One who is ill may express an eagerness to talk of himself audibly or mentally in spiritual terms, but as soon as he is well he may forget the spiritual terms. In such a case, the desire to put off a material sense of self and to recognize one's spiritual identity is lacking.
This reluctance to think of oneself as spiritual is an obstacle to healing. It represents a deep-down denial of Truth. Unless the practitioner succeeds in removing it, the work being done is largely mental talk when it should be mental action. This presents a challenge to each of us who desires to practice the Science of Christian healing.
Unless our thought of ourselves is challenged, we usually identify ourselves through what we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel physically. When we say to someone, "Here I am," the "I" we are talking about is a package of physical sense impressions we have come to think of as ourselves. But when we become ill, we become dissatisfied with some of these impressions. If we seek healing in Christian Science, we are ready to deny vigorously those impressions we think of as our aches and pains or the human stresses and strains that may have brought on the illness. But the sense impressions which have not given us trouble over the years and through which we think we have come to enjoy ourselves and our associations with others—we would just as soon not have these tampered with.
