The teachings found in the Edgar Cayce discourses often encourage us to engage our minds for growth in wisdom, understanding, and love. He taught that we have three primary levels to our minds. Our most familiar level is our daily conscious mind in which our personality operates. Beyond a veil there is our deeper, subconscious mind which Cayce identified as the mind of our soul. Above these two levels is a portion of our mind that is with God's Infinite, Universal Mind. Cayce called it the superconscious mind.
His first lesson on mind was to become mindful of our thoughts and thought patterns. Watch ourselves throughout the day and in dreams during sleep.
The Role of the Spirit with our Minds
In those passages that Cayce’s readings so often recommended, John 14 through 17, Jesus teaches us that after he leaves, he will send the Spirit. This Spirit will help us in every way. He calls the Spirit a “comforter” to us, "spirit of truth" that bring all things to our remembrance. He encourages us to seek this Spirit’s presence within our hearts and minds.
The disciple Paul picks up on this, identifying the Spirit as an important source of love.
“The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given to us.” (Romans 5:5 ASV)
Edgar Cayce understands how difficult life can be, and he encourages us not to kick against the thorns of life, rather engage love, for this will bring us closer to a happier, more creative life.
Kick not against the pricks but love good, love honor, love patience. For divine love may bring the knowledge, the understanding, the wisdom for the activities to bring the self in accord with Creative Forces.
-Edgar Cayce Reading 1215-4
Edgar Cayce’s readings strongly affirm the importance of love, active love in our daily lives.
Know in Whom you believe as well as in what you believe. Know the source of your knowledge and you may know the end thereof. Know the laws—or the love; for the law of God is LOVE of God, and is not a hardship. For the law as man's law kills, but the love of the law as of God makes alive—everyone. And your Lord, your God, is God of the living. Make your life and your love of your fellow man a living thing in your experience day by day. Smile oft. Speak gently. Be kind.
-Edgar Cayce Reading 262-109
Cayce's discourses call on us to “keep the fires of love burning in your hearts day by day, for the love of God is manifested in the earth through those that are just kind one to another.” (EC 281-17) Following on the idea that God’s Spirit brings life and light to us, Cayce notes that, “love is wisdom, as love is God.” (EC 262-108) Since God is love, it is wise to live lovingly. But Cayce adds a little note to this approach, that we be careful not to do such for our selfish reasons.
In seeking, let it be not for self, rather that there may come in your experience the greater channel of blessing for your friend—yea, your enemy; for the love of God constrains you that you faint not by the way. Condemn not and you will not be condemned. Love not and you will not be love. But He that would show forth the love that the Father has bestowed upon you will be lovely to every soul!
-Edgar Cayce Reading 705-1
Law and Love
Cayce sees love associated with law. This is not a feature normally associated with love. For Cayce, love was not unstructured giving and caring, but it had truth associated with it, and that truth coexisted with the giving and caring. Today we use the term “tough love” to describe this. For Cayce it was more a balance of love with truth. One without the other was an imbalance.
You will come to that realization, as was expressed in Him, that as you abide in truth and love, truth and love abide in you, bringing into your experience more and more harmonious forces, bringing peace that takes away fear, doubt from your experience.
-Edgar Cayce Reading 2073-2
Our love should include truth.
“Life is truth. Truth is love. Love is God. God is life.”
-Edgar Cayce Reading 5733-1
This following Cayce discourse encourages us to seek an inner connection with God, in our hearts and minds, because this will bring the Spirit’s reaction in our daily experiences, and the experiences of those around us, who we are called to love as well. Here's Cayce:
His promises are true: “I will not leave you comfortless, but will come and abide with you.” In such experiences in self, then, may there be added to the lesson on Love that which will awaken in the hearts, the souls, the minds of others that desire to know His ways better. Each has been chosen as a channel, and each in its own way, and not alone of self, but manifesting life through love will bring the Spirit’s reaction in the daily experiences of every soul.
-Edgar Cayce Reading 262-46
Our service is to love one another, even the least among us. In so doing, we become an expression, a channel of God’s love. As we continue with this, we become one with God. His love and our love are the same.
A New Commandment
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” (John 13:34 RSV)
“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” (John 13:35 RSV)
Clearly Jesus is calling us to learn love and live in love. His group will be identifiable by this one characteristic: They will express love.
The disciple Paul takes up this new way, writing:
“Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” (Romans 13:8 RSV)
Paul has much to say in his affirming of love’s role in the spiritual life; the most famous being this passage:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long, and is kind; love envies not; love exalts not itself, is not puffed up, love never fails—but where there be prophecies, they shall be done away; where there be tongues, they shall cease; where there be knowledge, it shall be done away. But now abides faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love. Follow after love; let all that you do be done in love. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. (1Corinthians 13-16 RSV)
It is in one of the letters of the apostle John that we find an important insight into why love is so important. John tells us that the quintessence quality of God is love. Love is the music of God, the vibration of God, and the spirit of God.
My loved ones, let us have love for one another because love is of God, and everyone who has love is a child of God and has knowledge of God. He who has no love has no knowledge of God, because God is love. No man has ever seen God; if we have love for one another, God is in us and his love is made complete in us. His Spirit, which he has given us, is the witness that we are in him and he is in us. And we have seen and had faith in the love, which God has for us. God is love, and everyone who has love is in God, and God is in him. (1 John 4:7-16 BBE)
God is love, and all who live and express love, live in and express God.
Perhaps the most difficult of the love teachings is that we are not only to love our neighbors but also our enemies!
You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy; but I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that you may be sons [and daughters] of your Father who is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans [tax collectors] the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even the Gentiles the same? You therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48 ASV)
Perfect? Jesus wants us to become perfect as our Heavenly Father? Paul affirms the perfecting power of active love for all as he writes in Colossians 3:14: “Above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness.”
Jesus expands on this teaching in Luke 6:35: “But love your enemies, and do them good, and lend, never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and you shall be sons [and daughters] of the Most High: for He is kind toward the unthankful and evil.”
If God expresses loving-kindness to the ungrateful and wick, how can we become companions with God if we cannot do likewise?
This blog is part of our 2019 Enlightenment Series. Members can access all of the available material, which includes an online video and downloadable monthly lesson, in the Member-only section of our website at EdgarCayce.org/members. Not a member? Join now.
