Day 234: Decide Proper Treatment

463:5-464:29

To decide quickly as to the proper treatment of error-- whether error is manifested in forms of sickness, sin, or death--is the first step towards destroying error. Our Master treated error through Mind. He never enjoined obedience to the laws of nature, if by these are meant laws of matter, nor did he use drugs. There is a law of God applicable to healing, and it is a spiritual law instead of material. The sick are not healed by inanimate matter or drugs, as they believe that they are. Such seeming medical effect or action is that of so-called mortal mind.

2010

Day 211: Identity & Illusion in Healing

416:16-418:11

The whole reading today grabbed me. My thoughts have been racing toward this all week.

The material body, which you call me, is mortal mind, and this mind is material in sensation, even as the body, which has originated from this material sense and been developed according to it, is material. This materialism of parent and child is only in mortal mind, as the dead body proves; for when the mortal has resigned his body to dust, the body is no longer the parent, even in appearance.

To the Christian Science healer, sickness is a dream from which the patient needs to be awakened. Disease should not appear real to the physician, since it is demonstrable that the way to cure the patient is to make disease unreal to him. To do this, the physician must understand the unreality of disease in Science.

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 192: Truth vs. Illusion

379-381:7

Nothing but the power of Truth can prevent the fear of error, and prove man's dominion over error.

Be no more willing to suffer the illusion that you are sick or that some disease is developing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temptation on the ground that sin has its necessities.

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 231: Mental Quackery

457:7-458:31

This reading is about dividing yourself between the material solution and the spiritual solution. Yesterday’s quote about guilt and self-condemnation come to mind in this light. Also the idea that my direction in spirituality must progress.

A couple of ideas I obviously need to work on:

It is anything but scientifically Christian to think of aiding the divine Principle of healing or of trying to sustain the human body until the divine Mind is ready to take the case. Divinity is always ready.

The Christianly scientific man reflects the divine law, thus becoming a law unto himself. He does violence to no man. Neither is he a false accuser. The Christian Scientist wisely shapes his course, and is honest and consistent in following the leadings of divine Mind. He must prove, through living as well as healing and teaching, that Christ’s way is the only one by which mortals are radically saved from sin and sickness.

Day 229: Misc Instruction

453:6-455:2

This reading has several disjointed ideas about teaching students, at first glance. I think MBE is trying to cover a lot of details at once. She covers sin, sickness, and moves on to the important, higher aspects of Christian Science.

The last few pages, perhaps even into the last chapter, mention honesty over and over. This reading discusses honesty with yourself – knowing yourself before you expect to know a patient. I think that is what I’ve been working on but I don’t think I’m done with it yet.

Her higher Christian Science aspects include:

That evil or matter has neither intelligence nor power, is the doctrine of absolute Christian Science, and this is the great truth which strips disguise from error.

Love for God and man is the true incentive.

Wait patiently for divine Love to move upon the waters of mortal mind, and form the perfect concept.

Day 226: Sin

447:12-449:6

This reading was about sin. MBE always said it was easier to heal sickness than sin. A distinction she makes in this reading is the difference between declaring the Truth versus knowing the Truth:

A sinner is afraid to case the first stone. He may say, as a subterfuge, that evil is unreal, but to know it, he must demonstrate his statement.

So there is the catch. A sick person is ignorant of the cause of sickness and the pain of the body is all the reason to reach for knowledge of the truth. The same isn’t true for what can sometimes seem like delicious sin. The motive to change isn’t immediate physical pain. The motive must be an interest in a long-term change in thought and deed:

Evil which obtains in the bodily senses, but which the heart condemns, has no foundation; but if evil is uncondemned, it is undenied and nurtured. 

Christian Science rises above the evidence of the corporeal senses; but if you have not risen above sin yourself, do not congratulate yourself upon your blindness to evil or upon the good you know and do not.

Day 211: More Treatment Instructions

416:16-418:11

Specific points:

Turn their thoughts away from their bodies to higher objects. Teach them that their being is sustained by Spirit, not by matter, and that they find health, peace and harmony in God, divine Love.

Maintain the facts of Christian Science, – that Spirit is God, and therefore cannot be sick; that what is termed matter cannot be sick; that all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law.

Show them that the conquest over sickness as well as over sin, depends on mentally destroying all belief in material pleasure or pain.

Please with an honest conviction of truth and a clear perception of the unchanging, unerring, and certain effect of divine Science.

Day 209: Steps of a Treatment

412:16-414:14

This is a note to myself so I can find this again easily.

To prevent disease or to cure it, the power of Truth, of divine Spirit, must break the dream of the material senses. To heal by argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical. Argue at first mentally, not audibly, that the patient has no disease, and conform the argument so as to destroy the evidence of disease. Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony.

Day 192: Sin & Sickness

379-381:7

In this reading, Mary Baker Eddy works to break the barrier between the idea of healing sickness and the idea of healing sin. Or maybe she takes it one step further in applying the concept of prevention to both. Anyway, the point is that they are, in Christian Science, indistinguishable and just errors of mind.

Half way through the first sentence, I mentally finished it although not from memory but just working it out myself:

If disease can attack and control the body without the consent of mortals, sin can do the same, for both are errors, announced as partners in the beginning.

Then some fuzzy editing at the bottom of page 379:

Fevers are errors of various types…drawn on the body by a mortal mind.

Then the instructions from MBE that I need to follow better:

Be no more willing so suffer the illusion that you are sick or that some disease is developing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temptation on the ground that sin has its necessities.