Day 114: Mind & the Body

221:1-223:6

He learned that suffering and disease were the self-imposed beliefs of mortals, and not the facts of being; that God never decreed disease, –never ordained a law that fasting should be a means of health.

This new-born understanding, that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of mortal mind, can make one suffer, brings with it another lesson, –that gluttony is a sensual illusion, and that this phantasm of mortal mind disappears as we better apprehend our spiritual existence and ascend the ladder of life.

2010

Day 267: Sorrow, Desire, & Rule

535:6-536:29

Well, now. Adam and Eve get a talking to – don’t they. The 2nd Story God lays down the punishment.

The woman will multiply her sorrow, her only desire to serve her husband, and he (her husband) shall rule over her. God just made man the god of woman. So now there are many gods.

Mary Baker Eddy’s response is right on:

Divine Science deals its chief blow at the supposed material foundations of life and intelligence.

The material foundation are not only how man is created but how man and woman are to live, which in Science is in harmony, with only one god – God.

Then God turns to man and says he can’t eat of that tree anymore, man can eat herb of the field, bread. Ok. so why isn’t this passage (Genesis 3:17-19) taken literally if so many religions want to take Genesis 3:16 literally? Just bread for man. 

Then Mary Baker Eddy sums up what this 2nd Story God did:

The illusion of sin is without hope or God.

Day 196: Food and Harmony

387:13-389:12

Today’s reading covers food and how it doesn’t control the body. I remember so many conversations with other CSers in college about this area of thought. We loved food: rich, yummy food. We philosophized on the CS perspective of our love of food. Oddly, at the same time, I was struggled with a type of eating disorder:

It is a law of so-called mortal mind, misnamed matter, which causes all things discordant. 

I’m grateful to Mary Baker Eddy, in passages as these, where she discusses how the future might look one day on this topic but shouldn’t look that way right now. It gives me insight into my own areas of growth regarding food (or materiality) without heading off in the wrong direction.