Edgar Cayce and the Almond Tree
As one advances in age it is inevitable that one would have to contend with some health issues. Some that I have faced in recent years is reduced energy, occasional disturbed sleep, stiffness in muscles and occasional lapses of short-term memory. However if one works on these or other such health issues it is definitely possible to improve the situation. It is wonderful if one can age gracefully without any major health issues and move on to the next world when still physically independent. It is tragic and basically bad karma if one undergoes a prolonged disability requiring help or hospitalization before exit from this life. There is much about karma in older posts.
I do not rely on modern medicine and allopathic methods for chronic and minor ailments. For me allopathic methods are a resort for acute conditions, emergency or diagnosis. Therefore I have been working on my health issues through more natural means such as diet, exercise, yoga, life style changes, water, air and sunshine. Food is a medicine but water, air and sunshine are even more so.
One of the methods I tried for improving sleep was to try different sleep directions and there is a post on that in this blog. Although it did help, the problem was that the head of my bed is against the north wall and shifting the pillow to the foot of the bed meant that one or both the pillows kept falling to the floor and it did not feel right not to have the security of the wall and head board behind the pillow. Eventually I returned to head pointing north. If I get an opportunity to design and construct another home next time around I shall ensure that the bedrooms permit keeping the head of the bed pointing south or east. More recently, with the help of simple mantra meditation I have had sound sleep whatever the head direction.
As regards, muscle stiffness and reduced energy some headway was made with moderate exercise but I have to admit that I am not very disciplined in this direction and miss out on exercise more often than I comply. This is something that will have to be dealt with in the near future.
On the diet side I found an interesting and well-argued Japanese study on the Internet on the benefits of vinegar added in small quantities to drinking water to relieve fatigue. I experimented with adding quantities varying from half a tea spoon to a full table spoon to a glass of water, Surprisingly as described in the study the method worked very well for removing muscle and bone stiffness and reducing fatigue the first time and for the first few days. After that the benefit reduced much so I have discontinued with this practice now. Perhaps the body chemistry adjusts quickly to new acidity levels in water and the benefit is lost.
I was initially lead to explore vinegar because of a psychic message one night that ordained adding a drop of vinegar to a glass of water but as with many psychic messages this one was received during sleep and such messages are rarely hundred percent clear. Based on the Japanese study and scientific logic, I had chosen half a tea spoon or so. Just today I realized that there might be something more in the original psychic message than I had realized. My water source is probably a bit on the alkaline side and even a drop of vinegar might have the effect of altering ph of water in a beneficial direction. I have yet to introduce this practice in my routine though. The full effects of water ph on health are not yet known to science.
As regards occasional short-term memory loss, the worry for a person past fifty or sixty is that with further advance in age the problem can worsen and in severe cases result in Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore based on ancient medicinal knowledge from India my mind turned to consuming five or so almonds soaked overnight in water. One may mention that based on my past knowledge, almonds that are pre-shelled or those with very fragile outer covers are not the best for the purpose. Contact with air apparently reduces medicinal benefits of almonds. The best are the old small traditional almonds with hard shells procured with their shells on. These have to be shelled daily just prior to soaking. The difficulty I faced in acquiring these is that I live in a modern part of the city with modern stores and the only kinds of almonds they carried were pre-shelled large ones. These last make eminent business sense for the grower and the retailer. Therefore last month I made a trip to the traditional old part of the city. It has many shops that carry traditional goods and here I easily found the right kind of hard almonds intact with their shells on. This story is a warning that, often when we rely on ancient knowledge of foods one must watch out that the modern variant may not be quite the same. This is true of honey as well and apparently only wild honey has the medicinal value prescribed in old texts. Alas, that is available with great difficulty nowadays so one has to do without honey. It seems that while five or so soaked almonds are good for memory; they are even more effective if consumed with a spoonful of true wild honey if you can find it. Nevertheless ever since I have started consuming these soaked almonds even without the honey, there has been a full improvement in memory as well as mental clarity. Besides soaked almonds even dry ones are good for health and I consume about ten almonds a day, five dry while shelling and five soaked. Overall this combined practice has improved memory, mental clarity and reduced fatigue as well as improved sleep. If you attempt this practice do not discard the soaked skin of the almond because some beneficial chemicals are contained in the skin too.
Another great aid for reversing Alzheimer is the use of coconut oil as your cooking oil. Just fry some bread in it for a nice hot sandwich at lunch daily.
