Discovering Your Soul's Purpose: Finding Your Path in Life, Work, and Personal Mission the Edgar Cayce Way, Second Edition - Softcover

Thurston PhD, Mark

 
9780143130857: Discovering Your Soul's Purpose: Finding Your Path in Life, Work, and Personal Mission the Edgar Cayce Way, Second Edition
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0143130854 ISBN 13: 9780143130857
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

A new edition of the classic guide to using the spiritual and psychological insights of renowned mystic and psychic Edgar Cayce to find your authentic mission in life.

The medical clairvoyant Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) left the world a wealth of intuiitive readings on everything from health and spirituality to psychology and past lives. Now the most significant teacher of Cayce's teachings, Mark Thurston, updates and revises his classic book, Discovering Your Soul's Purpose, to help you use the Cayce teachings in the twenty-first century to find greater purpose in your relationships, career, and overall mission in life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mark Thurston, Ph.D. is an educator, psychologist, and author of more than a dozen books about personal spirituality, dream psychology, meditation, and mind-body well-being.  Among his publications are The Essential Edgar Cayce (2004) and Willing to Change: The Journey of Personal Transformation (2005). Mark worked for the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) and Atlantic University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, for 36 years.  In 2009 he moved into a new phase of his own soul's purpose, becoming the Director of Educational Programs for George Mason University's Center for the Advancement of Well-Being. In that capacity he focuses on teaching undergraduate and graduate courses about consciousness, mindfulness, and the science of well-being. Mark and his wife of many decades Mary Elizabeth Lynch are co-founders of the Personal Transformation and Courage Institute, a non-profit educational organization begun in 2000 which offers small-group learning intensives. Mark and Mary Elizabeth are parents to two adult children.

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Chapter 1

Cooperation, Meaning, and Mission

Not my will but Thine, O Lord, be done in me and through me. Let me ever be a channel of blessings, today, now, to those that I contact in every way. Let my going in, my coming out be in accord with that Thou would have me do, and as the call comes, "Here am I, send me, use me." (262-3)

This prayerful affirmation provides a perfect foundation for understanding Cayce's approach to finding one's personal mission. It addresses free will, the importance of making a contribution to the well-being of others, and the sense of a call to a higher purpose. Cayce offered these words as a focal point for meditation, linked to the first step in the A Search for God soul-growth sequence.

In a sense, this affirmation about cooperation is a distillation of this entire book and the systematic steps to discover your soul's purpose. It invites you to understand the word cooperation in a distinctly spiritual way-something that hinges on right use of your free will. The affirmation invites you to consider how your own happiness and fulfillment are linked to the well-being of others. And the affirmation underscores how deep cooperation depends upon having an orientation of willingness in your life-willingness to respond to life as an interconnected whole with which you can cooperate.

Cooperation means more, though, than just being open to connections to something bigger than yourself. It is also about cooperating with yourself, as strange as that may sound. Consider for a moment how we often don't cooperate with ourselves. Most fundamentally, that noncooperative spirit is expressed as self-judgment and self-criticism. We are usually our own worst critic! And it's quite revolutionary to turn this tendency around and practice profound self-acceptance. Ultimately this first step-the shift to self-cooperation and healthy self-love-makes it possible for us to go on a search for meaning and purpose.

What does it feel like to practice self-acceptance? That kind of internal cooperation might feel spacious. We give ourselves the gift of having room to breathe, so to speak. Most of the time, our self-judgment and voices of self-criticism crowd in on us, leaving us feeling trapped and disappointed in life. On the other hand, when we can love ourselves and give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, that gentleness creates a whole new environment in which we can start to flourish. Just being kind to ourselves, just having deep respect for ourselves-these expressions of self-cooperation really are step number one in trying to find the soul's calling. Self-cooperation sets the stage for us to be able to address the deepest need of the soul: the need for meaning.

Meaning and the Soul

What do we need to survive? The list of obvious answers includes air, food, and shelter. We can never deny the inescapable fact that we have physical bodies, and survival depends on meeting their basic requirements.

However, something else distinguishes us from other creatures who have physical needs. That extra ingredient is an individual soul, and like the physical body, it must be nurtured to survive. The human soul may be invisible to scientific instruments, but each of us experiences its reality daily. Each time we say "I" to ourselves, we feel the presence of the soul. Every instance of aspiration, enthusiasm, or free will is an expression of our own soul nature. And yet, as real and immediate as the soul may be, it still needs nourishment and sustenance each day.

What is the air, food, and shelter of the soul? What keeps it alive and active? The answer is meaning. The human soul grows and develops as it can make sense of life and set aspirations for the future.

The Edgar Cayce readings returned to this point time and again as they advised people how to find happiness. The hundreds of people who received his guidance were given a promise that everything about life is meaningful. That promise extends to each of us. We are assured there is a rhyme and a reason to what happens to us.

When we stop to think about it, this is an amazing promise. So much goes on in our world that seems senseless. It's easy to be cynical because every day we are likely to learn about or directly encounter cruelty, dishonesty, and injustice. Not only do things often appear to be unfair, it's easy to conclude that nothing is really in charge, that life is random and pointless.

In almost every century of human history, some individuals have made a special effort to point out the signs of despair and chaos. They voice an ancient cry of hopelessness. However, other people have been able to look at the same events and conditions with a different perspective. They have spoken and written about the meaning of life. They have seen how both pleasant and unpleasant experiences are purposeful.

If we look at the twentieth century as an example-the century in which Edgar Cayce did his work-we can see both sides of the debate. For example, the first fifty years saw great tragedies and disasters, including two world wars and a global economic depression. There were ample reasons to despair. Yet during those same fifty years, there lived pioneers of a renewed sense of meaning for our own postindustrial society. Since then we have built on the creativity of these key individuals. Let's look briefly at three of them-Carl Jung, Edgar Cayce, and Viktor Frankl-and the new ideas they presented about the meaning of life.

Carl Jung and the Process of Individuation

Carl Jung was the founder of analytical psychology. A contemporary of Cayce, he was born in 1875, just two years before the clairvoyant whose work parallels his so closely. The son of a Swiss clergyman, Jung trained as a psychiatrist.

In his early professional years he was a supporter and protŽgŽ of Sigmund Freud. A rift, however, developed between the two, primarily over the question of the unconscious mind. Freud viewed the hidden side of the psyche as driven by repressed sexuality. And while Jung did not deny the findings of his teacher, colleague, and friend, he felt that something more lay within the unconscious aspect of every person. Research with his patients and the study of his own dreams convinced him that the unconscious also contains innate impulses toward wholeness and mental health.

Out of Jung's long career as a psychiatrist, teacher, and writer developed a psychology of the human soul. Rather than seeing spirituality and religion as an evasion of mental health, he recognized the need for psychiatry and faith to find a common ground. For him the answer lay in a synthesis of Eastern and Western religious traditions. He recognized that each of these two great streams of spirituality had something vital to offer humanity in its search for meaning.

Much of the history of the Western hemisphere has emphasized our physical existence as individual beings and the historical fact of the Christ. Jung felt that Christians are most likely to look outside themselves for a divine presence who can bestow grace. In contrast, the East has featured universality, timelessness, and the inner life. Jung put it this way: "The Oriental knows that redemption depends on the work he does on himself. The Tao grows out of the individual."

What is this mysterious Tao? Some have translated it as God or Providence. However, Jung believed that the best interpretation is meaning. In other words, those of us who live in the West must learn to appreciate that meaning grows out of our own...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0143130854
ISBN 13 
9780143130857
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
2
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Tarcher
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/search/tarcher?page=1&q=TARCHER

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