We can perceive and experience freedom, security, and guidance even amidst the hustle and bustle. Why? Because “spiritual guides,” as Mary Baker Eddy describes angels (see Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 299), are independent of time and space. However, it can take some listening practice in order to be able to discern these spiritual intuitions and to distinguish between human reasoning and divine guidance.
I had an experience that illustrates this. On a warm afternoon I was strolling across the Theresienwiese, as the fairground of the Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, is called. The fairground is located in between the train station and the subway station (where I needed to board a train to my final destination), and I was happy to have the opportunity to visit the festival once again—it had been many years since my last visit. It was fun to watch the crowds dressed in their dirndl dresses and lederhosen (traditional leather shorts) milling about the noisy fairground with its wide array of attractions.
I was wearing a backpack that contained my belongings, and halfway across the fairground, I began to feel an increasingly sharp pain in my hips—despite taking a break at a sweet-dumpling stand. The backpack was heavy, but I had carried it several times in the past without any problems, which was why I found it surprising that this time I would experience problems walking. Toward the end of the fairground, and apart from the crowds, I took another break and put the backpack down. From one of the attractions I heard loud laughter—it was a “Fun House,” and a loud voice promised that it would make you laugh. A timely invitation to be lighthearted.
I thought, “I really don’t feel like laughing at all.” On the heel of that thought, though, came an idea from a passage in Science and Health, which indicated to me that the pleasures and pains of the senses are both, essentially, sides of the same coin, and that both are human illusions (see p. 265). They are not of God and therefore they have no power over spiritual man, who expresses God’s pure and intact qualities and therefore can include only good. So the pains of sense don’t have dominion over me, God’s spiritual idea. I rejoiced in this angel thought. It enabled me to soar, mentally, to a higher spiritual understanding. I was able to realize that unimpeded freedom of movement is part of my true identity as the expression of God’s harmonious being, without burden and pain. As these ideas flooded my consciousness, true joy welled up inside me, even though the pain still persisted. However, these ideas needed to be defended, as I would soon find out.
At the end of the fairground I noticed a rickshaw stand. The thought came, “Why don’t you take a rickshaw to the subway station?” However, I realized that this thought probably didn’t stem from a spiritual intuition. Why? Because if the “ ‘glorious liberty of the children of God’ ” is mine now, then I could expect to be able to walk without any pain. The entire passage says: “Citizens of the world, accept the ‘glorious liberty of the children of God,’ and be free! This is your divine right. The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being” (Science and Health, p. 227).
I was able to continue on my way toward the subway station, where a boy thoughtfully helped me purchase the right ticket. In good spirits and deeply grateful, I sat down. I got off the train at my destination, and after walking some more, I arrived at my hostel. The pains were gone. They didn’t return the next day, either, when I freely continued my journey to Italy, which involved two more travels on foot.
Science and Health explains the right kind of listening in the passage next to the marginal heading “The true sense.” The passage begins with a statement by Job who said: “ ‘I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee.’ ” The passage continues: “Mortals will echo Job’s thought, when the supposed pain and pleasure of matter cease to predominate. They will then drop the false estimate of life and happiness, of joy and sorrow, and attain the bliss of loving unselfishly, working patiently, and conquering all that is unlike God. Starting from a higher standpoint, one rises spontaneously, even as light emits light without effort; for ‘where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ ” (p. 262).
The following year I gratefully remembered my experience as I accompanied a guest joyfully across the fairground in pouring rain, holding to the higher standpoint that joy is ever present.
