How often has the expression, "Be yourself!" uttered goodnaturedly but with no thought of its deeper implications, aroused one from a sense of pride, anger, or gloom, and healed a situation that might have led to friction and discord! Even this casual use of the expression is an admission that one has a better selfhood than the one that is seen in ill nature. But to the Christian Scientist, who knows something of spiritual identity, finding the real self means entertaining only the perfect ideas of divine Mind, and eliminating the erroneous suggestions that represent anything less than the image and likeness of God.
Christian Science reveals the perfection of man. Mortals may not readily grasp this fact, but when it is acknowledged and adhered to, the false representations of mortal mind begin to seem less real, and one finds that his understanding of his real spiritual selfhood is outwardly manifested in a healthier, happier, and more useful human living.
Could anything be more practical than this? In Christian Science we have a religion that meets our needs in the present state of our human development, reveals the true fact about every situation in which we may be involved, and provides definite rules for expressing more and more of our real selfhood, until the human shall have disappeared in the divine. True, the goal is perfection, and we may not reach it in a day. It may even seem at times as though we have fallen woefully short of what we think we should be able to demonstrate. When tempted to belittle our present achievements, let us remember that the selfhood we are condemning never existed in the reality of being, and that in accepting the suggestions of failure and futility we are merely building up a false sense of self that must eventually be overcome.
