Day 182: Know Yourself

357:7-359:17

you must change the human concept of life, and must at length know yourself spiritually and scientifically

2010

Day 181: Discord

355:9-357:6

Let discord of every name and nature be heard no more, and let the harmonious and true sense of Life and being take possession of human consciousness.

Discord can never establish the facts of harmony.

2010

Day 180: Traditions

353:7-355:8

Surely it is not enough to cleave to barren and desultory dogmas, derived from the traditions of the elders who thereunto have set their seals.

2010

Day 179: Personal Devil

351:8-353:6

We cannot bring out the practical proof of Christianity, which Jesus required, while error seems as potent and real to us as Truth, and while we make a personal devil and an anthropomorphic God our starting-points,--especially if we consider Satan as a being coequal in power with Deity, if not superior to Him. Because such starting-points are neither spiritual nor scientific, they cannot work out the Spirit-rule of Christian healing, which proves the nothingness of error, discord, by demonstrating the all-inclusiveness of harmonious Truth.

2010

Day 178: Faith Healing (Faith + Healing)

349:13-351:7

When we lose faith in God's power to heal, we distrust the divine Principle which demonstrates Christian Science, and then we cannot heal the sick. Neither can we heal through the help of Spirit, if we plant ourselves on a material basis.

2010

Day 177: Not Power but God

347:12-349:12

I desire to have no faith in evil or in any power but God, good.

Two essential points of Christian Science are, that neither Life nor man dies, and that God is not the author of sickness.

2010

Day 176: Carnal Mind

345:10-347:11

This thought of human, material nothingness, which Science inculcates, enrages the carnal mind and is the main cause of the carnal mind's antagonism.

2010

Day 175: God’s Unlikeness

343:6-345:9

As it is evident that the likeness of Spirit cannot be material, does it not follow that God cannot be in His unlikeness and work through drugs to heal the sick?

2010

Day 174: Opinions

341-343:5

In Christian Science mere opinion is valueless.

2010

Day 183: The Ideal

359:18-361:32

Today is the last day of this chapter. The two statements that caught my eye are:

You are bringing out your own ideal.

And:

A human perception of divine Science, however limited, must be correct in order to be Science and subject to demonstration.

These two statements have a lot to teach me.

Day 182: Arguments

357:7-359:17
Today’s reading concerns several arguments about and against Christian Science. This are issue each person has to work out for themselves, if they are issues. They aren’t for me so I passed by those. But this did sound like it was written for me:

Even though you aver that the material senses are indispensable to man’s existence or entity, you must change the human concept of life, and must at length know yourself spiritually and scientifically.

Day 181: Matter versus Spirit

355:9-357:6

In this reading, Mary Baker Eddy went back to the discussion of original creation and original creator. This caught my eye:

Strangely enough, we ask for material theories in support of spiritual and eternal truths, when the two are so antagonistic that the material thought must become spiritualized before the spiritual fact is attained.

This is something I’ve been thinking about myself lately. MBE said it better, of course.

Day 180: Inconsistency

353:7-355:8

These two pages seemed like a personal rebuke for me. Consistency is a lesson I seem to learn over and over; otherwise named inconsistency. I especially like the comparison of words/works to inconsistency/consistency.

I’ve been thinking lately if meditation, which I’m not that good at, would help my CS focus. Any CSers out there that meditate?

Day 179: The Ghost

351:8-353:6

In this section, Mary Baker Eddy writes about calming a child’s fear about imaginary ghosts. It’s an analogy, she could have meant any material fear but ghosts are particularly frightening to little children so the analogy is that much more poignant. She writes:

In short, children should be told not to believe in ghosts, because there are no such things. If belief in their reality is destroyed, terror of ghosts will depart and health be restored. The objects of alarm will then vanish into nothingness, no longer seeming worthy of fear or honor.

People who read this have an interesting reaction: I’ve experienced a ghost myself – how can you tell me they aren’t real? This book is about Christian Science and spiritual reality, not about ghosts. If you want to believe in ghosts because you have experienced them – good for you. But how is that different from believing in sickness, or sin? It’s not.

Go back to the analogy and replace the word ghost with anything you are afraid of, in pain from, etc. The paragraph is still truthful. The idea is the same. One material sensation is just as unreal as the next.

Day 178: The life-link connection

349:13-351:7

I marked several things in this reading but I’m only going to cover two. Please read this section for yourself several times. There are lots of grains of thought here.

…that life-link forming the connection through which the real reaches the unreal, Soul rebukes sense, and Truth destroys error.

Jesus was the life-link or the original demonstration. There were lots of demonstrations, but this was God’s demonstration to us. I never thought of Jesus that way before, as a CS demonstration.

When we lose faith in God’s power to heal, we distrust the divine Principle which demonstrates Christian Science, and then we cannot heal the sick.

I take this as a guide to check my own thinking and examine the results of my demonstration – to weigh my faith.

Day 177: The Dream or the Life

347:12-349:12
The first thing I marked was:

The dream that matter and error are something must yield to reason and revelation. Then mortals will behold the nothingness of sickness and sin, and sin and sickness will disappear from consciousness. The harmonious will appear real, and the inharmonious unreal.

Behold the nothingness is a strong statement but one I need to grasp. The human senses and even mortal mind can paint a compelling picture where it is very had to think what I’m seeing, feeling, thinking – is nothing. Something to work on.

I deny His cooperation with evil, because I desire to have no faith in evil or in any power but God, good.

When Mary Baker Eddy writes in first person, I take notice, since she does it so little in the book. She wasn’t one for gentle statements. I should learn something from her there.

Two essential points of Christian Science are, that neither Life nor man dies, and that God is not the author of sickness.

Well said.

Day 176: More information about Progress

345:10-347:11
The two points I underlined today are:

Disbelief in error destroys error, and leads to the discernment of Truth.

and:

Material beliefs must be expelled to make room for spiritual understanding.

My take on these are: If I’m not gaining the progress I want, I need to search out any remaining error and material beliefs.

Day 175: Treating Disease & Meekness

343:6-345:9

In yesterday’s reading, Mary Baker Eddy wrote that mere opinion is valueless. Well, today, here I am giving my opinion to her question in today’s reading:

Why should one refuse to investigate this method [Christian Science] of treating disease?

She states that allopathy and homoepathy are fashionable but I, from my own experience, think there is a deeper issue. Prayer and understanding are work. To remember why it is that God made us whole and how we came to that understanding means we have to take time (a few minutes? a few hours?) to go down that road again, if we have forgotten it. For a non-CSer, they have to take time to get there. Who has that kind of time? It seems faster to take a pill, let the doctor do the thinking. I don’t think it was fashion that made Christian Science healing appear less, I think it was the commitment it required. I speak from experience. I don’t want a lot of work, I just want to be healed. I’m not proposing CS doesn’t heal, it does and has for me. But there might be more than fashion to the reason. What do you think?

Meekness is mentioned several times in the reading. I gather that I might not have a deep enough understanding of the word to figure out why this word is being used. The point that I knew I missed was:

submission to divine will

Day 174: Objections

341-343:5

This is the first few pages of Chapter 11, Some Objections Answered.

I'm going to read this as though I am one of those with objections in order to see if I have lingering doubts or lack of understanding. I underlined:

In Christian Science mere opinion is valueless.

I might go one step farther and say it can be harmful to someone's progress to throw my own opinion on top of their work, or the other way around. But Mary Baker Eddy's point was works, not words. So in that spirit, I will continue to listen.