Day 246: New Connections

489:24-491:16

A few of things I would like to note about this reading. First, I think there might be several points that are new in recapitulation, to me anyway. I know this is probably error on my part. So the second thing is that I’m considering reading this journal again next year instead of moving on to misc writings. If I missed some key points and didn’t figure it out until around page 500, I wonder what else I missed. Third, if other people were blogging about their experience reading the book, and I could find/read those blogs, perhaps I wouldn’t have missed what I now consider very important points. Drat! Double Drat!

[Just spent 20 minutes trying to find an online link to the Journal for Misc Writings. Argh! I’ll post here and on the About Me page when I find it. Anyone know if it is officially out of print?]

First point:

The corporeal senses are the only source of evil or error. Christian Science shows them to be false, because matter has no sensation, and no organic construction can give it hearing and sight nor make it the medium of Mind. Outside the material sense of things, all is harmony.

This is the best definition of evil/error so far in the book – the first one that was applicable to my life and experience.

Will-power is but a product of belief, and this belief commits depredations on harmony. Human will is an animal propensity, not a faculty of Soul.

Will--blind, stubborn, and headlong--cooperates with appetite and passion. From this cooperation arises its evil. From this also comes its powerlessness, since all power belongs to God, good.

This is the first connection I’ve seen between human will and belief (or was it there in the trial somewhere?). Also another good tie into to evil.

Human belief--or knowledge gained from the so-called material senses--would, by fair logic, annihilate man along with the dissolving elements of clay.

Now a tie between belief and the material senses. The following formula isn’t exactly write but close to what I’m getting from this reading:

Material Senses = Belief = Will = Error/Evil

Thoughts?

And then the last little bit about sleep which I thought was a great example of what Mary Baker Eddy is trying to say:

Sleep and mesmerism explain the mythical nature of material sense. Sleep shows material sense as either oblivion, nothingness, or an illusion or dream. Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and that he is swimming when he is on dry land. Needle-thrusts will not hurt him. A delicious perfume will seem intolerable. Animal magnetism thus uncovers material sense, and shows it to be a belief without actual foundation or validity. Change the belief, and the sensation changes. Destroy the belief, and the sensation disappears.

Day 152: Everything

296:4-298:7

I read today's pages and didn't expect to be blown away with ideas. Just one new idea to work with is, most days, enough. But, wow, today's reading will be with me for awhile. I marked it as a Read Again in the tags meaning it is something to come back to and use for any issue. There is probably a better word choice for the tag but for now, that's it.

Two sectioned I starred and turned down the page corner, my sign for super duper important:

Mortal belief is a liar from the beginning, not deserving power. It says to mortals, "You are wretched!" and they think they are so; and nothing can change this state, until the belief changes. Mortal belief says, "You are happy!" and mortals are so; and no circumstance can alter the situation, until the belief on this subject changes. Human belief says to mortals, "You are sick!" and this testimony manifests itself on the body as sickness. It is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the physical condition.

and:

Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual understanding, human thought has little relation to the actual or the divine. 

The first one is a great reminder and wake up call to myself about what I need to be aware of. The second is my road map.

As I mentioned recently, I'm working through prayer about a behavioral situation with one of the kids. It's about control from a moral mind perspective and letting go and seeing his divine perfection from a spiritual perspective. So there were lots of tidbits I marked:

The death of a false material sense...is what reveals man...

Mortal belief must lose all satisfaction in error and sin...

...how long they will suffer the pangs of destruction...

Change the evidence...

The last one is the most interesting to me. Change the evidence. The word 'evidence' means whatever is evident is already there. So what is already there and how can I change it? This is the bones of my challenge. I couldn't have written it better.

Back to prayer...