Day 129: Spirit vs. Material Sense

251:28-253:17

there is no cause (outside of erring, mortal, material sense which is not power) able to make you sick or sinful

Material sense lifts its voice with the arrogance of reality and says: I am wholly dishonest, and no man knoweth it. I can cheat, lie, commit adultery, rob, murder, and I elude detection by smooth-tongued villainy. Animal in propensity, deceitful in sentiment, fraudulent in purpose, I mean to make my short span of life one gala day. What a nice thing is sin! How sin succeeds, where the good purpose waits! The world is my kingdom. I am enthroned in the gorgeousness of matter. Like bursting lava, I expand but to my own despair, and shine with the resplendency of consuming fire.

Spirit, bearing opposite testimony, saith: I am Spirit. Man, whose senses are spiritual, is my likeness. He reflects the infinite understanding, for I am Infinity. The beauty of holiness, the perfection of being, imperishable glory,--all are Mine, for I am God. I give immortality to man, for I am Truth. I include and impart all bliss, for I am Love. I give life, without beginning and without end, for I am Life. I am supreme and give all, for I am Mind. I am the substance of all, because I AM THAT I AM.

2010

Day 74: Healing

140:4-142:24

Lots of good instruction in this reading about theology today.

We worship spiritually, only as we cease to worship materially.

Few understand or adhere to Jesus’ divine precepts for living and healing. Why? Because his precepts require the disciple to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye, – that is, to set aside even the most cherished beliefs and practices, to leave all for Christ.

In healing the sick and sinning, Jesus elaborated the fact that the healing effect followed the understanding of the divine Principle and of the Christ-spirit which governed the corporeal Jesus.

2010

Day 68:

128:4-130:6

We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things.

I’ve been challenging myself with this for a few days now but it is nice to have the idea so succinctly stated.

2010

Day 63: Spiritual vs. Material Law

117:29-119:24

Material law, defined by science, theology, and medicine, is all around us. It seems to be getting more pervasive and more complicated all the time. While new laws are still be considered, and then freshly installed into society (coughing into your elbow – oy), they are usually not in our thought much unless they are controversial. But once the law finds a place, then the people find the law. Beliefs, theories, opinions – these start to build on top of the law. Then the law eventually becomes part of our community and personal sense. We change our behavior to fit it and we get afraid, then angry when others don’t change their behavior.

Then there is spiritual law. It doesn’t change or grow more complicated. By comparison, it seems to become more simple. Love.

2010

Day 54:

100:1-101:32

What if Mesmer got it all wrong from the beginning? What if the mutual power he saw was actual us reflecting God’s love but he didn’t know or understand it so he took it in a different direction.

What if these other theories (outside C.S.) are people who where on the cusp of something spiritual (truly God inspired), but they just couldn’t figure it out?

What if that happens everyday?

2010

Day 52: What will happen

95:28-97:28

This reading is a prediction or overview of events to come. I wouldn’t call it the end of the world but I’m sure many people who don’t want materiality to end will see it that way.

Mary Baker Eddy explains what will happen, including:

As material knowledge diminishes and spiritual understanding increases, real objects will be apprehended mentally instead of materially.

She also gives us our task list:

…those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection.

Patience is not my strong skill. I need to work on my cheerful waiting.

2010

Day 40:

72:1-74:2

Mary Baker Eddy writes:

The belief that one man, as spirit, can control another man, as matter upsets both the individuality and the Science of man, for man is image.

I would like to propose as modified version of this sentence, for your consideration:

The belief that one man, as spirit, can control [negative verb of choice here] another man, as matter upsets both the individuality and the Science of man, for man is image.

My point is that the concept of control, fear, or harm isn’t limited to spirits but is something we walk around with everyday. Some of use give spirits more power than any other materiality, when we shouldn’t. None if it should have any more power than God. Or more correctly, none of it has power at all. 

2010

Day 24: A Convenient Season

39:31-41:21

In this reading, I felt like a errant child. In some regards, I am always looking for a convenient time to get things done. Five minutes here to do the dishes, twenty minutes here to do the laundry, a few minutes after picking up the kids from school to run errands. My life is all about a convenient season materially. But not spiritually. If anything, I struggle with how to remove the veil of matter. I often wonder if a different place, time, or position would lend itself to more spirituality.