Edgar Cayce, a modern Christian mystic was a great proponent of the concept that an almond a day keeps the doctor away and that almonds will keep away cancer. A larger number, three or four, makes up the deficiency produced by not consuming meat without the simultaneous ill effects of meat consumption. I have great regards for Edgar Cayce as a modern Christian mystic and many of his health ideas have been proven subsequently by science after Edgar Cayce’s death. However, Edgar Cayce was a human and I do not accept everything he proclaimed. He made errors too. One of his beliefs I do not subscribe to is that humans cannot reincarnate as animals. In my belief system inter species reincarnation also takes place from time to time. Another article in this blog explains how and why animals lost their souls when Christinaity reached Europe here:
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2014/05/when-all-animals-lost-their-souls.html
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2014/05/when-all-animals-lost-their-souls.html
Edgar Cayce was very popular and highly respected in my childhood hometown Nainital in the earlier part of the previous century. This town has been associated with other Christian Mystics too. Another one- Robert Llewlyn has been described in my blog on Nainital at http://nainitalgoddess.blogspot.in/2010/09/kriya-yoga-as-taught-by-baba-haidakhan.html. You would find many references to Nainital in older posts of this blog as well as the companion one. According to Edgar Cayce the almond tree as well as almonds are spiritually beneficial too. I can easily accept that because the almond tree is one of the finest that grows on our planet – a truly heavenly tree just as the rose is a heavenly flower bush. Both belong to a similar botanical family. There is an earlier post on that in this blog.
Even though Edgar Cayce was a Christian mystic he did not confine himself to any conventional church dogma or theories. With true mystics there are only minor differences between beliefs from different religions whether they be Muslims, Christians, Buddhists or Hindus. The Muslim mystics are known as Sufis and persons of all religions in the east respect Sufi saints. However, mystics retain some concepts from their original religions. Perhaps this explains why Edgar Cayce subscribed to his restricted reincarnation theory. His meditation mantra was a variation of a Hindu Mantra – Hare Om. Just the word Om is also a Hindu mantra, but I too find it easier to chant ‘Hare Om’ rather than just ‘Om’ because it synchronizes more easily with breathing. More on such chanting meditation is posted in older posts of this blog.
One of the concerns with almonds is that some of them turn out to be bitter. The bitterness is caused by cyanide that is a poison. However I do not discard these but consume them too, because even some poisons in very small microscopic quantities may have some beneficial medicinal effect. Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why consuming almonds by the handfuls is not recommended. There is a perfectly good reason why a spiritually advanced tree like the almond tree produces a small proportion of bitter almonds. Do keep the number to under ten a day in case you become an almond eater.
Almonds are also a great aid for sleep. Simply add a tablespoon of ground almonds to a cup of hot milk for you night cap and sleep is likely to be sweet and deep. You may also add some natural sweetner and coco to the drink if you like.
The almond blossoms picture is from publicdomainpictures.net
Comments
The white flowers of almonds are very beautiful. I was reading this post thinking that it belonged to Rebb. So, I was wondering why a young person like Rebb complained about achy muscle and memory lost and so on. For some reason, both of your sites look similar on my cell phone. Maybe, it is my age also. I need to eat five more almonds a day.
Well, I've been eating five almonds a day because of your advice from the old post. But you eat 10, and you soak five of them in water. How long and why?
Many Japanese have the habit of eating one or two salty and sour plums a day with green tea and rice. I forget often, but I have a package of the plums in my refrigerator.
Short term memory loss can create a disaster such as leaving something on the stove to burn etc.
Keiko almonds contain a series of benificial chemicals and some of them apparently undergo transformation on soaking as to chemicals of all seeds. These changed chemicals have been held to be most benificial for memory by ancient health practitioners of the Himalayas where such trees are found.
I used to take five soaked almonds as a student on th recommendations of an aunt but now that I am taking these for more than memory. I take ten more as dry almonds that have their own benifits. Gives one something to do while one shells them. Are you able to find almonds with shells in your area? If not even shelled ones will provide partial benifits. My revised recommendation now based on further study and reflection is ten almonds, five dry five wet. Just soak them in the evening while preparing supper and consume them with the morning tea or breakfast. You could add them to your breakfast cereal too.
I do not about the full effects of plums now and in anycase I do not like most fresh fruit so I would skip these but I am certain they must have some benificial effect seeing the Japanese perfection with food and its effects. What are the traditional views on almonds in Japan or Japanese literature Keiok? If you could add that as a comment here it would cover much on this wonderful nut from around the world.
Hayden is planning on planting both almonds and filberts on her farm. She will have a fresh supply always and perhaps we will be able to convince her to send us a parcel every year in return for japanese tea and indian cinnamon.
Same with pasturisation of honey. It kills the most benificial aspect of it - enzymes - leaving mostly sugar that one can get easily and more cheaply as sugar.
I think a health enthusiast in california may have to contact a farmer for their unpasturised in shell supply.
