life to have appropriate experiences and to develop verbal language. These experiences need to be hands-on experiences, rather than academic in nature, so that the brain can integrate events with language.³ So, when a fourteen-month-old sits banging the spoon on the family’s pots and pans, she is learning about the different ways to make sounds as well as different tones. All the while, the brain’s synapses are firing, causing neuropathways to be routed for future reference. This idea will be explored further in chapter four.

What we have seldom considered in Western society is how to keep this infant child in touch with her Creator or even her mind, much less her heart. In fact, most of what those of us in Western society are traditionally taught causes us to lose touch with the Creator and become enmeshed in the denser vibrations of the physical experience, rather than transcending it to embody a spiritual experience.

Connections with the Creator are gestalt in nature. In a way, it is like the skilled reader who does not read each word singly but rather whole phrases or sentences at a time, grasping the meaning and visualizing the content without conscious thinking. It is also like the sports player who sees the opening, takes it, and plans the pass without conscious thinking. The entire sequence is grasped in less than a second but would take minutes to explain in words. Such is the connection with the Creator.

Drawing upon the Cayce readings, research on child development, and stories of parents and their children, the following pages explore ways to raise a child while assisting her to remember her connections to the Creator.

While exploring these ideas, it is important to be mindful of what the Cayce readings have to say about our origins. John Van Auken and Lora Little have done a remarkable job of delineating our origins and subsequent meshing with the lower vibratory matter in their book The Lost Hall of Records: Edgar Cayce’s Forgotten Record of Human History in the Ancient Yucatan. To briefly address this here, we were all created as souls simultaneously. Thus, none of us is older or younger than any other. Or, as reading 2542-1 expresses it, “This to some would appear an old, old, soul; yet all souls are as one—they were all of the same; for soul is eternal.”

In the beginning, we were light beings, able to be anywhere and to experience anything with just a thought. A great many of us decided to investigate the physical realm and became trapped in various slower vibratory entities. We began to be overwhelmed with physical sensations, unable to reconnect with our true light-being selves. We were provided a way out when the physical body, which was designed to help us remember who we are, was created. Two of the first to inhabit these bodies were the souls called Adam and Eve. These souls finally, after many lifetimes, incarnated into the respective bodies called Jesus and Mary, and gave the example as to how to live so as to reclaim our original selves. As souls, we choose families that will provide the lessons that will best help us remember, even when the lessons seem to be brutal.

Each birth marks the opportunity to remember and reexperience our origins as light beings. In any event, each birth marks a new opportunity to manifest the spiritual while being in a physical form:

For this, then, is in every birth—the possibilities, the glories, the actuating of that influence of that entrance again of god-man into the earth that man might know the way.

262-103

For, no soul or entity enters without opportunities. And the choice is ever latent within self and the power, the ability to do things, be things, to accept things, is with the entity.

3226-1

Every entering soul has the opportunity to be one with what the readings call the Christ Consciousness and also show the Way. Jesus was one who achieved that goal. Thus, we know, through Jesus and others, it is possible for us all:

Jesus is the man—the activity, the mind, the relationships that He bore to others. Yea, He was mindful of friends, He was sociable, He was loving, He was kind, He was gentle. He grew faint, He grew weak—and yet gained that strength that He has promised, in becoming the Christ, by fulfilling and overcoming the world! Ye are made strong—in body, in mind, in soul and purpose—by that power in Christ. The power, then, is in the Christ. The pattern is in Jesus.

2533-7

“Mind is the Builder” is a consistent theme in the Cayce readings. The universal laws mentioned in the readings are all aspects of this belief. Science, specifically quantum physics, is beginning to offer explanations for how this works. It seems that we are connected on a subatomic level.

When we are chosen as parents, it is our implied responsibility to create an environment in which souls can use their temples to make the most of the opportunities and to become one with the First Cause. On these pages are suggestions, from conception to adolescence, as to how to do that. However, it is important to remember that each soul has its own path, which may not seem the right one to the parent. Yet the readings also tell us that all acts bear fruit, even if in future lifetimes.

What follows on these pages is based on the experiences with children and families of the authors. Many have other experiences that also help people with the issues cited within, and we encourage you to explore many avenues to see what resonates with your heart as you raise your children.

Also, throughout this book the readings are cited verbatim. Many include medical recommendations. The authors ask that if you are concerned about any physical condition, seek advice from a licensed physician. There is a list on the EdgarCayce.org Web site of medical practitioners who are familiar with and incorporate the material from the readings into their practice, if you are interested.