In the meantime, here I am, reading each day to glimpse that spirituality and find that calm.

2010

Day 10: Absent from the body

13:5-14:30

In this reading Mary Baker Eddy has two point that are old standards in Christian Science but struck me new today. The first is to work toward your goal. Prayer isn’t enough; we must do. Take steps. Move Forward. For just a moment, I felt like I was listening to a motivational speaker. That isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s just I never got that from Mary Baker Eddy before.

The second point is to be absent from the body and present with God. When I saw body, I thought all materiality. Life and intelligence are spiritual but pretty much everything else isn’t. It didn’t matter if I was absent from the body or absent from my car. To me, the deeper point is to be present in spirituality enough to be absent from materiality.

2010

Day 288: The Purpose of Love

579-581:7

I was a little worried about this chapter, The Glossary. It’s just a dictionary. What insight could it really have? But even on the first few pages, I marked a couple of things.

• Spiritual sense = original meaning
• The purpose of Love is to create trust in good.
• An adversary is one who opposes, denies, disputes, not one who constructs and sustains reality and truth.

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 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 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.

153: Angels

298:8-300:8

I've been thinking of "change the evidence," from yesterday, all day long. It's quite an idea. I'm not sure if it really means change the evidence or it means that once I change my thought, the material evidence will change. What do you think?

Today, I marked two different ideas. The first is a sort-of definition of spiritual sense:

Spiritual sense ... involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality.

There are moments of such amazing clarity that I know the thoughts, during those times, are spiritual. In a sense, those moments are my spiritual sense. Of course, Mary Baker Eddy, summarizes what is involved very nicely above.

And the discussion of Angels:

Angels are pure thoughts from God...

My angels are exalted thoughts...

The most interesting thing about this is Mary Baker Eddy's choice of the first person usage "my." This is so rarely done in the book. It means more to me since she did personalize it for herself. Outside of the Preface, I'm not sure I remember anything like this. Do you?

I'm still churning with "change the evidence" though...

Day 141: Matter and Spirit

273:29-275:32

Today's reading covers a lot of ground about material senses and  what materiality is and isn't. There are several sections I underlined but they seemed more to reinforce what I already studied. The only new thought I underlined was:

The senses of Spirit abide in Love, and they demonstrate Truth and Life. 

This might be the first mention of Spiritual senses in the book. I'm trying to dissect the sentence for greater meaning but I may be trying to hard. Any thoughts?

Day 110: Spiritual Sense

213:16-215:10

Today's pages work on spiritual sense as opposed to material sense. We know what the material or physical senses are so I'm not going to cover that. And if someone said "he had a spiritual sense about him," you would get the meaning of "spiritual sense." But what about a different view of spiritual sense -- one that takes the idea of  the physical senses and provides a correlated spiritual sense? That's what Mary Baker Eddy tries to do.

But the idea of spiritual sense from Day 108 is still fresh in my mind -- a conscience, constant capacity to understand God. And then I see this today:

Spiritual sense ... conveys the impressions of Mind to man, then being will be understood and found to be harmonious. 

And a little farther down:

Spirit's senses are without pain, and they are forever at peace. Nothing can hide from them the harmony of all things and the might and permanence of Truth. 

So I looked up spiritual sense in the concordance to get more ideas to work with. And holy moly, there were so many references. I know this has happened at least one other time -- where I'm surprised by how many references to a word there are in the concordance. I can't remember what word it is and I can't search my own blog to find it, so it may just be spiritual sense. I went through the S&H references for spiritual sense. One stood out to me on page 505:20.

Spiritual sense is the discernment of spiritual good. 

This explanation I understand and I think I'm pretty close with my idea of seeing Man as the spiritual reflection of God in Day 108. I think the trick is not seeing man that way when times are good and all is well but when life appears bleak and unharmonious. I use the word appear meaning as it appears to mortal man -- not how it is to God. How it is to God is spiritual good. Good. All the time.

I think the chapter title, Footsteps of Truth, might be right on. Perhaps no need for a nickname.