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A Practical Lesson Based on Edgar Cayce Reading 281-13
Prayer and meditation are often spoken of together, yet Edgar Cayce reading 281-13 makes an important distinction between them. Both are ways of turning toward the Divine, but they represent different movements of the inner life. Prayer is our conscious reaching toward God; meditation goes deeper, becoming an opening of the inner self so that we may receive. When understood in this way, prayer and meditation are not merely religious exercises. They become practical ways of bringing our thoughts, emotions, body, and spirit into greater harmony with the Creative Forces.
Prayer: Turning the Conscious Self Toward God
The reading describes prayer as the conscious effort to bring ourselves into harmony with the spiritual:
“Prayer is the MAKING of one's conscious self more in attune with the spiritual forces that may manifest in a material world.” (281-13)
Prayer, then, is not simply asking God for things. It is an act of attunement. We turn our attention away from ourselves for a time and toward the Divine. We may express gratitude, ask for guidance, seek forgiveness, pray for another person, or simply offer ourselves to God. The essential purpose is the same: to bring our conscious mind into harmony with a higher spiritual consciousness.
Cayce also warns against turning prayer into an outward performance. The reading contrasts elaborate prayer intended to impress others with the simple prayer of a humble person who asks for mercy. It describes true prayer as entering “the closet of one's inner self” and pouring out oneself so that “the inner man may be filled with the Spirit of the Father.” (281-13)
This gives us a simple principle: pray sincerely rather than impressively. We do not need beautiful language. We do not need to sound spiritual. We do not need lengthy prayers. What matters is sincerity. A few honest words spoken from the heart may bring us closer to God than many words spoken without inner meaning.
Meditation: Listening From Within
After describing prayer, the reading moves deeper:
“Meditation, then, is prayer, but is prayer from WITHIN the INNER self.” (281-13)
This is one of the central teachings of the reading. In prayer we consciously reach toward God; in meditation we become quiet enough to experience that relationship within ourselves. Meditation is therefore not simply thinking about spiritual subjects. Neither is it merely relaxation. It is an inward opening.
Later the reading gives an even clearer definition:
“MEDITATION is EMPTYING self of all that hinders the creative forces from rising along the natural channels of the physical man.” (281-13)
The emphasis is on emptying ourselves of what hinders. Worry, resentment, selfishness, anger, fear, restless thoughts, and preoccupation with material concerns can occupy our inner attention. Meditation gradually allows these disturbances to become quiet so that something deeper may emerge.
Prayer might therefore be thought of as speaking and reaching toward God, while meditation includes becoming still and receptive to God. One expresses; the other receives. Together they create a spiritual conversation.
Prepare Yourself Before Meditation
Reading 281-13 places considerable importance on preparation. Cayce says that individuals throughout the ages have found “self-preparation” necessary before entering deeply into meditation. Different people may find different preparations helpful, including washing, breathing, quiet surroundings, music, or other practices that help settle the body and mind. (281-13)
Yet the deeper cleansing is not merely physical. The reading says:
“FIND that which is to YOURSELF the more certain way to your consciousness of PURIFYING body and mind.” (281-13)
This makes the practice personal. One person may prepare by washing the face and hands and sitting quietly. Another may take a few slow breaths. Another may listen to gentle music. Another may begin with prayer. The outward method is less important than its purpose: to prepare body and mind for sincere spiritual attunement.
The reading gives an especially strong instruction concerning our thoughts and attitudes:
“Approach not the inner man, or the inner self, with a grudge or an unkind thought held against ANY man!” (281-13)
This is tremendously practical. Before attempting meditation, examine what you are carrying within yourself. Are you angry with someone? Are you deliberately holding resentment? Are you wishing harm upon another person? Are you consumed by jealousy or bitterness? If so, begin with prayer. Ask for help in releasing those attitudes.
We do not have to become perfect before we meditate. Rather, we should come with an honest willingness to let go of what separates us from love.
Establish a Spiritual Ideal
Meditation should have direction. Reading 281-13 describes setting an inner “mark” or image representing the spiritual ideal toward which the individual seeks to rise. It associates this ideal with “the Lamb, or the Christ, or the Holy One, or the Son,” and with entering into the presence of the Creative Force within. (281-13)
For a general spiritual practice, this can be understood as establishing the highest spiritual ideal you sincerely recognize. It may be expressed as God, Divine Love, the Christ, the Creator, the Holy One, or simply the highest consciousness of love, truth, mercy, and service.
The important point is that meditation should not be aimless. Before entering the silence, know what you are seeking to become attuned to. If your ideal is Divine Love, hold love before you. If your ideal is the Christ spirit, hold that consciousness of selfless love and service before you. If you seek God's will, quietly offer yourself to that will.