"I take ten more as dry almonds that have their own benifits. "
should read:
"I take five more as dry almonds that have their own benifits."
The placement of these trees will be helpful and efficient. They will form the near side of the informal grass roadway I drive to get to the orchard along the fence line - so when I'm passing by, ready to spray the apples with compost tea, I can give a good squirt to these small trees along the way.
I, too, avoid allopathic care as much as possible. So far (knock on wood!) I appear to be in pretty good health. Too heavy, and some lifelong chronic issues with my feet, but other than that, all systems seem go.
Having recently researched bee keeping, I'm horrified by modern methods - way too much medical intervention. What seems obvious to me is that the bees are weak from malnutrition - they take way too much honey from them and force them to make do on sugar water. Recent studies of colony collapse disorder indicates that there is a gut problem with the bees. Given the poor nutrition, too many meds and too many pesticide contaminated blossoms, it's no surprise that they're vulnerable to problems.
I wonder how much your attitude to allopathic treatment is affected by the health care arrangements in your country. Here the National Health service is free and at my age I don't even have to pay for medications. So I have recently been its patient. I don't have any symptoms normally but had some sudden pains about which the NHS website said I must call an ambulance immediately. I didn't do that but booked to see my doctor. I ended up taking medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol. Allopathic medicine loves these because they have pills to reduce them and can monitor the success. This doesn't prove to me that there was anything wrong with me in the first place but the doctor is convinced that I'll live longer by protecting my heart and kidneys in this way. I don't know if it's the right thing long-term & wonder if there will be any side-effects, hidden or otherwise.
As for almonds, sleep direction and so forth, I wonder if you believe there is such a thing as "placebo effect"? If I appear like a sceptic on these matters I shall have to plead the excuse that for about fifteen years I tried many remedies and treatments for a chronic condition, none of which worked. But I was miraculously cured in a single talking session. I'm convinced that wasn't a vague general-purpose placebo effect but a trigger to a mental letting-go from something unresolved for 30 years.
I hope that you are drawn towards the appropriate treatments by your own intuition, because you are unique and if you listen to anyone else (including me) it's unlikely to do any good.
Anyhow, thanks for the wishes. I do feel pretty well.
Having said that the effects of natural foods is unlikely to be as rapid as an allopathic medicine and that is the route of choice if the condition is acute, to my mind. However in a chronic condition if one can wait and give nature a chance, it appears to be eminently worthwhile. First to avoid side effects and next to avoid dependency that increases dosage with time with more side effects (in some way as alcohol does) unit one may collapse. My doctor too noticed high blood pressure some years ago and prescribed a medicine. I threw it in the garbage even though the doctor was a good one. India is a country of diversity and we have medical services ranging from good to bad. The blood pressure has gone away now perhaps due to some herbal teas I found for it or on its own. I am quite certain that had I begun the medicine, the condition would have become permanent. My response would be the same for sugar, cholesterol etc. I have also suffered angina for a few years and strictly avoided intervention. That too has gone away now.
I am not in favor of a lot of modern allopathic treatments. These include root canals for teeth and much else but as I said I will go for allopathic incase the condition is acute.
When people worry about blood pressure, cholesterol and so on I ask them what did humans do a hundred years ago when they did not know such conditions existed and many lived happily into old age. I know life expectancy was low earlier but that was in the main because acute conditions and infections could not be addressed.
However in the end the decision must vary from individual to individual and I wish the best of health for you. My only request to all is to give nature a chance, have patience and have faith in Nature as a doctor too.
As regards your fatigue condition disappearing suddenly, it happens sometimes that a dam is about to break and just a little more water will cause the break. A minor trigger then can result in a miraculous cure.
Do give almonds a chance if for no other reason but because they are good food and delicious.
And it is so in other areas of life too - lawyers, engineers and so on.
The more desperate the human need the greater the human exploitation.
and it has been that way from the beginning of time. Greed drives much of this world. Only those charged with love escape. But then that sounds like a cliche that every saint has repeated!
It imples that the heart will be protected. It means that when you go, pardon my saying so, but all of us will go one day, that the chances of your going through heart failure will be lower and some other thing like cancer or degeneration of brain or liver etc. will take place.
It will imply that the chances of your going of peacefully through cardiac arrest will reduce and the chances of a slow painful condition will improve. I would not choose that. There is more on that in an older post "when heart disease is a blessing" in this blog.
Let us assume for a moment that the doctor is right that your chances of living longer will improve. Then the chances of spending some years as an old invalid unable to walk will increase because that happens to all very old people and the proportion of your time spent in this life as an able bodied person reduce. I would not want that for myself.
Please dont take my arguments in a contrary way. I wish long life for you but more than that I wish that all of it be when you are physically and mentally alert and when you go it is just peacefully and suddenly in bed one night onward to a new brighter life.
