Tell the Truth

Archive for November, 2009

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

John 8:12 (KJV)

Jesus’ example and teaching enlighten us. They give us the right idea of Life—wisdom, healing, harmony, love, demonstration, life, Truth, Spirit, universal Principle. If we follow him—thinking after him, demonstrating after him, healing after him, loving after him—we will not walk in darkness (the ordinary human mind), but shall wake up to the right idea of Life and begin living and experiencing it for ourselves.

I’ve been reading this morning from a wonderful book, The Bible as Our Life by Peggy M. Brook. She gives an insightful metaphysical interpretation of the story of Noah and the flood. Here are several ideas that I’ve found helpful.

The story of Noah corresponds to the second day of creation—the firmament separating the waters above from the waters below, i.e. separating order from chaos, clarity from confusion, strength from weakness, peace from drama. This separation is, of course, a mental one.  We get into the chaos, confusion, weakness and drama of life because we’re not holding on to the right idea of things. We lack spiritual understanding.

505:7-8
Spiritual understanding, by which human conception, material sense, is separated from Truth, is the firmament.

Noah represents right living and obedience to Truth—what Psalm 23 would call “paths of righteousness”.

Gen 6:9 (KJV)
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

The ark represents our abiding in the Word of God (right thinking) which keeps us above the waters (upsets) of life. It is our remaining conscious of Truth during the day so that we are always rising above whatever drama there is, no matter how high that drama gets (from annoyance to outrage). With Truth as our ark, we can always keep our head above the water.

When confronted by the resentments of the past, it seems a startling idea, but we can decide how we think and feel about our experiences. We can control our feelings and can change how we feel about the painful situations of the past. Mind is cause, never effect—never a victim. Circumstances, situations and actions of others never control our thinking—we do. As Paul says, “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Romans 12:2)  We don’t have to conform our thoughts or feelings to what we see, hear or experience, but instead can renew our thinking—finding new ways to think about the past, and through this process, find transformation.

When we allow our thoughts and feelings to conform to our experiences, we allow those experiences to act as a mold for our thought patterns and thought-feelings, and allow them to perpetuate our suffering needlessly.

We can begin this process by being willing to think a new thought.

I am ready to move on—to see this experience of the past from a spiritual perspective—through the eyes of Mind—not the eyes of the flesh. I am willing for my thoughts surrounding these events to be new ones. I now decide to dissolve these old patterns of thinking with their accompanying thought-feelings. Divine Mind holds no grudges or resentments. Divine Mind knows the right way to think about these events of my past, and that Mind is my mind now. I am listening to God’s divine ideas. As God’s expression, I can never be a victim.

There is one very satisfying reward in this work, which is: that, when once a student really grasps and understands the fundamentals of this science of life, to the point where he can demonstrate it for himself, he never leaves it; simply because his own understanding tells him that there really is no other way out of erring, human belief.

from The Sharp Sickle, by William Walter

There is only one Mind—the divine Mind. The word God comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for good; so, good is Mind and good is the only Mind. God is right consciousness and God holds the right idea of everything s/he creates and sustains—i.e. of everything that is real. If God is all then any other power must be a supposition, an assumption, a false belief, a misapprehension or a misunderstanding.

Since God is infinite Mind, an evil consciousness, called a devil, cannot be Mind, and cannot have intelligence or reality.

If God is infinite power, there can be no evil power. If God is infinite Mind, there can be no evil consciousness or devil. If God is infinite presence, there can be no lurking presence of evil. 2+2=5 cannot be real and cannot be a part of the principle of mathematics and cannot exist. So it is with evil. Evil can have no place in the divine Mind and cannot exist as a part of the divine Principle.

Saying there is a devil is like saying there is a principle of anti-mathematics which is trying to get us to make mistakes in arithmetic.

A note to my Unity friends: If you believe evil is real and is a power, what does that do to the Unity statement, "There is only one presence and one power in the universe and in my life, God the good, omnipotent?" It makes it meaningless.

Good has power over evil and if you look at a situation without the emotional charge of fear, you will realize that this is the case.

If working on a difficult math problem, you can quickly become frustrated, but even so, there will be no doubt in your mind that the proper application of the principle (good) will bring the right result. And it will.

Two children fighting will quickly become subdued when their mother steps in between them and asserts order (good).

Whatever the situation, understanding (Love) will subdue fear and will result in a resolution of the problem.

The power of evil is the power of fear—that is why Mrs. Eddys says…

411:27-1
   Always begin your treatment by allaying the fear of patients. Silently reassure them as to their exemption from disease and danger. Watch the result of this simple rule of Christian Science, and you will find that it alleviates the symptoms of every disease. If you succeed in wholly removing the fear, your patient is healed.

The real bread or food of life is thoughts of health, of happiness, and success or progress. It requires a lot of work and effort to obtain and maintain these true and life-giving thoughts. But there is no way out of this erring condition but the one—discarding all thoughts that evil and any life separate from God (i.e. material life) are real.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought this week about the idea of reflection. This is an idea that has given me a lot of difficulty, but Mind has cleared it up wonderfully for me.

Man is the image and likeness of God, Soul and is the microcosm of God’s macrocosmic expression. God acts on an infinite, unlimited,and  universal scale, and man reflects that activity on his individualized scale. Man is always reflecting the qualities and activities of God, although that gets filtered through his mortal/material mentality.

I find a wonderful analogy in this animated Sierpinski Triangle…

Many of you (is three many?), OK, a few of you, have asked me to make my talk from last Sunday available on the blog, so here it is. My talk was on the topic of, “Exalting Our Valleys”, and it is part of my ongoing effort to encourage my local Unity church to get more interested in practicing metaphysics. This is not specifically a Christian Science talk, but Christian Science runs through the material, and Mrs. Eddy and Science and Health are mentioned at various points.

This is an mp3 file. If you have Quicktime it will probably play in your browser, otherwise you can download the file and play it in Windows Media Player.

Click here to listen (36 mb).

If there is only one presence, who are you? Where are you?

If there is only one power, what power does sickness or disease have over you? Addiction? The economy? Hurricanes?

If God is All-in-all—everything, how can you possible be separate from our Father-Mother? How can there be any lost souls?

If God is All-in-all—everything, and God is good, how can evil be real? How can disease be real? How can poverty be real? And how can there be any sinners?

If God is all and God is Love, where is hell located?

If God is spiritual, and you are His image and likeness, how can you be material? How can you be imperfect?