Section V

Selecting and Working with a Personal Spiritual Discipline

Having completed the reading material for this course, you have already noted that all the material in some way emphasizes the theme of this course: following spiritual disciplines and focusing on spiritual growth does have a direct bearing on the development and use of intuitive ability. Now you are ready for the practical application part of the course -- designing and following a spiritual discipline and tracking your intuitive experiences for the next six months.

1) Select your Spiritual Discipline You may have some spiritual disciplines such as prayer and meditation that you have been following for many years. Feel free to incorporate those elements into your discipline for the next six months.

Hopefully you will have discovered other ideas from the reading material or the panel discussion that you wish to experiment with for the next six months. We encourage you to select at least one new idea to incorporate into your discipline.

Decide which elements you want to work with for the next six months and determine how much time you will spend each week. Write this down so you have in front of you your personal spiritual discipline.

2) Call an Institute Staff Member When you have completed step one, call the Edgar Cayce Institute for Intuitive Studies 757-428-3588 ext. 7192 to discuss your discipline with a staff member. This call will probably last no longer than ten minutes.

The primary purpose for this call is to briefly discuss out loud with an objective source your reasons for selecting the discipline you did. The Institute staff member will probably ask you which elements of your discipline are new and which you have worked with for a while. They may or may not raise other questions or give you suggestions that might help you as you begin your practice. Remember the primary purpose is for you to state out loud with someone what you intend to do and why.

3) Begin your practice and keep weekly log sheets on what is happening Following this page you will find 26 log sheets -- one for each week for the next six months. These are for your personal records, and you will not be asked to turn them in as part of your course work. However, during your final phone call at the end of the course you will be asked to summarize your experiences. These sheets should give you a record to enable you to do that.

As you proceed, let the process unfold naturally and try not to force things to happen. Some weeks you might only fill in the first question on the sheets. Other weeks you might fill in all questions and even end up writing on the back. It might be that major breakthroughs and insights will come only months after you have completed this course.

The primary purpose of the sheets is to make you aware of the process that Edgar Cayce said would happen over time. Don’t try to force major experiences to happen in the six months you are taking this course. As we said in the introduction, working with the Cayce process for intuitive development is a life-long process of awareness and growth. Completing a course does not mean an end but only another step in a continual process.

4) Call the Institute to arrange for a final phone conversation At the end of six months call the Institute and arrange for your final thirty minute phone call. During this call you will discuss with an Institute staff member your answers to certain questions from Part I of the course and a summary of your experiences with your spiritual discipline.