This blog is part of our 2021 Enlightenment Courses, an exclusive benefit for members of Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. Each month John Van Auken provides a lesson with a worksheet, a video, a blog, and in each issue of the member magazine, Venture Inward, he writes an article about this topic. For 2021, the topic of study and practice is Enhancing, Our Minds, Intuition, and Dreams. Members can access all of the available material in the Member-only section of our website at EdgarCayce.org/members. Not a member but interested in this course? Join now. Here's a taste of the April Lesson on Everyday Ways to Enhance Our Mind, Intuition, and Dreams.
Edgar Cayce's Everyday Ways to Enhance Our Mind, Intuition, and Dreams
Each month I provided members with lessons from Edgar Cayce's teachings. This year the topic is Enhancing our Minds, Intuition, and Dreams. Lesson one was focused on enhancing our mind, with details about his fundamental principle: "Mind is the Builder." The second lesson was focused on enhancing our intuition, with details about his teaching: "All knowledge is as one knowledge. Hence may be attained from the universal force." The third lesson focused on enhancing our dream life, with his statement: “When the physical consciousness is at rest, the other-self communes with the SOUL of the body, see? Thus, correlating with that as the entity has accepted as its criterion or standard.”
In this fourth lesson we are going study Cayce's practical, everyday ways to develop, experience, and grow stronger in our efforts to enhance our minds, intuition, and dream life.
Daily Tips for Enhancing Our Mind
As you saw in lesson one, there were three aspects to furthering the use of our minds:
1. Be Mindful (maintain a "presence of mind"), 2. Set an Ideal (i.e., live by a conscious code), and 3. Use a Mantra or Affirmation to keep the mind centered.
Let's explore two of these.
Setting the Ideal
Before Cayce recommended a growth path or method, he instructed us to set our ideal. Setting and living by an ideal was at the top of his list of importance. An ideal is a standard, a code, or touchstone by which we measure ourselves: our actions, interactions, words, thoughts, judgments, and motivations. Cayce instructed that the ideal "cannot, should not, will not, be that that is man-made, but must be of the spiritual nature – that has its foundation in Truth, in God, in the God-head, that there may be the continual reaching out of an individual." (262-11) When he was asked to explain what he meant by "the God-head," he answered: "That as from which the impulse flows or returns to. The beginning – the end – of all." (262-12)
Using a Mantra/Affirmation to Stay Centered
Repeating a mantra or affirmation helps keep the mind centered during daily activities and interaction with others. It also keeps us from slipping into self-doubt and moodiness or fantasy daydreaming and blue-sky imaginings. I don't want to diminish the importance of our imaginative forces and their role in soul growth. On the contrary, Cayce actually encouraged our use of the imaginative forces. What we don't want is mindlessness. We want presence of mind and the highest of intentions when using our imaginative forces.
Here are two affirmations that may be helpful:
"Let that light be within me in such measures that I, as a child of God, may realize His love for humanity. May I live that, then, in my life day by day." (262-129)
"Our Father, Mother, through the love that You have manifested in the world through Your son, the Christ, make us more aware of God is Love." (262-43)
Daily Tips for Enhancing Our Intuition
Enhancing our innate intuition requires that we listen within, which requires that we pause our own thinking to allow the inner, universal all-knowing to flow to our consciousness. It takes practice and patience. In my journey I learned to be careful, for my wish-fulfilling, lower
mind would often give me the message I wanted to hear, not the pure truth I needed to hear. But, through practice and honesty with myself, I came to know from where the insights were coming.
One tip I can give you from my application of Cayce's teachings about intuition is that often it comes to me in its own time and manner. Often, I received the knowing after I was seeking it, during some quiet moment, like waking in the morning, or taking a shower, or doing something mundane or routine when my outer mind was still. BANG! Out of nowhere the insight would come to me! It was wonderful, profound, and I knew it! However, I quickly learned that I needed to write it down now! For some reason, the knowledge belonged to a deeper part of my mind, such that my outer, everyday mind would not retain the brilliant insight.
Daily Tips for Enhancing Our Dreams
In lesson three I gave you Cayce's four types of dreams and explained them: 1. Physical dreams about the body, 2. Self-revealing dreams that help us "Know Thyself," 3. Psychic dreams that include precognitive "heads up" messages from our timeless soul mind, and 4. Spiritual dreams that connect us to our heavenly homeland and parents. Dream helps us keep on keeping on through thick and thin, doubt and daring, weariness and vitality.
How to Remember Dreams
Now that we have some idea of the dynamics of dreaming and the development of the "sixth sense" or intuition, let’s look at Cayce’s tips for dream recall.
1. Pre-Sleep Suggestion: Since slipping into sleep is actually a transition from conscious mind to subconscious, and since the subconscious is amendable to suggestion, Cayce recommends that we give ourselves a pre-sleep suggestion (as we are falling asleep) to recall our dreams. One suggestion that is used in the Cayce organization is: "Now I'm going to sleep deeply and will wake feeling refreshed, revitalized, and remembering my dreams."
2. Do Not Move the Body: Since the conscious mind is not having the dream and is in control of the central nervous system (affected by bodily movement), Cayce recommended that we do not move the body immediately upon awakening. Rather, lie still and scan our deeper mind for dream content.
3. Transfer the Content: Once the content is present, transfer it over to our conscious mind and write it down in a dream journal. Much will be gained by regular dream study. Think of it as going to university in the college of the soul and spirit. Graduation comes as we fully know our deeper self to be our true self, and yet one with the whole of creation, including other souls. Within us is an amazing teacher – our better self. This one is tapped into the infinite source of knowledge.
Tips for Understanding Dreams
1. Get the GIST of the dream first, details second: Feel the essence of the dream’s meaning first, and don’t let the details sway you from the fundamental theme of the dream.
2. Use the spirit of the dream in daily life: Knowledge not applied is lost and becomes a stumbling block rather than a steppingstone.
3. Keep a journal but keep it simple: Dream themes are developed over a series of dreams. But don’t let it become a burden. Keep it a dynamic, changing part of real life. We want the inner and outer mind to become a team, working together.
Cayce gives a good sequence of steps to help us correctly interpret a dream. We cover these in-depth in the member lessons.
A Review of Dream Life Tips
As you wake, take note of your overall mood, then the subject or theme, then the activity, and finally the nature of the mind while in the dream. Remember, it is best to do this
while still in or near your dreaming mind because it is the best interpreter of the dream. Cayce always said that the dreamer was the best interpreter of the dream. The dreamer is not our outer, intellectual self but our inner, dreaming self. Get the interpretation before you come completely out of the dreaming mind. Feel it. Intuit it. However, there are times when you simply don't have time to linger. In those situations, when time does avail itself of your need to know, sit still and re-enter your deeper mind to retrieve and review the dream with intuitive receptivity.
Practice brings results.
Finally, Cayce taught that we must USE the dream in daily life if we expect to receive more inner processing, guidance, and help. He encourages us to make an Action Plan. Simply put, whatever you can surmise from the dream as its intention or topic or message, USE IT somehow in your outer life. Also, if you are going through a no-dreams period, look back at the last dream you can recall, and then use it somehow in your life now. Usually, dreaming will begin again because your subconscious sees that you are using the dream in your outer life. The two are a team.
If you'd like to hear more from John, he'll be speaking at the 92nd Annual A.R.E. Members Congress. It's in-person and live online Sunday, June 11 to Friday, June 16. Enjoy a week of fellowship with like-minded People. Congress is a time not only to connect, but reflect, rejuvenate, and restore to our truths, and recommit to bringing forth profound personal change in body, mind, and Spirit.
