Day 249: Million Dollar Question

495:25-497:27

Two questions are in this reading and I’ll handle both of them. The first is the one I have been racing after this year: How can I progress most rapidly in the understanding of Christian Science?

The one element of her answer, and there is a lot to it, that was new to me was:

error cannot destroy error

That seems obvious and straightforward. I shouldn’t even have to try to remember this – it is such an obvious point. However, – and this is a big however, the thought came to me as I read this that a snarky retort to someone’s less-than-loving comment was the error that doesn’t destroy error. Then my mind raced around to all the aggressive or meanly defensive things I tend to do. Oh, you probably wouldn’t think me a mean person but I’m not always kind either. So the idea of error, even in its more commonly accepted form, should be replaced.

My Answer: I would like to add my own answer to the above question. I was raised in Christian Science, although I would call that a spotty job done. I went to Prin and I took class instruction from a previous CS Church Board Member. Outwardly, I took the appropriate steps. Inwardly, I trudged along. I’ve read the book front to back maybe six times. But until this journal, where I knew I only had 5 minutes worth of reading but wanted to get enough out of it to 1) progress and 2) write about it – I focused. Not well all the time, but generally I focused. I focused through a bit of marital turbulence, and a bit of static with my son. And now I want to do it again next year. I have gotten SO MUCH out of this journal that I don’t understand why more people don’t do it. Or talk about it. I think every person who wants to take class instruction should take it only after reading this journal. Or, and this won’t happen but it’s nice to think about, do away with a two-week class, and make the whole thing based on this journal. Make each student work for a year processing Recapitulation by reading the entire book.

The second question asks about a creed. I wanted to boil these tenets down to very short thoughts for myself:

1. Inspired word of the Bible (not the literal word)
2. one supreme and infinite God
3. God’s forgiveness of sin
4. man is saved through Truth, Life, and Love
5. crucifixion and resurrection served to understand nothingness of matter
6. for that Mind to be in us which was in Christ Jesus

Day 248:

493:9-495:24

Funny thing about reading this chapter before this year journal – I always hated it. Now its another chapter I can’t wait to reread.

Something else I missed in the first read and need to go back and get the full text on: Will you explain sickness and show how it is to be healed?

A full answer to the above question involves teaching, which enables the healer to demonstrate and prove for himself the Principle and rule of Christian Science or metaphysical healing.

I didn’t realize teaching was a component of healing.

I would like to replace the word fear in the following quote with anger. While to me, they are the same thing, I don’t always remember it when reading a passage like this.

Disease is an experience of so-called mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body. Christian Science takes away this physical sense of discord, just as it removes any other sense of moral or mental inharmony.

There are some spots in the books where I think Mary Baker Eddy is particularly eloquent -- this question/answer is one example.

Day 247: Man, Dreams, and Death

491:17-493:8

This reading is so far down the line that I had to go back to page 488 to see that the question was: Do the five corporeal senses constitute man? The very first idea of the reading was Mary Baker Eddy saying it as plain as day:

The belief that matter and mind are one, – that matter is awake at one time and asleep at another, sometimes presenting no appearance of mind, – this belief culminates in another belief, that man dies. Science reveals material man as never the real being. The dream or belief goes on, whether our eyes are closes or open.

Then another formula:

God is Mind, and God is infinite; hence all is Mind.

Or:

[God is Mind] + [God is infinite] = [all is Mind]

And who are we:

Being is [1] holiness, [2] harmony, [3] immortality.

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 245: Belief and Senses

487:13-489:23

This reading had two questions, the first dealing with belief, the second dealing with the material senses. I wish the ordering would have been different so that yesterday’s last question was followed by the sense question of today. I’m not sure that the belief question really needs to be in between. It is a minor point anyway.

So the question of belief brought me back to the trial again where false belief is the attorney for the plaintiff, personal sense. A couple of ideas from today’s reading were very clear:

The believer and belief are one and are mortal.

the Scriptures often appear in our common version to approve and endorse belief, when they mean to enforce the necessity of understanding.

I’m not sure if the common version is King James, but I suppose any version back then, and there were probably far fewer than now, would have the same issue.

The second question, about material senses, uses the term real senses of man:

mental endowments are not at the mercy of organization and decomposition, – otherwise the very worms could unfashion man. If it were possible for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could reproduce them in all their perfection; but they cannot be disturbed nor destroyed, since they exist in immortal Mind, not in matter.

And then:

Corporeal sense defrauds and lies

Day 244: Spiritual vs. Material Sense

484:28-487:12

Today’s question, aside from some fancy word use, is asking about spiritual sense versus material sense. Material senses are so hypnotic, we depend on them more than is even necessary – we enjoy them. I wonder if I would even know the spiritual equivalent.

Day 243:

482:13-484:27

Today, the questions in Recapitulation are about healing and what is or isn’t involved. I was looking for a new idea or fresh insight when I found these two gems that seem to have nothing to do with healing at first glance:

One must fulfil one's mission without timidity or dissimulation, for to be well done, the work must be done unselfishly.

The physical universe expresses the conscious and unconscious thoughts of mortals.

Day 242: Harmony revisited

479:27-482:12

I must admit there was a lot I marked in this reading. Mary Baker Eddy came back to the discussion of Soul, evil, and material belief. But I want to focus on harmony write now. It seems to ebb and flow in our house which isn’t the truth I want:

Harmonious action proceeds from Spirit, God. Inharmony has no Principle; its action is erroneous and presupposes man to be in matter. Inharmony would make matter the cause as well as the effect of intelligence, or Soul, thus attempting to separate Mind from God.

Day 241: Identity & Belief

477:19-479:26

After today’s reading, I’m considering the chapter nickname of belief.

Mary Baker Eddy starts of the answer to What is body and Soul? with the concept of identity. Plenty of people would identity as either the body or Soul in body, so I understand why she starts there.

This is one of those question/answers that, regardless of Christian Science, I totally get. That’s to say that outside of the nature/nurture argument, I know my body is not me and that there is no other identity (such as Soul) in my body. There are some things that you have to know for yourself, spiritually speaking. This is one I know.

So when I got to this line:

What basis is there for the theory of indwelling spirit, except the claim of mortal belief? 

I broadened it so I could apply it to other issues:

What basis is there for the theory of [insert challenge here], except the claim of mortal belief? 

Still praying about son.

Day 240: Man

475:5-477:18

The question is What is Man? I’m grappling with more issues with my son again. Ugh. This has got to stop. So I appreciated this question because I remember how someone told me to use this answer by replacing the word man with the name of the person who I need to see as God’s idea. Today, that would be my son. So I used the name Bill and changed up the sentences I’m praying with today:

Bill as no separate mind from God.

Bill has not a single quality underived from Deity.

Bill is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The real Bill cannot depart from holiness, nor can God, by whom Bill is evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin.

Earnestly see the spiritual status of Bill, which is outside of all material selfhood.

Day 239: Is there no sin?

472:23-475:4

Two things immediately jumped into my mind with this question, before I read the answer. The first was the Trial where Personal Sense, and his attorney, False Belief, are trying to have Mortal Man committed to death. The second is the third tenet of Christian Science:

3. We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.

Before I started this year, I didn’t have a feel for false belief and personal sense in terms of Christian Science. I never focused on it before. The readings, broken up the way they are, unraveled that for me. So I probably never understood the 3rd tenet as much as I do now.

The last line of this reading stood out as the premise of the formula and the formula itself where sin is concerned:

To infinite Spirit there is no matter, – all is Spirit, divine Principle and its idea.

I also learned a lot about matter this year that I glossed over in years past. I think my teacher, during class instruction, tried to point this out but there was so much to learn that this point was lost on me.

Day 238: What is error?

471:22-472:22

I found the definition of error very enlightening. I changed this sentence:

Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter.

To this:

Error is anything that exists in matter.

I think I underlined something like this earlier in the book but I can’t remember where it was.

Day 237: More than one Mind

469:7-471:21

In the definition of Mind, there are several nuggets of thought to work on. The main point is that there is only one, divine Mind:

The supposed existence of more than one mind was the basic error idolatry. This error assumed [1] the loss of spiritual power, [2] the loss of the spiritual presence of Life, as infinite Truth without an unlikeness, and [3] the loss of Love as ever present and universal.

I think the last point, the loss of Love, is the most immediate issue for me. How about you?

Day 236: Life

467:1-469:6

I was out with the family last night, kids off playing, husband watching them, and I had a moment to stop and think about yesterday’s reading. I knew I marked only one phrase and it was about beliefs but I couldn’t remember the words idolatry and ritualism so I came up with all sorts of words like that. It turned out to be a very insightful and restful few minutes just think about human beliefs.

Today’s section is a great place for any one to learn about Christian Science, me included. The question What are the demands of Science of Soul? made me sit up and wander what I had missed in the previous 466 pages. I should probably have the answer memorized but I was happy to not be surprised.

The phrase I marked today is part of the answer for What is Life?:

Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity.

I’ve been praying about time lately so this was a nice thought to add to my thoughts.

Day 235: Idolatry and Ritualism

465-466:31
I spent some time yesterday thinking about single ideas not having an element of error. I thought about how we are all ideas and we aren’t old or new ideas just familiar (old) or unrecognized (new). I got caught up in the spiritual attributes of ideas and let my thoughts just take me to new places. It was nice to have a single, clear idea I could do that with.
Today is the first day of Recapitulation. If you have heard of class instruction or taken it, you know this is the chapter that is the basis for the class. When I figured out what Recapitulation meant, years ago, I was a little disappointed. So, no secret handshake will be revealed, just a summary of ideas already covered. The question/answer format is nice and easy to follow. [I wish class instruction was now just a private blog to read and make notes with links to the books.]
The idea I grabbed from today’s reading is something that has been nagging me anyway:

idolatry and ritualism are the outcome of all man-made beliefs

You could almost hear someone say: “Let’s not think, let’s just do it the way it was done before.” Now that I’m checking my thinking, I’m looking for those little spots in my thought-conclusions that are based on idolatry and ritualism – purposeless stuff that might keep me from listening to God.