I was given this article by Jon Shatat, who got it from a 'Group Starter' in the 'States',  and I thought it was a great article to share.

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Hugh Lynn came to Toronto a few times and he was wonderful to listen to and helped start so many groups in Canada.  60 in Toronto.

Enjoy! 

Nan

(Excerpts from his lecture)
"My Experiences in the Original Search for God Groups"
given on June 8, 1981

In February of 1931, Edgar Cayce's dreams collapsed, completely. The hospital that had been
operating for three years, that had doctors, M.D.'s, osteopaths, x-ray equipment, etc., was closed.
Atlantic University closed. For a while, we thought Edgar Cayce was going to die. He wanted to die. And,
in my mind at least, it was the Study Group, the first Study Group, that saved his life. It's about this Group that I want to talk.
It was an unlikely collection of people. This group of people wanted to get readings, but
they had questions to ask, and they wanted to know what to do at this point. Everything looked like it
was going out the window—and they wanted to ask questions. They did not have in mind, at the first
meeting, any idea of what was going to be proposed in that first reading for them, and what this was to
lead to for the Association. It was a new development, a new direction.
Edgar Cayce proposed in that first reading that the group put together a book to be later called
A Search for God and that they begin work with the discipline of meditation. The readings proposed a
subject for each of the essays, or chapters, in the Search for God. They would give a short discourse
and an affirmation which was to be used as a meditation. The group wished to work on this and to write
up their experiences in trying to apply, in their lives, the suggestions that the found in this reading on
the spiritual law—cooperation. Their writings are now the twenty-four chapters of A Search for God,
Books I and II.
This Group had never written anything, any of them. We were in the throes of the Depression.
There were no regular salaries or income, and we were just beginning to pick up the pieces of a very
shattered dream. As we talked with each other and shared ideas and concepts, in this small group, it
boiled down, finally, to twelve people who really did most of the work.
Dad participated in all of the discussions, and he made contributions of own, consciously—wrote
on the typewriter with two fingers, selections to be turned in to the compilers. Some of his material, at
a conscious level, is part of the Search for God material, both in Books I and II. His was edited just as
strictly as the rest of them. He was very much a part of the discussions, and the contributions, and the
meditations. He woke the members of Group #1 for a time, until they got into the habit of meditating
every morning. He offered to do this. It must have been a very powerful suggestion, because every one
of them woke up at the proper hour in the morning.
The meditations that these people began to work with, the material, and the discussions that
they held in their regular meetings stirred individual members of the Group. Some strange and
interesting things happened to these people. They became, many of them, very, very psychic, very
sensitive. We don't today make a great effort at telling you that if you get in a Study Group you can get
to be just as psychic as you want. But, in my mind, this is absolutely true. I don't think it's any problem
at all for the average person to become psychic. It's what you do with it after you begin to be psychic
that becomes important.
Esther Wynne used to get hunches about where to go to start Groups. It was an absolute inner
knowing that she expressed in terms of these intuitive flashes, and who to talk to. She would write to
these people, and they would invite her, and she would take off and go start a Group. And this began to
extend itself clear across the United States. As she phrased it, "It came to me . . . it came to me."
Ruth Lenoir had another kind of direction and guidance. It was a practical kind of ESP. She had a feeling
for action, and when she obeyed these, it worked for her.
There was another lady in the group who was the director or head of the healing group or the
prayer group that formed within the first Search for God Group. Florence Edmunds became a channel
for healing. I was a party to a number of the experiences that she participated in where she was used as
a channel for instantaneous and direct healing. She did it in Jesus' name, of course. She was a channel
for healing, not somebody that was a healer. And there is a difference.
What was Edgar Cayce trying to do through this first A.R.E. Search for God Study Group? It
wasn't just to proclaim a system of teaching of some kind, because you have trouble even reading the
Search for God material. The ideas, the concepts are fairly simple. When you try to put the concepts
into action, in a daily life, there seems to be something else that takes place and happens. There are
literally thousands of people getting help—inspiration, guidance, healing—people who are beginning to
move who say simply, if you ask them, "It's changed my life." We have a job to do here, and we need to
discover what it is. Then we need to do it as diligently as we know how. There are many in these Groups
who found that it was a privilege and an opportunity to share the results that we found in our lives as we
tried to put these principles, these laws, these spiritual concepts, into daily action.
Why do you start out with cooperation? Now, the cooperation isn't just any old cooperation: it's
cooperation with God, of course, Not only God in the Universe, but God in other people. And that
requires some very specific hard work. You look at that affirmation and, if you dare, meditate on it for a
month. You will begin to discover that it has a great deal to say. It's about being a channel of blessing
today, now, to those you contact in every way. This means everything to everybody. For some of us can
do just a little, and some of us can do a great deal, depending on the talents, and the abilities, and the
knowledge, and the power, and the money, and all the things that are at our disposal that God has made
available to us.
It's quite different for each one of us, but the principle, the basic principle is the same:
"To love and to serve one's fellow man in a practical everyday way." When you begin to do that, God will
give you, as a natural result of aligning yourself with the Universal Laws, an opportunity to serve in far
greater capacities and directions than you ever dreamed was possible. I've watched it change the lives
of thousands and thousands of people. All you have to do is try it.
Now, some of you think you've got a whole lot better stuff than what's in that book. It's not
what's in there. It's the principles that are there, the simple statement of basic spiritual law. And when
we begin to align ourselves with them, anything can be accomplished. There is a support of the energies
that have been generated in the Group, as you work with each other, pray for each other, meditate
together daily and then at meetings; as you share concepts, and discuss and try to understand the laws,
and then begin to try to go out and practice a little bit. Try them out. Work with them. And come back
and share your failures and your successes at a daily level.
I strongly recommend that you take a look at the Group work
and consider it a part of your life.
To me, it is the most vital part of A.R.E., without question.
To me, the real work of A.R.E.
in terms of loving, and caring, and serving God,
is in that Study Group work.
Try it.
You might like it.

Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993-2007 By the Edgar Cayce Foundation All rights reserved.
Text and materials copyright the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc