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approach is a kind of evil. Christ Consciousness creates a meeting ground for the two extremes, creating a life that integrates the mystical with the mundane.

    Aggression and invasion. We think of these terms in connection with warfare, but all human relations have the potential for these forms of evil. We try to subvert the free will of others by overpowering them with our own will. One gift of authentic practical spirituality is the capacity to stand up for oneself (and one’s ideals) with integrity but without becoming aggressive and invasive in the process.

    Transformation. Here is a particularly hopeful way of viewing evil. Evil is something that just falls short of the mark, just misses it. “How far, then, is ungodliness from godliness? Just under, that’s all!” (254-68). That doesn’t mean ignore the fact that evil falls short; it means stay engaged with anything ungodly and keep working to transform it. Sometimes, only a mere readjustment is required.

    For example, an individual might have a destructive tendency to manipulate others, but that trait may be just short of something that is constructive and healthy. While he may have a talent for motivating people, that talent has become distorted or is being misused in such a way that it qualifies as manipulation. Instead of rejecting that manipulative trait, he can uplift and transform it into its full potential. If he only tries to suppress the fault, he will miss out on a valuable side of himself.

    Rebellion and willfulness. This is Edgar Cayce’s most fundamental idea about evil. We are given the choice daily between good and evil. Perhaps what tips the scale toward evil is rebellious willfulness, as Gerald May refers to it in his 1987 book Will and Spirit. “Evil seeks to mislead or fool one into substituting willfulness for willingness, mastery for surrender.”

    And so the choices are always ours in the big and little decisions we make each day in response to evil. As concerned as we must be about evil on the national and international scale, an essential principle Cayce challenges us to look at is our own relationship to these very themes.

12. Learn to stand up for yourself; learn to say no when it’s needed.

    Life-affirmation is great, but sometimes we must learn to say no before we can say yes. Hearing this may give us pause, fearing that we’re about to go down a path to negativity. Do we really want to honor negation in this way? But, in fact, a higher degree of mental health is required to set boundaries and define ourselves with a no.

    Consider Cayce’s bold advice: “So live each and every day that you may look any man in the face and tell him to go to hell!” (1739-6). People usually laugh nervously when they first hear this passage. Surely this is not Edgar Cayce, the life-affirming spiritual counselor, saying something like this! Perhaps it’s just another example of his wry humor. But Cayce was dead serious about the need for us to define and defend our boundaries vigorously, and sometimes that means telling someone to go to hell. More often, it’s enough to just firmly say no, letting it be known who you are and how you need to be treated.

    It’s all a matter of affirming one’s personhood. Beneath the negation there is actually a more significant affirmation of something. The point is this: There is no love and no intimacy with others unless we can first define our own boundaries. Saying no is a matter of the most basic practical spirituality. Then, from that position of relative strength, we can enter into relationship with another individual. As strange as it may sound, loving someone may start by stepping back, saying no, defining oneself, and then reaching out and building an authentic bridge to that person.

    This sounds a lot like self-assertion, as popularized in modern psychological practice and as Edgar Cayce himself sometimes advocated. One good example was advice given to a thirty-four-year-old machinist foreman