Tell the Truth

Archive for February, 2010

520:3-5
The depth, breadth, height, might, majesty, and glory of infinite Love fill all space. That is enough! 

It is a saving Principle that we look to, to save us—not a person. Just as the principle of mathematics, when followed, brings a correct result, so will the principle of metaphysics—reliably, consistently, always. That principle is Love. It is always healing, always correcting, always renewing. It is always establishing and unfolding good. We can count on it to meet our every need.

Love is free of personal sense. It neither has a personal, selfish point of view, nor does it identify a personal problem with God’s children.

Love never brings us discouragement and expression, but leads us through the door of Truth into It’s arms. Love is our true Mother—tending, cherishing, protecting and loving us. Love holds nothing back from us—It is not withholding healing or comfort from us. It is not withholding hope and encouragement. It is not withholding faith and understanding. Love is setting our table and that table is full. Love is filling our cup and that cup is running over.

Divine Love continually supplies us with all good—with beautiful images of thought, encouraging and uplifting feelings, the perfect idea of all things. Love promises that our every human need will be met. Love is always giving us everything we need to bring us closer to God, closer to our healing, closer to our good.

9 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Matt 6:9-13 (KJV)

We are children of God, the offspring of harmony, the reflection of infinite being—of that Mind which is perfect in goodness and right-ness and worthy of our complete devotion.

The kingdom, the world of harmony is present now. It is here, for God Himself is ever-present, and our God is omnipotent and supreme now, on this earth, and not just in a future heaven.

Our Father gives us spiritual meat, and feeds our hearts hunger for right-ness.

Let us reflect Your Love, and may we reveal to others the activity and reality of Your kingdom and omnipotence at work in our lives just as Jesus revealed You to us.

You never cause us to believe or accept the material picture, but if we would, You deliver us from the temptation to fall into sin (wrong thinking and behavior), to believe in disease (the imperfection of Your kingdom) or to accept death (that Your image and likeness can be less than immortal).

You are infinite, Father. To You belongs all power and your kingdom is without end in space or time.

SH 13:20

If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief, and so we cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite, incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible. Because of human ignorance of the divine Principle, Love, the Father of all is represented as a corporeal creator; hence men recognize themselves as merely physical, and are ignorant of man as God’s image or reflection and of man’s eternal incorporeal existence. The world of error is ignorant of the world of Truth, — blind to the reality of man’s existence, — for the world of sensation is not cognizant of life in Soul, not in body.

God is not a divine person creating other persons. If you see God as a person, you inevitably miss seeing the wonders of God as Principle. The God of infinite, incorporeal Love is not in the business of creating forms (sorry, Ernest Holmes!)—He is not creating physical beings. Man is God’s image and reflection and man’s existence is not a life lived in a body, but the life of Soul, eternal and incorporeal.

25:16-17
Jesus presented the ideal of God better than could any man whose origin was less spiritual.

How Mary must have talked with Jesus as a boy about her angelic visitation—how the Spirit of the Lord overshadowed her and how he was spiritual conceived! How this would have shaped his thought and understanding! He had a personal knowledge of his Father God because he never had the belief to overcome that Joseph was ever his father. For our part, we have to affirm God as our Father in the face of our material belief, but Jesus did not have the material picture to contend with. “Our Father” was his heart-felt statement of reality and his precious gift to us.

I’ve been working with this week’s lesson on the topic of Mind. Here are some of my thoughts on the Golden Text and the Responsive Reading:

Golden Text

Philippians 2:5

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

This lesson is not just about our reading about Mind, but in our getting into the divine Mind—taking it on for ourselves.

Responsive Reading

Psalms 18:28 my God, 32; 139:2, 12(to : ), 14, 16-18 in, 23, 24 and lead

my God will enlighten my darkness.

God is bringing us into the light—that is, He is enlightening us, increasing our understanding, showing us what we need to know, and giving us vision where there was none before. Love is continually blessing us, bringing us more and more good, eternally loving us.

It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.

God gives me strength, surrounds me, encircles me, equips and provides for me. He makes my way perfect, makes the way forward clear, fast, open, filled with opportunity. He makes clear to me the steps I need to take, and makes the way forward available to me. I recognize God’s hand in my life. It is He that makes the difference, that strengthens me, that makes my life go well.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

God knows when I sit back and when I plow ahead. He understands how I am thinking and why I do the things I do.

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day:

Material light and darkness is irrelevant to spiritual sight. With spiritual light, I can see no matter what my eyes are showing me. I’m not dependent on material light or physical eyes. I see with the eyes of Spirit.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

I am an awesome and wonderful creation, made in His image and likeness, and I know it!

in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

God created every little bit of me before I was formed. I am not a material creation. I am a thing of Mind. God’s thought of me is all that I am. My character and being were not decided by a material history, an earthly Mother and Father, where and when I was born, my education, my relationships or my career. My nature was decided and fashioned before I ever was given form.

God’s thoughts of me are more in number than the sand. God has countless ways and measureless potential to unfold within me. It shows me just how wrong I am if I see my horizons shrinking as I grow older! God has barely started with me!

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

and lead me in the way everlasting.

God, look at my feelings, look at how I’m thinking, see how I’m doing and lead me down the spiritual road.

I possess an open, enquiring state of thought and I am open to admit the light! This song was an early morning gift.

