The wise traveler when planning a journey learns all he can about the right way to proceed and equips himself with maps and specific directions to assure a safe arrival. If all these preparations are necessary in taking a human journey, how much more important it is properly to chart one's course in the journey from sense to Soul.
Mary Baker Eddy in her writings gives some very understandable and definite directions to the wayfarer in traversing his path Spiritward. In the article "The Way" in "Miscellaneous Writings" she speaks of three stages of growth necessary to spiritual progress (pp. 355-357): the first is self-knowledge, the second is humility, and the third is love. The first step, to know oneself, is the basis of all Christian Science demonstration. We cannot expect to heal the sick instantaneously until we begin to heal ourselves of the false sense of a selfhood apart from God. We must learn to know and to love our real selfhood as God's idea and to accept it more and more as our very being. Someone may feel this is egotistic, but it is far from being so. In reality, to dwell on one's relationship to God destroys a false sense of identity with its self-interest and self-love.
We can never hope to gain salvation if we think of perfect man as an identity to be attained in the future. We must learn to accept the wholeness of being right now and to work from the basis of perfect God and perfect man. The absolute sense of self-knowledge is what heals. It is, however, necessary to take into account the false sense of a selfhood apart from God, so that We are not deceived and misled by its claim to reality and power. A clear line of demarcation between the right and the wrong concept of being must be maintained if one is to demonstrate the rules of Science. The ability to maintain this ideal becomes greater as we contemplate the real.
