Spiritual Growth Study Groups

New! Our website now features a Google Map of Canada with the location of each E.C.C. Study Group clearly marked! Click here to view it. A word of warning: You seem to be using an obsolete version of Internet Explorer as your browser, and as a result you may not be able to view the new map or some of its features. If this is the case, you will need to install an up-to-date browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer 7. Just click on one of these links to learn how easy it is to download either of these browsers for free and install it on your computer in just a few minutes. (Tip: Firefox will take one-third of the download time, and is a better browser to view the ECC site.)

What is a Spiritual Growth Study Group?

Since 1931, individuals in North America have been meeting to discuss, debate, and apply the material contained in the Search for God study books. Literally hundreds of groups around the world have found the answers to questions that they sometimes could not even formulate.

In Canada, the first study groups directly associated with the Edgar Cayce readings began around 1975, and reached across the country.

When you become involved in a spiritual growth study group, your “personal venture inward” in the company of other seekers will enable you to:

• AWAKEN your inner guidance;
• DISCOVER tools for finding your purpose in life;
• TAP into your own source of personal empowerment;
• EXPLORE the outermost reaches of your intuition and your own inner self;
• SEE the world and your life as purposeful, with new eyes, see any problems that arise as opportunities for soul growth and personal development;
• SHARE your journey with, and learn from the journey of others.

How Did Study Groups Originate?

A group of ordinary people asked the “sleeping” Edgar Cayce in 1931 for a series of lessons that would enable them to work with spiritual principles they were discovering:

• Some wanted to discover their purpose in life
• Some wanted to know how to help the troubled world
• Some wanted to become psychic

In the first psychic reading to the group, Cayce offered a promise: if they were sincere in their desire and commitment, they could give “light to a waiting world.”

As Study Group #1 went on to author the first “A Search for God” study book, Cayce’s promise was fulfilled.

The First Study Group’s Covenant

• They would meditate every morning in their own homes;
• They would faithfully attempt to apply these lessons on spiritual laws suggested in the readings;
• They would submit questions about their own progress as well as questions on the lesson material to Cayce’s psychic source;
• They would attempt to live what was being studied;
• They would not move on to the next lesson until each individual in the group had learned, understood, and applied the lesson being studied.

This final pledge led the group into an extraordinary commitment of time and energy. The original series of twenty-four lessons outlined by Edgar Cayce took the group eleven years to apply and compile.

The first Search for God text was published in 1942.

In 1934 a Cayce reading told Study Group #1 that the life-changing insights of their experiences would still be helping people a hundred years into the future. Today, some seventy years later, that prediction is clearly being realized.

Small Group Study

Small group study provides a non-threatening, non-judgmental atmosphere in which individuals can begin to look at their lives - their belief systems, attitudes, habit patterns of all kinds, reactions to others and to the world around them.

One thing that sets the study groups apart from other group endeavours is that there is no leader, or teacher, or “guru” figure. The readings emphasize that the Master Teacher indwells all persons. Not that one or the other “teaches” anyone anything, but the sharing within a loving nurturing atmosphere benefits all members of the group.

Each study group is autonomous – free to  determine for itself when and where it will meet, how it will conduct its meetings, what it will study and how, and all other considerations involved in group activity.

If you are interested in exploring a Study Group, you have several options:

• To find an ECC Study Group which meets near you, check out our Study Group Map, which shows the location of all groups across Canada.
• If there isn’t a group in your area, you may be interested in starting one yourself. An 11-page information package on starting a study group is available here in PDF format.
• An International A.R.E. Online Study Group program was started in 1998 by Johanna Van Zwet, who lives in Belgium. A number of groups are now active; if you are interested in joining one, please to contact Johanna by email.
• Our Edgar Cayce Canada Study Group Manager, Ray Millard, can be contacted by telephone. The toll-free number is 1 (866) 322-8209; press “705” for Ray’s extension.
• For an email response, please fill out the form below and Ray will get back to you.