The reading beautifully describes entering meditation through “that image in the creative forces of love.” (281-13) Love, therefore, provides a safe and practical center for the meditation.
A Simple Method of Prayer and Meditation
Reading 281-13 actually provides a practical formula, while making clear that it is “not the only one.” It begins:
“Cleanse the body with pure water. Sit or lie in an easy position, without binding garments about the body.” (281-13)
Comfort matters because unnecessary physical tension can distract the mind. Sit comfortably or lie down if that is more suitable. Allow the body to become quiet.
The reading then gives a particular breathing exercise involving alternate nostrils. (281-13) This should be understood as one method suggested in the reading rather than a requirement for everyone. The larger principle is to allow the breathing to become calm and balanced so that attention can move away from physical restlessness.
Once settled, begin with a simple prayer. It does not need to be complicated. You might quietly express the intention: “May I become a channel of Divine Love. Help me to release everything that separates me from You. Guide me to know and live Your will.”
Then become still.
Do not struggle to force thoughts away. When ordinary concerns arise, gently release them and return to your spiritual ideal. Let the mind become quieter. Rather than continually speaking inwardly, become receptive. Move from asking toward listening.
The reading describes going “deeper - deeper” into an experience of “the creative forces of love.” (281-13) This does not mean forcing yourself into an unusual state. The emphasis should remain upon love, sincerity, peace, and spiritual attunement.
Enter the Silence
One of the most beautiful ideas in the reading is the importance of silence:
“In entering into the silence, entering into the silence in meditation, with a clean hand, a clean body, a clean mind, we may receive that strength and power that fits each individual, each soul, for a greater activity in this material world.” (281-13)
Notice the purpose of meditation. We do not enter the silence merely to escape the world. We enter so that we may return to life strengthened for “greater activity in this material world.”
This is extremely important in applying Cayce's teaching. A good meditation should eventually influence how we live. If meditation makes us more patient, loving, forgiving, courageous, helpful, and balanced, then its spiritual influence is becoming visible in our lives.
The test of meditation is therefore not whether we experience unusual sensations, visions, or mystical experiences. The greater question is: What kind of person are we becoming?
Do Not Force an Experience
Reading 281-13 describes meditation in terms of powerful inner processes and uses the physiological and spiritual terminology found throughout the Cayce readings. Yet for someone beginning a public, practical spiritual practice, there is no need to try to manufacture these experiences.
Do not meditate in order to chase sensations. Do not try to force energy through the body. Do not become discouraged because nothing dramatic happens. The practical instruction is much simpler: prepare yourself, establish a worthy ideal, quiet the body, release hindering thoughts, enter the silence, and become receptive to Divine Love.
The reading says that meditation properly approached should make a person: “STRONGER mentally, physically.” (281-13)
The goal is greater wholeness and usefulness, not spiritual excitement.
Prayer and Meditation Should Lead to Daily Living
Perhaps the most practical way to understand prayer and meditation is this: prayer establishes the relationship, meditation deepens the attunement, and daily living expresses the result.
We may pray for patience, but eventually we must practise patience. We may meditate upon love, but eventually we must show love. We may ask for guidance, but when guidance becomes clear, we must be willing to act upon it.
This is why the reading's description of meditation ends not with withdrawal from life but with renewed strength for life. We enter the silence so that we may return to our families, work, relationships, difficulties, and responsibilities with something greater operating through us.
A Simple Daily Practice
For anyone wishing to apply the principles of reading 281-13, begin simply. Choose a quiet place and prepare yourself physically and mentally. Release resentment as best you can. Sit comfortably and allow your breathing to settle. Decide upon your spiritual ideal—perhaps Divine Love, God, the Christ spirit, peace, mercy, or service.
Begin with a short, sincere prayer. Speak inwardly to God in your own words. Give thanks. Ask for guidance. Release your worries. Pray for others if they come to mind.
Then stop speaking.
Become quiet.
Hold your spiritual ideal gently within your consciousness. When distracting thoughts arise, release them without frustration and return to that ideal. Rest inwardly in love and openness. Listen rather than demand an answer.
Afterward, carry something of that silence into your day. Ask yourself: How can I express what I sought in meditation? Whom can I encourage? What resentment can I release? Where can I practise patience? What loving action can I take today?
In this way meditation becomes more than something we do for a few minutes. It becomes something we live.
The Heart of the Teaching
Reading 281-13 ultimately presents prayer and meditation as a movement from the outer personality toward the deeper spiritual self. Prayer consciously turns us toward the Creator. Meditation removes the inner barriers that prevent us from receiving and expressing the Creative Forces.
The reading closes its teaching with an extraordinarily simple instruction: “Be thou CLEAN, in Him.” (281-13)
We might understand the entire practice through those few words. Come sincerely. Release resentment. Seek the highest ideal you know. Pray from the heart. Become quiet. Enter the silence without fear or force. Open yourself to Divine Love. Then return to ordinary life and allow that love to become visible through your thoughts, words, choices, and service to others.
Prayer is not about saying impressive words. Meditation is not about achieving impressive experiences. Both are about becoming attuned to the Divine—and then allowing that attunement to change the way we live.
EDGAR CAYCE READING 281-13
GC: You will have before you the psychic work of Edgar Cayce, present in this room, the information that has been and is being given from time to time, especially that regarding meditation and prayer. You will give, in a clear, concise, understandable manner just how an individual may meditate, or pray, without the effort disturbing the mental or physical body. If this can be given in a general manner, outline it for us. If it is necessary to be outlined for specific individuals, you will tell us how individuals may attain to the understanding necessary for such experiences not to be detrimental to them.
EC: Yes, we have the work, the information that has been and that maybe given from time to time; especially that in reference to meditation and prayer.
First, in considering such, it would be well to analyze that difference (that is not always understood) between meditation and prayer.
As it has been defined or given in an illustrated manner by the Great Teacher, prayer is the MAKING of one's conscious self more in attune with the spiritual forces that may manifest in a material world, and is ORDINARILY given as a COOPERATIVE experience of MANY individuals when all are asked to come in one accord and one mind; or, as was illustrated by:
Be not as the Pharisees, who love to be seen of men, who make long dissertation or prayer to be heard of men. They IMMEDIATELY have their reward in the physical-mental mind.
Be rather as he that entered the temple and not so much as lifting his eyes, smote his breast and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"
Which man was justified, this man or he that stood to be seen of men and thanked God he was not as other men, that he paid his tithes, that he did the services required in the temple, that he stood in awe of no one, he was not even as this heathen who in an uncouth manner, not with washed hands, not with shaven face attempted to reach the throne of grace?
Here we have drawn for us a comparison in prayer: That which may be the pouring out of the personality of the individual, or a group who enter in for the purpose of either outward show to be seen of men; or that enter in even as in the closet of one's inner self and pours out self that the inner man may be filled with the Spirit of the Father in His merciful kindness to men.
Now draw the comparisons for meditation: Meditation, then, is prayer, but is prayer from WITHIN the INNER self, and partakes not only of the physical inner man but the soul that is aroused by the spirit of man from within.
Well, that we consider this from INDIVIDUAL interpretation, as well as from group interpretation; or individual meditation and group meditation.
As has been given, there are DEFINITE conditions that arise from within the inner man when an individual enters into true or deep meditation. A physical condition happens, a physical activity takes place! Acting through what? Through that man has chosen to call the imaginative or the impulsive, and the sources of impulse are aroused by the shutting out of thought pertaining to activities or attributes of the carnal forces of man. That is true whether we are considering it from the group standpoint or the individual. Then, changes naturally take place when there is the arousing of that stimuli WITHIN the individual that has within it the seat of the soul's dwelling, within the individual body of the entity or man, and then this partakes of the individuality rather than the personality.
If there has been set the mark (mark meaning here the image that is raised by the individual in its imaginative and impulse force) such that it takes the form of the ideal the individual is holding as its standard to be raised to, within the individual as well as to all forces and powers that are magnified or to be magnified in the world from without, THEN the individual (or the image) bears the mark of the Lamb, or the Christ, or the Holy One, or the Son, or any of the names we may have given to that which ENABLES the individual to enter THROUGH IT into the very presence of that which is the creative force from within itself - see?
Some have so overshadowed themselves by abuses of the mental attributes of the body as to make scars, rather than the mark, so that only an imperfect image may be raised within themselves that may rise no higher than the arousing of the carnal desires within the individual body. We are speaking individually, of course; we haven't raised it to where it may be disseminated, for remember it rises from the glands known in the body as the lyden, or to the lyden [Leydig] and through the reproductive forces themselves, which are the very essence of Life itself within an individual - see? for these functionings never reach that position or place that they do not continue to secrete that which makes for virility to an individual physical body. Now we are speaking of conditions from without and from within!
The spirit and the soul is within its encasement, or its temple within the body of the individual - see? With the arousing then of this image, it rises along that which is known as the Appian Way, or the pineal center, to the base of the BRAIN, that it may be disseminated to those centers that give activity to the whole of the mental and physical being. It rises then to the hidden eye in the center of the brain system, or is felt in the forefront of the head, or in the place just above the real face - or bridge of nose, see?
Do not be confused by the terms that we are necessarily using to give the exact location of the activities of these conditions within the individuals, that we may make this clarified for individuals.
