When I receive calls for prayerful help from those struggling to be free of past abusive situations, I am always struck with the strength of their spiritual sense. Inherent in each of them is the untouched and pure impulse to see themselves as God sees them. Sometimes they voice this. Other times they don’t. But their spiritual sense—their “conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 209)—is always there and fully operating.
I am also struck with the power of their purity. It is a reflection of God as omnipresent Love and omnipotent Soul. This purity demands expression, and leads one to see “the new man” (see Colossians 3:9, 10). The “old man” is a fabrication of fears, ignorance, and spiritual blindness, and simply does not have the authority, credibility, or ability to counter purity.
Whenever we pray for healing, the light of the Christ enters in. Sometimes this happens in a full-blown realization of the truth about who we are as the loved and untainted children of God. Sometimes it is one intuition, one small victory, one step at a time leading to an ever-growing sense of our full, satisfying, and inseparable relationship to God, who is only good, and the only authority who determines who and what we are.
