The more abundant life promised by Christ Jesus is what Christian Science has meant to me. In the midst of material comforts, with everything apparently to be grateful for, I was moody,—hungry for something, I knew not what. In looking back, it now appears as if I had walked in a dream, at times apprehending what the real must be, then seeming to lose the vision. I was enough awake to the beauty of spirituality to want to be good, but my search for perfection resulted, as I now see, in a self-centeredness, an unconscious self-righteousness. This, coupled with will-power and ambition, brought me to the point where I was willing to learn, having suffered enough to become convinced of the fallacy of my human reasoning.
It was not an easy task for the practitioners who treated me. I had lived so shut in with myself that faults and mistakes seemed to have deeper and subtler roots than at first appeared. Illness came as a result of the tremendous upheaval, the casting to the surface of error which, thank God, was met and overcome in Christian Science after months of struggle, during which I vainly resorted again to materia medica, then returned to Christian Science, with change of practitioners in many cities. But truly, as the apostle tells us, "all things work together for good to them that love God," and these very experiences have been wonderful teachers, wonderful aids to the deepening of my understanding.
One of the greatest of the blessings which have come to me, has been the ability to live in the present. Only those of an overambitious, sensitive, worrying temperament can realize the boon this is. Another is the joy of knowing that the brain cannot solve any problems, that as my life reflects more of the divine, so are all my problems solved by "angels,"—God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect" (Science and Health, p. 581). People and things look different to me, and I am gradually learning to lose self, learning the bliss of a consciousness filled only with the reflection of the one Mind, which moves one to a right activity, an activity without stress or strain and which constantly opens up to my vision new vistas of joy, peace, and gratitude.
