Through a healing of paralysis of the nerves I became interested in Christian Science twenty-six years ago. From that time until a short while ago I accepted Christian Science simply as a means of freeing myself from any discordant condition in which I might find myself.
In January, 1940, I became very ill with a distressing condition of the heart. Treatment was requested from a Christian Science practitioner, but I did not respond readily. The practitioner told me that I must cease identifying myself as a human being, good or bad, and think of myself in the light of what Mrs. Eddy says of man (Science and Health, p. 475): "He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas."
And so, instead of thinking of myself as a person who was ill and in need of healing, I began to ponder those right ideas that comprise true selfhood. I came to the conclusion that because those ideas are spiritual, they must be infinite and indivisible. I began to declare that as the spiritual idea of infinite Mind, I expressed infinite Principle, Life, Truth, Love, and that I included joy, satisfaction, strength, beauty, perfection, completeness. When pain, exhaustion, fear, or unhappiness assailed me I saw that those thoughts were not mine, but merely suggestions of personal sense claiming that I was not the expression of God. Understanding this, I learned to deny those suggestions as lies concerning my real self. Recognition that man's true being is unlimited revealed the necessity of denying the reality of anything unlike God, whether personal sense said it was my condition or that of someone else. The symptoms, which seemed so real and distressing, gradually faded out of my experience, and today I have a greater awareness of health, strength, and happiness than ever before.
