JESUS revealed the perfect way to gain the true sense of selfhood which reflects God. He prayed, "Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." Perfect spiritual consciousness is the reality of our being. Demonstration of this fact measures our emergence from the human to the divine. As the truth about real being, elucidated in our Leader's writings, is assimilated, the ability is gained to analyze our motives and thoughts and to see wherein they are unlike divine Principle, and to correct them; and to do this not merely once or often, but continuously. We must become able to detect the errors of the false sense of self, not to mourn over it, or to be filled with despair of ever reaching perfection, but to know how to surrender it as a falsity, and to let the true selfhood, as God's reflection, be manifested.
We can purify the human self only as our thinking habitually dwells on the spiritual beauty of true selfhood, the man of God's creating, holy beyond the possibility of impairment, and lovely in the reflected loveliness of divine Mind. And we must love this selfhood, which God created in His likeness, with a love so deep and sincere and reverent that we are not only willing but eager to strive to let it be unfolded in our experience. Mrs. Eddy says (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 20), "The Christian Scientist is alone with his own being and with the reality of things." In this spiritual aloneness with God we learn to claim our true sonship, and learn what scientific self-knowledge and self-denial mean and require. The only self that needs to be or can be denied is the false sense of self which seemingly obscures spiritual reality and expresses itself in some form of material discord. Mortals cannot change or actually deny the real selfhood, which God creates, loves, and maintains in perfection, for mortal sense does not see the real man.
If we temporarily fall away from this high course or fail to bring out what we know we ought to express of spiritual good, and what we truly desire to do, we must arise after each stumble and go on, ever striving, ever correcting, ever beginning again with fresh hope. This is the price we pay for gaining spirituality in an age largely material in its views and practices. Through experience, through prayer and many self-corrections, we learn to detect wrong thoughts quickly and to be swift to arrest them before they carry through their false arguments. We may truly desire to do this, and yet may find thought straying into idleness and fearful imaginings; for the false sense of self contends for itself and its beliefs. It is possible, however, on the basis of the one Mind to silence these evil suggestions, this resistance to Truth which would harass, confuse, and darken, and to think more lucidly and availingly.
