today. Rarely do I know immediately what that something is. My job is to pay attention to that person carefully enough that I can sense his or her needs and be responsive.”
But there were many mornings when he posed the inner question; and as he tried to listen, nothing came. It was tempting on those mornings to feel like he had failed, but he had to remind himself of the deeper purpose to this one minute positive habit described by Cayce. The real goal was to get in touch with a certain openness to being guided and shown the way. Even if the message or the guidance didn’t come in that first minute, he still had gotten in touch with his willingness to be directed. If he could trust that the direction would come, then often it did in the first few hours of day.
He reported one typical episode. “A good example of this process happened to me this week. Monday morning I followed the Cayce prescription for how to start the day, but at the end of that minute, no particular guidance came to me. I knew I had made a good connection with the part of me that is willing to be guided. However, at that point, no direction came forth. An hour and a half later I was on my way to work, ready for what was sure to be a very busy and demanding week of work. Within the first thirty minutes of being at the office, I received my guidance. It became very obvious what God wanted me to do that day.
“The message came as an event, a sort of synchronistic occurrence. I was surprised to suddenly confront in the hallway a fellow employee with whom I’d been having lots of trouble lately. He works in another building of our company’s complex, and I almost never see him in the building where I work. My surprise at seeing him was quickly replaced by an inner knowing: working through my resentments and frustrations with him was the number one priority for the day. I found it natural and easy to say to him, ‘ When you’re finished with what you’re doing, can you come up to my office for a few minutes?’
“Ten minutes later we were alone together. What followed during the next half hour was a healing experience for both of us. There were tense moments as we talked about recent situations in which we had misunderstood each other’s motives. One thing especially helped me during those times: I remembered my early morning one minute positive habit. I’d take one slow centering breath, try to remember my own best self and his, and then try to make as reconciling a response as I could. In the end he left to go back to his office, and I’m sure that we both felt that our relationship was now better than it had ever been before. And I’m just as sure that none of this could have turned out so well without that creative habit for starting my day right.”
APPLYING THIS POSITIVE HABIT TO YOUR LIFE
Make a commitment for one week to start the day right. Each morning of the test period, upon first awakening, dedicate the first minute or two to this positive habit. You may find it helpful to get yourself fully awake by focusing all your attention initially on about three slow, deep breaths. Then invite a memory of your individuality self to surface. Silently say the words “my best self” or “individuality self” and be still for a moment until a specific memory comes to mind. When one does, take about fifteen seconds to vividly recall the situation or event. Reexperience how it feels to be that part of yourself.
Finally pose the request for guidance. Use whatever version of these words works best for you: God, what would You have me do this day? Then be inwardly alert for an inspiration or intuition. It may come as a reminder of a certain person, suggesting that this relationship is a priority for your day. The guidance might come as a feeling about the importance of a certain task or as the need for a certain quality to be expressed often during the day.
If nothing specific comes, that’s OK, too. What’s important is having made a connection with your individuality self and having affirmed your willingness to receive direction. As you stay mindful and attentive, the direction is likely to come soon.
Postive Habit #2
Three-Minute Meditation
Meditation has long been a tool of spiritually centered people. It offers a connection to a higher power, and it awakens a calming, harmonizing influence. Contrary to some beliefs, meditation does not take years of practice and discipline to achieve results. Nor does it require long periods of uninterrupted time. The positive habit of a regular meditation session may be more within our reach than many people have thought.
For most, the biggest obstacle is just finding the time to do it. It can be difficult when we are busy to squeeze in yet another activity. Or, even when we have had some success with a regular practice, some crisis or unexpected demand can quickly have us shifting priorities, and suddenly the steady meditation discipline is lost. Or, sometimes the obstacle is merely fatigue. When we are tired from a long day, spiritual practices are sometimes the first thing to be cut out of the evening’s schedule.
The start to a remedy for all these problems is to redefine what we are expecting of ourselves and expecting from the meditation period itself. Perhaps a more modest and simplistic set of expectation will allow us to keep the positive habit going. It is important to make that inward, meditative connection, even if it is just for a short amount of time daily.
If you’re already a regular meditator, or even an occasional one, you know the calming, centering impact of this spiritual discipline. But the idea of very short meditation sessions may push some of your alarm buttons. You might find yourself protesting that there are no shortcuts to inner growth. In a world of fast foods and convenience stores, surely spiritual development won’t succumb to modern impatience, too! Didn’t Edgar Cayce frequently prescribe patience and continually emphasize that it was only by slow, steady effort that one progresses to higher states of consciousness?
Patience is crucial, but the idea of making spiritual connections in as brief a time as three minutes doesn’t necessarily imply shortcuts. The path to enlightenment takes years of dedication, and there are no tricks. However, the idea of condensing your meditation time is based on a basic concept—simply that living in a hectic world doesn’t mean you have to give up your meditation life. Positive effects can be achieved from relatively brief times of focused silence—perhaps much briefer than you would have anticipated.
Cayce’s suggestions to some people about the positive habit of meditation indicate that maybe as little as three minutes is all the investment of time you have to make, at least to keep the momentum going each day. Some day—maybe many days—you might find it possible to have those fifteen- or thirty-minute meditation periods, the timeframe that many people have discovered is necessary to make the deepest kind of inner connection. And if you have already found a way to set aside those more lengthy periods daily for meditation, then you’ll want to keep up that invaluable discipline. These mini-meditations are not meant to replace the more lengthy ones. But for you, an additional three-minute meditation—strategically timed for a moment in your hectic day when you need to disengage from the stress—can work wonders. In fact, one research study done with several hundred meditators—experienced and inexperienced—reached an important conclusion. The researchers discovered that those who got the best results from Cayce’s recommendation for miniature meditation periods were the people who already had going a regular meditation discipline of fifteen to thirty minutes daily. The novice meditators had significant success, too; but not as dramatic as those who were already experienced meditators.
Consider just how reasonable it really is to find those three minutes daily for this crucial recentering habit. Aren’t there frequent instances daily when you waste three minutes or spend that amount of time superficially—reading a mindless article, watching a little more television than is necessary, complaining about how you were mistreated earlier in the day. What happens if you remember that you have an option for how to spend that time and creative energy? As an alternative, you can find a spot to yourself, close your eyes and quiet down, and then make a connection to your more authentic self.
It boils down to developing the habit to take three minutes out of a hectic or confusing day and to refocus on what’s best within you. Maybe that means taking three minutes before breakfast; or perhaps,