Day 53: True Spirituality

97:29-99:29

The calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-immolation, must deepen human experience…

2010

Day 52: What will happen

95:28-97:28

This reading is a prediction or overview of events to come. I wouldn’t call it the end of the world but I’m sure many people who don’t want materiality to end will see it that way.

Mary Baker Eddy explains what will happen, including:

As material knowledge diminishes and spiritual understanding increases, real objects will be apprehended mentally instead of materially.

She also gives us our task list:

…those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection.

Patience is not my strong skill. I need to work on my cheerful waiting.

2010

Day 51: More mind-reading

93:21-95:27

Mary Baker Eddy brings up an interesting point in this reading. Once a person progresses spiritually to such a point, they can’t help but be able to discern thought:

We approach God, or Life, in proportion to our spirituality, our fidelity to Truth and Love, and in that ratio we know all human need and are able to discern the thought of the sick and the sinning for the purpose of healing them.

She continues:

Whoever reaches this point of moral culture and goodness cannot injure others, and must do them good.

2010

Day 50: Error or Evil

91:22-93:20

The mistake of thinking that error can be real, when it is merely the absence of truth, leads to belief in the superiority of error.

Good does not create a mind susceptible of causing evil, for evil is the opposing error and not the truth of creation.

2010

Day 49: Movements & Transitions

89:32-91:21

Something to think about today:

Divest yourself of the thought that there can be substance in matter, and the movements and transitions now possible for mortal mind will be found to be equally possible for the body.

2010

Day 48: Idea versus Thought (Belief)

87:29-89:31

I spent most of yesterday working on the notion that everything I saw was a thought. Today Mary Baker Eddy expands that to divide thoughts between the Divine’s ideas and Mortal beliefs:

How are the veritable ideas to be distinguished from illusions? By learning the origin of each. Ideas are emanations from the divine Mind. Thoughts proceed from the brain or from matter, are offshoots of mortal mind; they are mortal material beliefs.

2010

Day 47: What is Thought?

86:1-87:28

Mary Baker Eddy writes about thoughts as though they were something more than we generally believe:

Mortals evolve images of thought. These may appear to the ignorant to be apparitions; but they are mysterious only because it is unusual to see thoughts, though we can always feel their influence.

See gives history to thought as well:

Do not suppose that any mental concept is gone because you do no think of it. The true concept is never lost.

This unique perspective makes me ask if I have seen a thought and would I be able to differentiate it from a non-thought? What is a non-thought? Does it really matter if I just want to focus on the spirituality?

What is a true concept? Isn’t one idea the same as the next?

2010

Day 46: Mind-reading

84:3-85:32

I find it fascinating to peek into the history of such interests as Mind-reading. It was obviously as popular in Mrs. Eddy’s day as it is now. Mrs. Eddy states the case for Soul-sense, instead of mind-reading:

It is the illumination of the spiritual understanding which demonstrates the capacity of Soul, not of material sense. This Soul-sense comes to the human mind when the latter yields to the divine Mind.

2010

Day 45:

81:31-84:2

I like this argument, it summarizes this reading well:

Mortal mind-reading and immortal Mind-reading are distinctly opposite standpoints, from which cause and effect are interpreted. The act of reading mortal mind investigates and touches only human beliefs.

2010

Day 44: Mystery

80:6-81:30

I appreciate Mrs. Eddy’s remarks on these pages.

2010

Day 43: Life as God

78:1-80:5

Mary Baker Eddy uses the above phrase working through an argument that people shouldn’t be warned against death but I took it as just a single idea – Life as God. I think I have only scratched at my own understanding of this and need to work more on it.

2010

Day 42: Purgatory

76:6-77:32

Mary Baker Eddy mentions that spiritism, the belief in spirits,

consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling that of blighted bugs, –to a wretched purgatory, where the chances of the departed for improvement narrow into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of matter.

How funny we, as people, don’t want change. We don’t want it for our selves and we don’t want it for our ghosts, real or imagined. A change in the spirit requires a change in us.

I have a friend who is very much into her ghosts. They are personal to her as if for her alone. She talks of her own angels as well. It’s so much easier to believe in a personal deity, angel, or ghost than it is to believe in the all-loving. It’s almost like an impersonal, although complete love from God, can’t possibly be as powerful as personal love which we all have at least had a taste of.

2010

Day 41:

74:3-76:5

This reading is about why is it impossible for the dead to communicate with the living. I understand two material, erroneous beliefs are in different states of belief and can not commune. I understand it logically.

My interest is in the something different. What if I could drop the belief of materiality, and pray? I call it meditation but I’m sure other people have other names for it. Being in the world but not of it – sort of. I wonder how Mary Baker Eddy would feel about that. I think of it as highly spiritual and very much about quieting the internal chatter in my thought so that I can be still and listen to God. But I can also see how it might appear either a material barrier or an illusionary change of conscience.

What do you think?

2010

Day 40:

72:1-74:2

Mary Baker Eddy writes:

The belief that one man, as spirit, can control another man, as matter upsets both the individuality and the Science of man, for man is image.