I know the sort of thinking here differs from the majority thinking but that is how spiritual thinking has always been.
An angel shall meet you on the way and ask your choices for the next life. You may now include Nainital as one of the choices since I have mentioned it in this blog :-)
Spiritual persons wish all others good health, peace happiness and the love of God.
I don't take your suggestions in a contrary way at all, and have no intention to go on artificially interfering with my body, which in fact is giving no cause for alarm (other than that one incident which I took as a sign urging me to action).
Your words are also a sign, pointing the other way.
I shall have to look deeper, where the signposts don't contradict one another!
As to the angel meeting me on the way, and choosing Nainital, I chose long ago not to visit India again in this life, never mind the next (which I don't believe in).
There are other western tourists though who want to come back again and again, I hear on TV, it is because there are parts that are worth doing that for and such persons probably went there.
Vincent, I can understand your not believing in in the next life, because one has not seen it and therefore it is easy to understand one not believing in it.
What confounds me though is not believing in the possibility of something without knowing what happens after one goes.
Ashok, I remember some time ago having a massage therapy session with a woman and she stunned me when she tried to bring my leg up while I was in a lying down position, and she said my physical body seemed much older—like twenty years older. I think I inherited something in the way of achy limbs, and possibly weak joints from my mother. I too do not go to regular doctors, unless I really have to. I have tried to be careful of my diet, but I’m not always successful. My job doesn’t help, as I sit at a desk and my shoulders, neck, jaw—and sometimes the whole right side is a knot. I try to get up often, but that doesn’t always help. But, this is something I try to deal with and work with. I have done a little bit of Yoga on my own, recently started meditating a little more often, and I have joined a gym and have been enjoying a dance class called Zumba where we do many different choreographed routines to Latin beats. I think this will help loosen up my body. They also have stretching and Yoga classes, but the Yoga classes are too full for my tastes, at least for now.
I’m glad to be reminded about the benefits of almonds. We used to have an almond tree in my grandmother’s backyard and we’d eat fresh almonds. I also recall her telling me to boil almonds in water, let the liquid cool, and swish it around in my mouth when I was having problems with my gums. I can’t remember exactly if it worked or not, but I would not doubt it. Also for fever, she would rest potato skins on our foreheads and it would help draw the fever out of the body.
If I remember from the food posts, Ashok, you like your fried foods. Hopefully, you eat those in moderation for overall health.
Many factors seem to play a role in overall health, but stress is a huge factor too. I have an extended family member whose spiritual practice does not rely on Western medicine. Unfortunately when she went for a routine check up one day, her blood pressure was so high, it caused them to take her to emergency. They prescribed her pills and such and she hesitantly took them. She is in her 80s. She took them for a couple of weeks, but they made her ill. Anyway, the short of it is, she stopped taking them. I think she was in a state of stress and being that it was the first time she had a doctor’s visit like that, it’s no wonder. She has an eye surgery in the near future and I reminded her to try and stay calm and breathe and hopefully they won’t try to make her take the pills again. So as of now, she is pill free.
I usually try to doctor myself. If I could afford it, I would have massage therapy sessions regularly. I know it would help. I try to massage myself. For the legs and arms, sometimes it helps, but not easy to get deep down in the shoulders. I’m sure though, that I will learn more movements as I take advantage of the new gym I have joined. They have a lot of great classes that are part of the membership. They also have some options, for a fee, that would probably be beneficial—one being Pilates. That would really stretch me out.
One end note on the Zumba class. Most of the folks are in their 50s and 60s. But the instructor said she teaches a class elsewhere and one of the participants is a woman in her 80s who has Parkinson’s. Apparently the class helps her. Also, I bet it helps her memory, since she would have to watch and do the moves, thus getting her brain engaged, while having fun. I was so inspired. 80 and doing Zumba! Amazing.
Good health to us all!
Glad to get such an informative response from you. You do seem to have the advantage and knowledge of natural healing that goes way back in your family. Thanks for reminding about fried foods. I knwo they are not good for health and avoid them mostly.
Sad to hear of your achy muscles. Often we inherit some of these things and then have to learn how to manage it. If you try the almond prescription here that will help too in ver many ways. It has helped me. If for no other reason because they are such good food.
The Dance class sounds great. In the end good health is really about healthy food, exercise lots of sunshine, freash air and most of all good relaxed thoughts rather than getting too tied up in diverse thoughts. Spending time in nature as you do provides all the fresh air, sunshine and relaxation of mind. That and the Dance should have you laughing all the way to the gym soon.
thanks for commenting on my blog. I have left a response there too. I look forward to reading some of your posts here!
Best wishes,
Finbarr