Have We Lived Before?    Just what is the nature of humankind?   This same question, framed in dozens of different approaches, was asked repeatedly of Edgar Cayce.   His answers-insights into our relationship with God, one another, and ourselves-have served as a foundation for comparative studies between the East and the West for decades.

From Cayce's perspective, we are not simply physical bodies [as the atheists believe] or even physical bodies with souls [as the anti-abortionists believe], but are instead [as the Eastern religions teach] spiritual beings who are currently having a material experience.   As souls, we have manifested in the earth in order to learn lessons that will enable us to return to our former state of spiritual awareness.   At the same time, the one purpose we all have in common is to bring the spirituality of the Creator into the earth.

A soul can choose to be born into either a male or a female body in any given lifetime or, as Cayce called it, an incarnation.   A soul selects that environment (parents and family, location, personal obstacles, etc.) which will best allow for the learning of lessons it needs for completeness.   The goal is to fully express love in all the challenges which physical life offers.   One's experiences are subject to the choices made with free will.   As one grows, he or she learns-or rather remembers-his or her true relationship with God and one's heritage as a spiritual being.   With free will, we can turn the challenges life presents to us into stepping-stones toward growth, or we can see them as obstacles and stumbling blocks.   Either way, we reap what we have sown.  We constantly meet the consequences of previous deeds and attitudes.

'God' is an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known.   But the transcendent is unknown and unknowable. . .   We want to think about God.   God is a thought.   God is a name.   God is an idea but its reference is to something that transcends thinking.   The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all thought.   As Kant said, the thing in itself is no thing.   It transcends thingness, it goes past anything that could be thought.   The best things can't be told because they transcend thought.   The second best are misunderstood because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about.   The third best are what we talk about.   And myth is that field of reference to what is absolutely transcendent. 

Reference:  Spiritual Awareness° 

This is not the Jewish text referred to as the Kabala. 

It explains in great detail The Seven Hermitic Principles.  The entire book in it's original writing is available on the internet at the address above.

An overview of these principles can be found on our Personal Success Coaching  web site at:  http://www.joy101.org/03-7-hermetic-principles.html 

This is one of the best books ever written about the nature of human reality.   Seth, the energy being who communicated through Jane Roberts, explains the way the universe functions and how humans can function effectively within that reality.  For  example:

"You are Gods couched in creaturehood.  You are a multidimensional personality.  Trust the miracle of your own being.   Make no divisions between the physical and the spiritual in your lifetimes, for the spiritual speaks with a physical voice and the corporeal body is the creation of the spirit."

Abraham, the energy being who communicates through Ester Hicks, describe in great detail the nature of Earthly reality.  He describes how humans relate to their environment  and how to use the three universal laws to consciously create your personal reality, even in the midst of the chaotic times we live in.   These books parallel the work of Jane Roberts and offer the same laws and principle couched in different language.

If humans were to be born with a set of easy to understand instruction manuals these two books would be included.

If you were to ask me how would I summarize my thirty years of religious, spiritual, metaphysical study, I'd answer, Neal Donald Walsh has already done so in his trilogy, Conversations with God.