Tell the Truth

Archive for December, 2009

    Perfect love casts out fear.
    If fear exists,
    There there is not perfect love.
    But:
    Only perfect love exists.
    If there is fear,
    It produces a state that does not exist.

Believe this and you will be free. Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is His gift.

From a Course in Miracles

When the temptation comes up to judge, don’t even go there. I loved this talk by the Christian Science lecturer, Maryl Walters.

Have a listen.

William Walter gives this excellent advice for anyone working with a practitioner:

• Go at the healing work in a whole-hearted way.
• Stick to the effort until it is finished. Don’t give up.
• Don’t stop for periods of time and start again trying to save money.
• Persistently work to destroy your erring belief through applying right thought.
• Refute every symptom with the fundamental truth that the good and perfect alone is all.
• Strive not to think of your ills at all.
• Have faith in the healer that is working for you and in your own right thinking.

On the last bullet he adds that even if the healer’s thought is not strong, your own faith in right thought will make it strong and you will be healed.

And the hardest thing?

The hardest work is to get the patient to do his share of the necessary work, just as the hardest part of the teaching of music is to get the student to practice.

"There is just as much required of the patient as there is of the healer or teacher. The principle is the same as in music lessons. The teacher can show you how but you must do the playing and practicing yourself. It is also true that many simple ailments are healed without much effort on the patient’s part, but so-called chronic ailments are the result of habitual sick thought and this erring habit must be overcome." 

William Walter writing in the booklet, “The Healer”

The cause of man’s misery and trouble lies in our false reasoning. It always has and it always will be so till man is convinced that his happiness depends on Wisdom, and his misery on belief.

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

I make war with what comes in contact
with health and happiness,
Believing that God made everything good.
And if there is anything wrong
it is the effect of ourselves.

Man is responsible for his acts
and even his thoughts,
Therefore it is necessary
that man should know himself
so that he shall not communicate sin or error.

This is my theory:
to put man in possession of a Science
That will destroy the ideas of the sick
and teach man one living progression
of his own identity,
With life free from error and disease.

Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

“…disease is the invention of man. It is caused by a disturbance of the mind . . . And therefore originates there. We can call to mind instances where disease has been produced instantly by excitement, anger, fear, or joy. Is it not the more rational conclusion that disease is always caused by influences upon the mind rather than that it has an identity, comes to us, and attacks us?

Living in a world full or error in this respect, and educated to believe that disease is something we cannot escape, it is not strange that what we fear comes upon us. We take the opinions of men, which have no knowledge in them, for truth. So we all agree to arbitrary rules with regard to our mode of life, and suffer the penalties attached to any disobedience of the same. These diseases or penalties are real to us through the result of belief.

It is reasonable to infer from these statements that the only way to approach and eradicate disease must be through the mind, to trace the cause of this misery, and hold up to it the light of reason or disbelief in the existence of disease independent of the mind. Then the cloud which shadows us vanishes, as error always will when over-powered by the light of truth."

Phineas P. Quimby

The sense of ease in a person is not primarily a physical state but a mental one. This is the basis on which we can see that mental ease produces a healthy body, and a state of mental dis-ease produces disease. We also see here the foundation for mental and spiritual healing. Restore a mental sense of ease in the patient and you restore his health.

That’s why Mrs. Eddy says:

SH 411:27-4
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 great fact that God lovingly governs all, never punishing aught but sin, is your standpoint, from which to advance and destroy the human fear of sickness.

By the word sin as it is used here, I understand it to be mental “wrong-thinking”, or a mental dis-ease that would recreate or perpetuate the unhappy condition. The causative mental state must be changed or the healing will not be permanent.

The common view is that the brain thinks, however, in most cases in the state called death, the brain is in its place unharmed, yet there is no consciousness or thought present—the vital spark, the Soul or spirit of the man has “gone”; and even though the brain is intact and unharmed, there is no life and no mental activity present.

The metaphysical view is that mental activity is spiritual activity, not material activity at all. The body is the embodiment of the mentality, the image and likeness as the Bible calls it, the reflection of mind. As the embodiment of consciousness, the body reflects the activity of mind in every respect and has no activity of its own, like a movie screen which shows us the images on the film; or a mirror that reflects the form and action of the object before it.

But because of man’s belief in a material creation separate from God, the body, through faulty reasoning is cut off in thought from the mind that makes it, and seems to function separately and apart from mind, having a being of its own—a being composed of matter that thinks for itself, that feels and senses by itself. In short, a material structure from which life arises without the help of God, who is Life itself—a creation where God, the creator of all, the only presence and power, is irrelevant to his own creation and reduced to an abstraction.

This imagined world is a world where mental or spiritual healing would not be possible. Happily, this is not the case. The evidence of spiritual healing, by itself, is more than adequate proof that mind is not in brain. The mind that governs matter cannot arise from the very matter it rules, but must be its lord. Mentality is spiritual, and not a result of material activity or structure.

In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy quotes Shakespeare: "There
is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." If thinking
makes BOTH the good AND the bad, then there is nothing AT ALL, unless
thinking makes it.

We tend to think of ourselves as living in a world not of our own choosing, where we are vulnerable to situations outside of our control, but this is only the appearance.

In reality there is nothing to be frightened of, and we should cultivate an abiding sense of ease, peace, confidence, harmony and love. There is no good reason at all to think thoughts of unease, threat, fear, worry or unhappiness.

William Walter suggests taking an affirmation like, “All is peace and harmony” and saying it slowly with as much feeling as we can muster with the intention of making it real to our mentality.

We frighten ourselves with the disturbed images we hold in thought. We should instead close our consciousness to them and reassure ourselves of God’s protection. “All is well, and I am going to be OK.”