Contemporary Cayce. Henry Reed

seen in the story of Rosalind, who was faced with a personal dilemma. She had been out shopping one day when she saw her best friend, Joanne, kissing a man (who was not her husband) in what appeared to be a romantic embrace. Joanne did not see her, so Rosalind continued on her way, but she could not get the image out of her mind. Although Rosalind was aware that Joanne was a bit unhappy in her marriage, she had not thought that things had gone this far. Instead, she felt a bit guilty for having seen Joanne and suddenly knowing her secret. But why did she feel guilty? Rosalind herself had done nothing wrong.

      Rosalind realized that she was assuming the worst of Joanne—judging her without knowing the facts. Was she angry at Joanne? Perhaps she should just let Joanne know that her secret was witnessed, and then perhaps Joanne would explain everything. Would Joanne want to know that her secret had been witnessed? How could Rosalind be the best friend possible to Joanne in this situation? She wanted to be loving. Would it be the loving thing to let Joanne know her friend had been seen her kissing this guy? But if Rosalind mentioned the incident, what would be her real intention in informing Joanne of such? Would she just be trying to force Joanne into sharing something she had not previously chosen to share? What was the loving thing to do in this situation?

      Rosalind had to reach down into her deepest values and intentions in order to resolve the troubling situation. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that if she were in Joanne’s place, she would want her friend to be more understanding and to have more compassion. In the end, Rosalind chose to remain silent and focus on being more compassionate, rather than choosing the “tough love” approach she had contemplated. Therefore, Rosalind meditated on the feeling of compassion. She found herself being more at peace with herself. She came to realize that having loving compassion for her friend was a much higher ideal than trying to discover what was going on in the situation. In her mind, she surrounded Joanne with love. As she did so, she found that she had feelings of acceptance, understanding, and empathy for Joanne, even though Rosalind didn’t know the actual facts of the situation. That was okay by her. She found the path of peace out of her dilemma, and kept her friend quietly embraced in the back of her mind.

      About a week later, Joanne contacted Rosalind and asked her to lunch. After the meal and catching up on each other’s news, Joanne indicated that she had something special to tell Rosalind, introducing it by saying, “I just knew, Rosalind, that I could share this with you, and you wouldn’t judge me, but would help me see my situation more clearly.” As Joanne spoke and told the story of her new relationship, Rosalind realized she had made the right decision and really was Joanne’s best friend.

      All of us have faced dilemmas where there was an upside and a downside to whichever choice was made. No wonder making these types of decisions can be one of our most disliked and challenging things to do. We are free to make choices, but whatever we choose will have consequences. The choice of any action is followed by a reaction. Our freedom to choose, our ability to make choices, and our inability to avoid our choices having consequences are all part of our co-creative relationship with the life force, or God. The best course of action available to us is to make good choices, but what makes our choices good?

      In order to make choices, we need to know our values. Often we need to know our highest or ultimate value, what Edgar Cayce would refer to as our “ideal.” It’s for good reason that he reminds us that becoming aware of our operative values and then consciously choosing our ideal among them is the most important spiritual act we make in our lifetime. On one occasion, Cayce explained to a man that the reason he had so many problems and so much confusion in his own life was because he had never really established a conscious ideal. He often felt like he was in a state of confusion simply because the ideal he had established (unconsciously, to be sure) was that of a “wanderer.” He was encouraged to make a conscious choice and to begin to work with it, because whatever an individual dwells upon, they become.

      How do you become aware of your highest values and, ultimately, the spiritual ideals that can best become a part of your life’s motivation? One way is to begin to imagine the scenario of an ideal day, and then examine that day for the values that it contains. For example, Richard was a self-employed handyman, a jack of all trades, an artist. He was relatively happy, unless he began to compare his modest circumstances to others he knew with bigger homes, newer cars, and exciting vacations. He felt guilty that he hadn’t used his talents enough to create as prosperous a life as others. When he was asked to imagine his ideal day, he responded as follows:

      “Every morning when I wake up, it feels like Saturday. I have a creative project that I love working on. Sometime during the day, I help somebody with something. At night, I enjoy myself with friends.” Examining the values underlying this scenario, Richard realized that freedom of expression was paramount, for the feeling he associated with Saturday mornings was “freedom.” There was also the happiness of being engaged in creative pursuits and the freedom to do so. There was the desire to be helpful to others as he was needed. There was the valuing of close relationships and the freedom to be himself among friends. When Richard realized that he actually valued freedom of expression more than the freedom to buy whatever he wanted, he became more at peace with his modest material existence. Having to trade in free time to work more hours to pay for more things than he really needed was not something he valued. In the end, Richard listed his underlying values as being freedom of expression, creativity, and relationships. In terms of his spiritual ideal, he chose service to others. As we become more aware of the existence and functioning of values and ideals, we can take a proactive approach to them.

      Since choosing a spiritual ideal is the most important thing we can do, it may be helpful to understand how to identify a genuine ideal. In a purely philosophical sense, an ideal is a representation of perfection that may be beyond us in the present but is something we strive toward. For example, a circle, defined as all points equally distant from a center, exists perfectly only in mathematics. In real life, all circles only approximate the perfection of the ideal. Similarly, in our desire to invent the “perfect mousetrap,” it is the perfect that is the ideal which cannot be obtained, while any given mousetrap is a valid representative of the idea of a mousetrap. Pursuing an idea of happiness (“a happy marriage and a fulfilling career”) is different from living according to an ideal of happiness (“loving deeply, serving widely”). The first envisions a goal—a concrete, fixed end point. Whereas a goal is something attainable, in Cayce’s terminology, an ideal is really a motivating pattern that guides our lives. With a goal, there is no happiness until it is reached, while sometime afterwards the goal that was once so attractive loses its appeal. On the other hand, an ideal is never truly achieved. There is always room for improvement. The ideal motivates us to reach beyond our present grasp. With ideals, it’s the trying, not the fulfillment, that is the purpose.

      When you can appreciate the spiritual creative power of an ideal, then you are ready to work with it as a purposeful map of the way you wish to live. Here we draw upon Cayce’s insight into the channel of creation, or the method by which energy is guided to produce manifestations. The “formula” he gave for it is, “Spirit is the life, mind is the builder, and the physical is the result.” Spirit is energy, while the mind patterns that energy to channel the manifested result. Here is how we can assemble the creative power of an ideal. Suppose you wish to grow into the ideal of “being in harmony with all life.” Begin to imagine how living according to that ideal would affect your attitude and behavior in various areas of your life. For example, how might this ideal affect us when at home with the family? What mental attitude toward home and family would naturally result from the spirit of harmony? Perhaps it would engender an attentive attitude of receptivity. And what types of behaviors might such an attitude generate? Careful listening and cooperation might be some ways to express the attitude of attentive receptivity. So there’s one example of completing the formula: the ideal of harmony at home inspires the attitude of attentive receptivity, which generates the behaviors of careful listening and cooperation. This same process can then be applied to the various areas of one’s life.

      As another example, let’s imagine that I wanted to pick a spiritual ideal that embodied becoming more loving. I might visualize the most loving person I could ever think of—perhaps a spiritual figure like Mother Teresa, or Jesus, or Buddha, or an enlightened Being. I can imagine how it might feel to be around this Being, and even how this Being might interact