I would like to propose as modified version of this sentence, for your consideration:

The belief that one man, as spirit, can control [negative verb of choice here] another man, as matter upsets both the individuality and the Science of man, for man is image.

My point is that the concept of control, fear, or harm isn’t limited to spirits but is something we walk around with everyday. Some of use give spirits more power than any other materiality, when we shouldn’t. None if it should have any more power than God. Or more correctly, none of it has power at all. 

2010

Day 39: Spiritualism

70-71:32

Spiritualism is an odd type of materiality since it is dealing with relatively non-material things. Sometimes I think Mary Baker Eddy could have stated it more succinctly if she had said the material experience of  spiritualism is just as false and erroneous as the material experience of sin and disease.

Day 38: New Ideas

67:30-69:30

It is funny how many times I have read this book and I still find new stuff:

Sometime we shall learn how Spirit, the great architect, has created men and women in Science.

and

Consider its [marriage] obligations, its responsibilities, its relations to your growth and to your influence on other lives.

In the first quote, Mary Baker Eddy uses we, including herself. She doesn’t know the answer? I doubt that but I’m not sure what she meant.

In the second quote, it’s the last idea that I find interesting – that marriage may reduce your influence and therefore marriage is not the right step.

2010

Day 37: Wait and Love More

66:1-67:29

I’ve heard complaints of how Christian Scientists don’t act, but wait --even under great duress. As a kid, I could see the outward evidence but the situation always resolved. Now, of course, I know they weren’t just waiting. There was a spiritual journey of prayer and understanding going on. I don’t know if I could pinpoint it to a specific page before today. Mary Baker Eddy’s instruction is clear on this here.

Anyone know what she meant by this:

Socrates considered patience salutary under such circumstances, making his Xantippe a discipline for his philosophy.

2010

Day 36: Friends and Relations

64:1-65:32

There are a couple points in this reading that could apply to a friendship as well as a relation.

The first is the idea that we should not condemn or criticize someone when they are helping someone else. Mary Baker Eddy listed pride, envy, and jealousy as the reasons.

The next point Mary Baker Eddy says about marriage is that honesty and virtue ensures stability. A good test of a friendship or relationship (even a business relationship) is to ask: are both parties asking and expecting honesty and virtue on all ways. How do you react when you think it is otherwise?

2010

Day 35: The Education of Man

62:4-63:32

Two thoughts on this page are interesting. They will be on my mind today.

1. the entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to moral and spiritual law
2. we do not pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence

 

2010

Day 34: The Higher Nature

60:4-62:3

Mary Baker Eddy gives a list of reasons why Marriage is not improving man:

...the education of the higher nature is neglected, and other considerations, --passion, frivolous amusements, personal adornment, display, and pride, --occupy thought.

I think the only two words she really needed to use were the last two: occupy thought. In this day and age, talking about what you are thinking about, thinking about thinking, is common. I wonder how that idea was received in her day.

Also, this page uses the synonym, Soul, a couple of times. How would you describe capital S, Soul? I've always had a hard time with that one.


2010

Day 33: Union

58:5-60:3

I believe there are points in this chapter that would benefit any relationship, even a friendship or family relation. Aside from the specific marital points, Mary Baker Eddy is talking about how to sustain any relationship. She puts a good prerequisite on relationships that I use today:

A mutual understanding should exist before this union and continue ever after, for deception is fatal to happiness.

2010

Day 32: Human Affection

56:1-58:4

Last year while reading, I had a realization that Christianity, Spirituality, and God were really about how I interact with my fellow inhabitants on this planet and less about my internal composition. That would be the demonstration part of religion. Mary Baker Eddy writes:

Human affection is not poured fourth vainly, even though it meet no return. Love enriches the nature, enlarging, purifying, and elevating it.

Her follow-up:

…Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its winds for heaven.

I like how this reiterates one of the lines of the spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer:

And Love is reflected in love

2010

Day 31:

53:25-55:29

There is a lot going on in the following paragraph, and at first it seems disjointed and unrelated. But I know that isn’t the case. I want to get to the point that not all to I understand how these points are related but can demonstrate those relationships:

My weary hope tries to realize that happy day, when man shall recognize the Science of Christ and love his neighbor as himself, –when he shall realize God’s omnipotence and the healing power of the divine Love in what it has done and is doing for mankind.

2010

Day 30: The Great Distance

51:28-53:24

Mary Baker Eddy writes of the shock that arises when someone realizes the great distance between himself and Truth. That when we recognize that distance, we should weep over the warning, instead of denying truth or mocking the goodness.

She must have know anyone reading the book would experience the same realization of the distance and have to deal with the shock.

But there is an additional idea I would like to add. Turning back or just stopping here on my spiritual journey isn’t an option. I’m sure it is for some people. Perhaps they weren’t committed but were just dabbling. Similar to the passport analogy Mary Baker Eddy employs.

I might be a Neanderthal in a spiritual sense but turning around or stopping isn’t a choice. Yeah, I see the distance. But I’m going anyway. If you are reading this, you are too. Good!

2010