Although the psalmist clothed his longing in the poetic imagery of the Orient, he nevertheless expressed a common human emotion when he exclaimed, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." There are earlier and brighter moods of the human mind, to be sure, that would ask for nothing better than to be borne on "the wings of the wind" into fields of fresh adventure; but the elements of change and decay in human belief, cause all human experience eventually to end in a sense of something wanting. Postponement of happiness may result, however, in changing the drift of human craving for something satisfying in matter into a more importunate desire to flee from the whole dark disappointment and be at peace. This dissatisfaction in the material, though unreal and inharmonious in itself, nevertheless hints a legitimate and real attraction to the spiritual and permanent; and when this attraction is responded to, human aspiration may truly soar above the mortal and disappointing into spiritual fullness and certainty.
In the first flush of understanding, however, some single demonstration of spiritual power may be mistaken as an indication that full-grown spiritual wings have been acquired and that all earthly vexations are to be swiftly left behind and spiritual altitudes at once attained. This premature exhilaration is almost invariably followed by earthward tumbles, and in grieved bafflement, one may wonder if Christian Science is really as liberating as it promised to be. When one was expecting to soar in the Spirit, it is of course very surprising to find that one must first learn how to "walk in the Spirit;" but the fact must be accepted that spiritual wings are not etherealized material pinions on which to rise above the things of the earth before belief in the reality of matter is overcome. A man cannot cleave to material conceptions if he would rise above the ill effects of those conceptions. All the innumerable conditions which comprise human existence have been conceived of materially, and these false conceptions have to be reversed, one by one, and the divine reality spiritually discerned. Then, as Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 261), "Fixing your gaze on the realities supernal, you will rise to the spiritual consciousness of being, even as the bird which has burst from the egg and preens its wings for a skyward flight."
Everything within the radius of experience must be estimated in its reality as an idea in divine Principle. This is why spiritual flights, reckoned from human standpoints, are necessarily preceded by a preparatory period, a time of walking through instead of fleeing from many very mundane experiences. It is in the midst of the material, however, that the human being must become disillusioned. One must really understand the unreality of the material before one can rise to the realization of the supersensible actuality of being. Spiritual realities are not to be drawn within the narrow confines of material concepts nor grasped through mere belief in Principle. Principle must be understood, for only spiritual understanding and the application of that understanding to false beliefs can unfetter human consciousness and prepare it for "a skyward flight."
