One day I was stung by a bee. I prayed to forgive the bee, but the pain was intense and moved swiftly through my body. Affirming that I was a spiritual idea of God, not material, helped me get over the effect within a few moments. There was no swelling. But I realized that there was more I could do to correct my thinking.
When my wife was stung the next day, I mentioned to her my own experience and how forgiving the bee had helped. She agreed but said that the pain was shooting through her system. She, too, got over it quickly, however, and experienced no aftereffects.
When I was stung again the following day, I immediately responded by praying, but I also remembered that I needed to do more than forgive the bee. I needed to reject the whole idea that I had been stung. That morning I had read an article in a back copy of the Christian Science Sentinel about being one’s own mental attorney (Jane Partis McCarty, “Are you a good lawyer for yourself?” August 9, 1999). Believing oneself to be anything but a perfect, innocent being, created by God and with the same purity as our Father, is pleading guilty to a false accusation made by mortal thought. Such an admission of guilt, when one is innocent, is like accepting a dose of poison. I rejected the venom by understanding that, as a spiritual being, I could not be stung or injected with poison, since poison and the act of injecting it don’t exist in the realm of infinite Spirit, which means they don’t exist at all. The result was that the pain that was trying to come on strong disappeared.
