We are inclined to personalize our faculties, our abilities, and our seeming disabilities. We speak of "my sight," "my hearing," "my ability" to do this or that. All too often, such expressions are used in a negative sense. We hear it said, "My hearing is poor," "My memory isn't what it used to be," or, perhaps, "I am losing my sight!"
If one accepts the premise that sight, hearing, memory, or any other faculty is his own personal possession, grounded in matter and subject to the limitations of matter, he opens the door mentally to the conclusion that such faculties may deteriorate or be lost. If, on the other hand, one sees himself as the individualized expression of God, every faculty is seen as the individualized expression of an attribute of God, which can no more be lost than God can be extinguished.
Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Man shines by borrowed light."Retrospection and Introspection, p. 57; In Christian Science, man is understood to be the reflection of God. He is never the originator. He is never the source of any thought, quality, or ability. Everything he has is bestowed by God, and hence is perfect and permanent. Just as he "shines by borrowed light," man sees, for example, by borrowed sight.
