Last week, while searching the Web for a translation of a German word, I came across a Facebook page on Schutzhund training. Not knowing what this was, I clicked on the page and saw a dozen people, similarly dressed, standing on steps to an academic building. It clearly wasn’t what I wanted so I clicked off and went on. Later, out of curiosity I wondered what Schutzhund was in German and so clicked back, and that’s when I saw them. By each person was a black German shepherd dog sitting perfectly to the side. I was surprised! They evidently blended in somewhat, but how did I miss seeing all those German shepherds the first time? Why were they completely invisible to me? Then I asked myself: What realities are right in front of me that I may not be recognizing?
Reality, in Christian Science, is understood to be all that is spiritual and when our thought is spiritualized, we feel Spirit’s tangible presence. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, explains it this way in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or eternal” (p. 335).
The truth is that we are already pure and perfect, healthy and whole.
This explanation is clearly not based on matter or anything that decays, but is based on Spirit, God, and His spiritual expressions, which are eternally harmonious. Whatever is inharmonious does not originate in God and has no foundation in Truth. Reality consists solely in what is immutable, immortal, divine, and eternal. So if something is unspiritual (or in other words, material), it can never be permanent, substantial, or harmonious. Why? Because whatever is unspiritual does not emanate from God, who is permanent and harmonious.
While this way of reasoning may seem challenging at first, it is logical. The more we learn to spiritually understand the distinction between matter and Spirit, the more we spiritually understand the temporality of one and the eternality of the other. These two opposites can’t both be real. Only one can be and it has to be the one that is permanent, never decays, is never lost. This one is Spirit, God.
Spiritually understanding God as being permanent and eternal helps us to also understand our own permanence and eternality as His expression. Creation, which is the expression of God, couldn’t be anything opposite to God. And because God is Spirit, His expression—you and I—are spiritual, not material. The reality, then, is that we exist only and eternally as the spiritual expression of our creator, God.
What does this understanding do for us? It enables us to confront the antics of matter as merely objectifications, the outward appearing, of the carnal mind and its beliefs—to see them as unreal and therefore amenable to elimination. When disease or sickness seems to threaten our health, we can rise up prayerfully against this false, so-called reality to affirm and perceive the all-presence of Spirit, God. Understanding that disease is not permanent or real, we also spiritually understand that it is powerless over us because God is the only power and the only reality. Unreality has no authority over His creation—you and me.
Mrs. Eddy explains: “Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique” (Science and Health, p. 475). This spiritual reality is tangible substance expressed in perfection and wholeness. Even though it may appear we’re suffering, the reality is that God’s expression never suffers. This reality can be seen and felt even in the midst of material so-called evidence, and as this happens, the suffering is destroyed; we are healed.
Our spiritual selfhood, as God’s image and likeness, is certainly a reality. Our true substance is wholly spiritual, including ideas that emanate from divine Mind, Spirit, and are maintained by Mind. In continuing her discussion of man, Mrs. Eddy states: “He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; …” (Science and Health, p. 475). The truth is that we are already entirely pure and perfect, healthy and whole. This is the spiritual fact of our existence with God. Anything that tries to contradict this spiritual fact is false and destructible.
We exist only and eternally as the spiritual expression of our creator, God.
Sometimes, though, it may seem like this perfect reality is not so real or tangible. It may feel as if matter is dominant and that it governs our thought and lives. These false beliefs are merely aggressive mental suggestions coming to thought, trying to state the predominance of matter. They can only seem to suggest themselves. Powerless to make themselves real or even believable, they are not the realities of being. They are not spiritual facts. They are unrealities and can be seen for what they are: untrue statements contradicting our oneness with God. Such errors only seem to survive and take on animation when we don’t scientifically refute and destroy them.
This is done as we exchange the false concept for the right idea. Suppose someone says to you that the tree outside your office window is red with purple polka-dots. You know that’s not the case, and you would know that no such tree exists. But the misstatement needs correcting, so you tell the individual: “That tree is not red with purple polka-dots! It’s green with lovely yellow blossoms.”
If a friend called and said she was suffering from a disease, you would know the individual cannot truly have a disease. But the suggestion needs to be corrected with prayerful reasoning, to correct your own thought as well as the patient’s: “She’s not diseased! She’s healthy and well. She’s perfect and whole. That’s the reality!” And you would hold this line of scientific reasoning, and explain truth to the patient, until the evidence changed for the better, demonstrating reality.
These statements aren’t just happy thinking, or a formula, or positive reinforcement of what we wish to be true, but an acknowledgment of God’s perfect reality expressed in His perfect creation. In short, we’re declaring the truth. We’re gaining an understanding of reality even if the outward evidence doesn’t seem to yet support what is true. Mrs. Eddy writes: “The facts of divine Science should be admitted,—although the evidence as to these facts is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense,—because the evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by spiritual sense” (Science and Health, p. 471).
By admitting the spiritual facts, we are recognizing the presence and power of reality. This right thinking acknowledges Spirit as the only substance, Mind as the only source of creation, and Truth as the only standard of man. This right thinking spiritually discerns the present reality here and now!
