circumstances of their given life situation has been shaped by prior lives. In one particular reading, presented in Woodward (1986), Cayce gives a reading for a woman who, in a past life, came to America in order to escape religious persecution.
Cayce notes that her attitudes toward those persecuting her were very unloving, marked by feelings of bitterness and a strongly rebellious character. These negative attitudes, he stated, resurfaced whenever in her present life she met people that were involved with her persecution in her past life; and since people with unresolved issues tend to be reborn together, the consequence was that she experienced a good deal of conflict in many of her current relationships, conflict in which rebelliousness and bitterness were a strong part.
Edgar Cayce's readings often stated that physical defects or diseases were karmic conditions. An example of this can be seen in a reading given in Wood
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