Day 217: Death

428:3-430:12

When man gives up his belief in death, he will advance more rapidly  towards God, Life, and Love. Belief in sickness and death, as certainly as belief in sin, tends to shut out the true sense of Life and health.

2010

Day 216: Ignorance of God

426:5-428:2

Man's individual being can no more die nor disappear in unconsciousness than can Soul, for both are immortal. If man believes in death now, he must disbelieve in it when learning that there is no reality in death, since the truth of being is deathless. The belief that existence is contingent on matter must be met and mastered by Science, before Life can be understood and harmony obtained.

The great difficulty lies in ignorance of what God is. God, Life, Truth, and Love make man undying. Immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual.

2010

Day 208: Destroy Human Fear of Sickness

410:22-412:15

The procuring cause and foundation of all sickness is fear, ignorance, or sin. Disease is always induced by a false sense mentally entertained, not destroyed. Disease is an image of thought externalized. The mental state is called a material state. Whatever is cherished in mortal mind as the physical condition is imaged forth on the body. Always begin your treatment by allaying the fear of patients. Silently reassure them as to their exemption from disease and danger.

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. Mentally and silently plead the case scientifically for Truth.

The power of Christian Science and divine Love is omnipotent. It is indeed adequate to unclasp the hold and to destroy disease, sin, and death.

2010

Day 147: Mini-treatment - Sin, Sickness, & Death

286:9-288:8

Sin, sickness, and death are comprised in human material belief, and belong not to the divine Mind. There are without a real origin or existence. They have neither Principle nor permanence, but belong, with all that is material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which simulates the creations of Truth. All creations of Spirit are eternal; but creations of matter must return to dust. Error supposes man to be both mental and material. Divine Science contradicts this postulate and maintains man's spiritual identity.

2010

Day 25: Word Choice

41:22-43:20

The belief that man has existence or mind separate from God is a dying error.

I can’t stop looking at this sentence. I think I’ve been misunderstanding it for years. Instead of pointing out a belief that is coming to an end because it is wrong (my previous thought), what about the erroneous belief causes the result of death?

Did everyone see that but me all these years? I’ll be in the corner with the dunce cap on.

2010

Day 282: At War with an Idea

565:6-567:13

Mary Baker Eddy makes an interesting point at the end of this reading:

Against Love, the dragon warreth not long, for he is killed by the divine Principle. Truth and Love prevail against the dragon because the dragon cannot war with them.

The dragon is at war with Love but he is killed by divine Principle. Materiality cannot destroy an idea. There have certainly been, and still are plenty of dictators, tyrants, and politicians willing to disprove this.

The idea remains.

Day 265: Death

531:8-533:4

The Adam dream (the second story) has an interesting figurative twist. Adam believed he would die if he ate the apple and so he hadn’t until woman offered it to him. The death wasn’t material but spiritual. So this story has two lies to tell us. First that we are material, and second we will stay that way.

Day 251:

503:6-505:3

The thought came to me today that while reading this chapter, I need to remember the first tenet, the inspired word. It is all to easy to get very literal and what-if the text when that isn’t what I’m reading it for.

Mary Baker Eddy writes the same thing several different ways in this reading but I underlined them all:

No supposition of error enters there.

God creates neither [1] erring thought, [2] mortal life, [3] mutable truth, nor [4] variable love.

Immortal Mind makes its own record, but [1] mortal mind, [2] sleep, [3] dreams, [4] sin, [5] disease, and [5] death have no record in the first chapter of Genesis.

This is a great support for the beginning/only idea of yesterday.

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 217: Great Quotes

428:3-430:12

Some days, I underline most of the reading. Today is one of those days but for this blog, I’ll just pick out a few:

Man’s privilege at this supreme moment is to prove the words of our Master: “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”

To divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear, – this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true.

eternal building

everlasting Father

We must realize the ability of mental might to offset human misconceptions and to replace them with the life which is spiritual, not material.

We must hold forever the consciousness of existence

We must being, however, with the more simple demonstrations of control, and the soon we begin the better.

if we are wise, we look beyond a single step in the line of spiritual advancement

Faith should enlarge its borders and strengthen its base by resting upon Spirit instead of matter.

Day 216: Death

426:5-428:2

A side note: I’ve had 216+ days so far to think about how I want to continue this journal next year. Mainly, I’m focusing on making the tasks less time consuming so that I can spend more time on reading and thinking about each day’s reading instead of the mechanics of how to blog about it. One step is to move off of blogger. Another step is to get all the days’ readings mapped out and linked up before the next year. I’m a little concerned this might be some sort of copyright issue if I do that. While I’m not ‘copying’ the content, you could say I’m breaking the spirit of the copyright. I do burn a lot of time with that process and if it were available, other’s might join in the blog-journal year with me. So, copyright violation? Moral violation? Or seems practical and helpful? Thoughts?

Today’s reading covers death as “another phase of the dream that existence can be material.” Some little idea popped in the back of my mind; its sitting there waiting for me to know it. I don’t know when I dropped the fear of death. Maybe I never had it. I just didn’t seem relevant. And I wasn’t worried about anyone I left behind until I had kids. But that too is not a huge nagging issue for me. But the whole death as another phase implies that there is the ability to side-step the dream altogether. That’s the new idea.

I don’t mean in the Jesus didn’t die way but something even larger than that -- something completely outside of life as we believe we know it.

Day 160: Death and Jesus

312:1-314:9

Today's reading is about material death and the example of Jesus' death. There is something in these two pages, can't put my finger on it yet, that is different or new to me. Some glimpse of something unseen until now. This sentence summarizes it but doesn't really expound on it:

...death is the departure of a mortal's mind, not of matter.

I agree with th departure but where did the mind go? From a spiritual perspective, it is more a releasing than a departure?

I also marked:

That which material sense calls intangible, is found to be substance.