When an individual then enters into deep meditation:
It has been found throughout the ages (INDIVIDUALS have found) that self-preparation (to THEM) is necessary. To some it is necessary that the body be cleansed with pure water, that certain types of breathing are taken, that there may be an even balance in the whole of the respiratory system, that the circulation becomes normal in its flow through the body, that certain or definite odors produce those conditions (or are conducive to producing of conditions) that allay or stimulate the activity of portions of the system, that the more carnal or more material sources are laid aside, or the whole of the body is PURIFIED so that the purity of thought as it rises has less to work against in its dissemination of that it brings to the whole of the system, in its rising through the whole of these centers, stations or places along the body. To be sure, these are conducive; as are also certain incantations, as a drone of certain sounds, as the tolling of certain tones, bells, cymbals, drums, or various kinds of skins. Though we may as higher thought individuals find some fault with those called savages, they produce or arouse or bring within themselves - just as we have known, do know, that there may be raised through the battle-cry, there may be raised through the using of certain words or things, the passion or the thirst for destructive forces. Just the same may there be raised, not sedative to these but a CLEANSING of the body.
"Consecrate yourselves this day that ye may on the morrow present yourselves before the Lord that He may speak through YOU!" is not amiss. So, to ALL there may be given:
FIND that which is to YOURSELF the more certain way to your consciousness of PURIFYING body and mind, before ye attempt to enter into the meditation as to raise the image of that through which ye are seeking to know the will or the activity of the Creative Forces; for ye are RAISING in meditation actual CREATION taking place within the inner self!
When one has found that which to self cleanses the body, whether from the keeping away from certain foods or from certain associations (either man or woman), or from those thoughts and activities that would hinder that which is to be raised from FINDING its full measure of expression in the INNER man (INNER man, or inner individual, man or woman, meaning in this sense those radial senses from which, or centers from which all the physical organs, the mental organs, receive their stimuli for activity), we readily see how, then, IN meditation (when one has so purified self) that HEALING OF EVERY kind and nature may be disseminated on the wings of thought, that are so much a thing - and so little considered by the tongue that speaks without taking into consideration what may be the end thereof!
Now, when one has cleansed self, in whatever manner it may be, there may be no fear that it will become so overpowering that it will cause any physical or mental disorder. It is WITHOUT the cleansing that entering any such finds ANY type or form of disaster, or of pain, or of any dis-ease of any nature. It is when the thoughts, then, or when the cleansings of GROUP meditations are conflicting that such meditations call on the higher forces raised within self for manifestations and bring those conditions that either draw one closer to another or make for that which shadows [shatters?] much in the experiences of others; hence short group meditations with a CENTRAL thought around some individual idea, or either in words, incantations, or by following the speech of one sincere in abilities, efforts or desires to raise a cooperative activity IN the minds, would be the better.
Then, as one formula - not the only one, to be sure - for an individual that would enter into meditation for self, for others:
Cleanse the body with pure water. Sit or lie in an easy position, without binding garments about the body. Breathe in through the right nostril three times, and exhale through the mouth. Breathe in three times through the left nostril and exhale through the right. Then, either with the aid of a low music, or the incantation of that which carries self deeper - deeper - to the seeing, feeling, experiencing of that image in the creative forces of love, enter into the Holy of Holies. As self feels or experiences the raising of this, see it disseminated through the INNER eye (not the carnal eye) to that which will bring the greater understanding in meeting every condition in the experience of the body. Then listen to the music that is made as each center of thine own body responds to that new creative force that little by little this entering in will enable self to renew all that is necessary - in Him.
First, CLEANSE the room; cleanse the body; cleanse the surroundings, in thought, in act! Approach not the inner man, or the inner self, with a grudge or an unkind thought held against ANY man! or do so to thine own undoing sooner or later!
Prayer and meditation:
Prayer is the concerted effort of the physical consciousness to become attuned to the consciousness of the Creator, either collectively or individually! MEDITATION is EMPTYING self of all that hinders the creative forces from rising along the natural channels of the physical man to be disseminated through those centers and sources that create the activities of the physical, the mental, the spiritual man; properly done must make one STRONGER mentally, physically, for has it not been given? He went in the strength of that meat received for many days? Was it not given by Him who has shown us the Way, "I have had meat that ye know not of"? As we give out, so does the WHOLE of man - physically and mentally become depleted, yet in entering into the silence, entering into the silence in meditation, with a clean hand, a clean body, a clean mind, we may receive that strength and power that fits each individual, each soul, for a greater activity in this material world.
"Be not afraid, it is I." Be sure it is Him we worship that we raise in our inner selves for the dissemination; for, as He gave, "Ye must eat of my BODY; ye must drink of MY blood." Raising then in the inner self that image of the Christ, love of the God-Consciousness, is MAKING the body so cleansed as to be barred against all powers that would in any manner hinder.
Be thou CLEAN, in Him.
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