“The truth is, you will never rise above the image you have of yourself in your own mind.” Well-known American preacher Joel Osteen made that insightful observation in his book Your Best Life Now (Warner Faith, 2004, p.56). In the last few years, people certainly have been exploring the connections between what people think and then what they experience, including their varying states of wellness. This is, in a way, a process of rediscovery. Those connections have been recognized over the centuries in most of the world’s holy writings, whether of the Eastern or Western Hemisphere. Once again, people are finding for themselves that their thoughts actually embrace their whole world of health. Rather than treatment and cure being based solely on using matter to fix matter—“good” matter employed to alter “bad” matter, in other words—it’s becoming clearer that, with truly effective treatment, thought is involved at the most fundamental level. What we think ourselves to be goes hand in hand with the state of our health.
Along with the Bible, a wonderful book that many people read to learn more about these associations between thought and treatment is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. As a rudimentary introduction to Christian Science treatment, the author, Mary Baker Eddy, outlines this approach: “To heal by argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical” (p. 412). Healing by argument in this manner is not a case of the metaphysician arguing with physical symptoms, and certainly is not some sort of approach in which an argument is conducted with the patient.
The argument, often in the form of reasoning, takes place within the metaphysician’s thought. He or she becomes inspired by the intelligent presence that the Bible calls Love and Spirit. Rather than embracing ideas about God’s status and man’s concurrent reflected goodness in the hope that they will become facts, successful treatment is to think deeply and gratefully, reasoning through the present goodness of perfect God and perfect, spiritual man. This is not simply using the human mind to trick itself into believing that all is well. No, as the human mind becomes subordinate to the truth of how things actually exist for God and God’s creation, the power of God is brought to bear on thought. Then, as Jesus proved, this newfound understanding and knowledge of the truth makes one free from lack, injustice, injury, and illness.
