Look around you. What do you see?
Table, chairs, walls, a window? Trees, park bench, cars? A huge range of material objects constantly facing us and apparently real may lead us to think of them as entirely actual, parts of our natural environment.
Christian Science equips us to be so undistracted by the moving, colorful, sometimes disturbing scenes about us that we're not deflected from recognizing the presence of God and realizing Deity as the only presence. It shows us how to be spiritually rather than materially minded and to enjoy the mastery of discord that spiritual mindedness brings.
The healing method of Christian Science is to consistently affirm the presence of God and of nothing else, even in the face of material images or sensations that may seem to confront and surround us. We can do this with confidence and authority since Science is based on the spiritually scientific fact of God's presence and is coherent in teaching and practice.
Mary Baker Eddy, unreservedly convinced of God's closeness and the practicality of knowing this, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The facts of divine Science should be admitted,—although the evidence as to these facts is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense,—because the evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by spiritual sense. Man is, and forever has been, God's reflection. God is infinite, therefore ever present, and there is no other power nor presence."Science and Health, p. 471;
Consider these various situations: life in the business and the university worlds, which are often pressured and competitive; the need to find a new career in midlife; difficulty in "keeping body and soul together." These and thousands of similar situations present major challenges to many individuals. Believing unquestioningly that matter, mortals, mortal thought, are present, people inevitably find life more or less difficult to manage.
How can we cope with circumstances that would dull our life, or even lessen our will to live? No one need feel helpless. We can begin acknowledging that God is irresistible and omnipresent Life, the only substance here and now, being actively All. This is the reality in place of the mesmeric pseudopresence of troubling material conditions, whatever they are.
Because God is Love, and here, we can find steady affection now. Because God is Mind, and here, we can realize and prove intelligence now. Because God is Soul, we can find beauty and warmth now. God is here and All, and the man we really are is God's reflection—already enjoying infinite good. God does not withdraw from man, nor can man withdraw from God. Mind and its idea coexist in the here and now of divine being.
Some of the most significant moments in human history are those in which individuals have become so convinced, so thoroughly conscious, of the presence of God that trying circumstances have been in some way adjusted or neutralized. Such instances—Moses striking the rock, from which water then flowed, when the children of Israel were in need of it,See Ex. 17:6; and Christ Jesus' safe passage through the hostile mob See Luke 4:28-30; —are the warp and weft of the Bible.
Proofs of God's healing presence are not reserved for merely a few especially enlightened individuals but are open to all of us who are willing to admit this presence despite even mountains of testimony suggesting the presence only of matter and the troubles linked with it. When God is more real to us than apparently ubiquitous matter, we are endowed with whatever spiritual power is necessary to eliminate physical disease or to bring peace and clearness to those with mental illnesses.
Such healings may, candidly, demand immense effort on our part. But all the while our affirmations of the presence of God, good, and our accompanying certainty that the conditions we would heal are, in reality, absent right now and forever, will be more and more effective.
God's presence has no valid opposite. What of black discouragement or apathy? "Mental darkness is senseless error, neither intelligence nor power, and its victim is responsible for its supposititious presence,"Miscellaneous Writings, p.355; Mrs. Eddy says. We have the power to refute supposed mental darkness by knowing that the truth of good's universality can never be inverted. We can check on our spiritual integrity: "What do I really believe to be present, right here, right at this moment—senseless error and a helpless victim of it, me? Or am I deeply conscious of and fully realizing the nearness of God's power and intelligence?" If the former, we can snap out of such deception at once. Simply because God, good, alone is present, nothing can resist our efforts.
Christian Science is not an invitation to fool ourselves that things are different from the way they "really" are! It is a spiritually scientific system whereby we can prove the nature of divine Love. If we believe in the presence of something other than divine Love and Love's ideal man and universe, then we are being fooled.
The prophet wrote of God's care for the children of Israel: "I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, . . . and the great goodness toward the house of Israel .... The angel of his presence saved them."Isa. 63:7, 9. The presence of God! Not a glib religious statement but the only fact of being no matter where we are, no matter how we are, according to material description.
God: all that can be with and around you this very moment.