I’m open, open to the light of God, open to the light of God
I’m open to the light, open to the light of God
Let Your light shine down
Let it shine all around
Let Your light shine down on me

I’m open, open to the Truth of God, open to the Truth of God
I’m open to the Truth, open to the Truth of God
Let Your Truth be found
Be found all around
Let Your Truth be found in me

I’m open, open to the Life of God…

I’m open, open to the Love of God…

I’m open, open to the Mind of God…

Click the control below to listen, or click here to see the music.

• Mind is thinking me
• Spirit is unfolding me
• Soul is who I am
• Principle is governing me
• Life is living me
• Truth is my reality
• Love is setting my table and filling my cup
• I and the Father are one
• In Him I live and move and have my being

Lord, give me wisdom and understanding.
Let me know the ways of your heart.
Show me the pathway of Truth’s demanding,
The wisdom your Love would impart.

Give me your grace that I ever follow
Wherever your Spirit may lead,
A heart that before you is meek and humble,
And eyes that are open to see.

Here are some statements that have helped me work with the Christian Science weekly Bible lesson on the topic of Soul this week:

1. I turn from a material outlook towards the spiritual facts of being
2. I remove my thought from the body and elevate my thought to the contemplation of divine Science
3. I abandon the evidence of mortal sense in the search after spiritual Truth
4. God’s divine idea takes definite form and beauty in me and all
5. The spiritual man is my identity
6. My identity lies in my sameness with God
7. I and my Father are one
8. I have definite and unique Godly characteristics as my identity
9. My identity coincides with the divine nature
10. I am eternally inseparable from the divine Principle, God
11. I identify myself with God’s ideas
12. In the blending of my identity with God, I have dominion
13. I don’t just think about God. I think like God
14. The substance of Spirit is my essential being and true nature
15. When my interests, aims and plans coincide with God’s, I am never in conflict with the interests, aims and plans of others
16. My true identity is wholly spiritual
17. My identity always remains independent of mortal mind
18. I can never lose my identity. It can never be stolen
19. My identity never appears as matter or through the material senses
20. My identity includes neither error, illusion or mortal mind
21. I am harmonious when governed by spiritual understanding
22. I do not have a body with life or sensation
23. I seek to identify myself with God and understand myself as God’s expression
24. I identify more and more with the immortal facts of Spirit and give up reliance on the evidence of the senses
25. I work to rise above material standpoints
26. Neither age nor accident can interfere with the senses of Soul
27. I constantly strive to regard everything from the basis of Mind and Spirit and resist the influence of physical sense testimony
28. The Truth of spiritual sense silences the lie of material sense
29. I constantly and steadfastly consecrate my thought to the spiritually real
30. My search for God is "sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing"
31. I reflect the higher conceptions of loveliness which transcend all material sense
32. Through my spiritual sense I comprehend and love Deity
33. Through my spiritual sense I discern spiritual good
34. I exchange the illusions of mortal sense for the ideas of Soul
35. I immediately reverse every false claim in myself and others
36. Through my prayer I assist in the transformation of all things
37. I and my faculties are unchangeable and invulnerable
38. I am always intact—no false influences can reach me
39. I am enveloped in the atmosphere of Soul
40. My individual identity determines my true gender and true destiny
41. I possess all divine ideas in my consciousness and they are always at my disposal
42. I can never lose anything belonging to my identity
43. My heavenly treasures are divine ideas which are unchangeable, immortal and substantial
44. My true selfhood is sinless
45. I am immortal
46. My true self is never confined by illusions of any kind
47. I am conscious of my inherent riches—I draw on myself
48. I am completely independent of persons, theories, bodies and surroundings—I am completely dependent upon God
49. My freedom is sinless, disciplined and law-abiding
50. I observe laws, order and divine rules
51. Through the freedom God has given me, I am a master of improvisation
52. My heritage is freedom
53. I dwell in the realm of limitless freedom and unbounded opportunity
54. I have the balance of Soul
55. I always identify with the spiritual facts of being which are harmonious
56. I have an immutable, permanent wealth of spiritual ideas
57. In spiritual ideas I have an ever-present source of joy, happiness and satisfaction
58. Truth compels me to exchange the pleasures and pains of sense for the joys of Soul
59. I am learning the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the grandeur and bliss of spiritual sense
60. I identify with ideas, not with a body or personal sense
61. I relinquish my identification with material beliefs, personal will and personal habits and identify with the divine Ego
62. I am identified with divine Principle, Life, Truth and Love
63. I correct the evidence of appearances with spiritual sense
64. I repudiate all claims of sickness, fear, uncertainty, temptation and incapability and turn my gaze only toward the true

Mortal mind always seeks to put the spiritual “into” something—to compass the infinite into the finite form and make it real and tangible. The material state of mind sees matter as being the substantial thing and wants to make Spirit real and tangible. It believes that by making Spirit material, it makes it real and substantial.

Like in everything, mortal mind has it exactly backwards. It is the spiritual which is substantial, not the material. The word substance comes from the Latin word, substare which is made of the words, sub, meaning under, and stare, meaning to stand.

So, what lies behind a form? What stands underneath it? The idea.

What lies behind the idea? What stands underneath it? Only Mind.

What then is really substantial? Is it the material form or the spiritual idea and the Mind which is Father to the idea? If a material form has something behind it, matter can’t be the substantial thing.

SH 269:14

Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul.