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Being Out, Not Getting Out

From the April 1977 issue of The Christian Science Journal


There's a difference, a significant one, between getting out of trouble and being out. The real man, forever held as an idea in Mind, God, could never fall away from Mind, never lapse into trouble out of which he must climb or be hauled. Admittedly, this isn't how it seems from the position of a limited mortal personality. But such a perspective sees things wrongly and gets them wrong. A misconception or a false stance is not a fruitful starting point for moving to the true spiritual conception of being. But spiritual sense—stemming from Spirit and cultivated and focused through Christian Science—leads us to start with the perfection of being, notwithstanding that to mortal sense such perfection is a far-distant destination. To get this straight is to resolve troubles, to be out of troubles by realizing we were never truly a mortal under stress.

It might be argued from the human angle that such an approach is intrinsically a hoax, and a dangerous one; that it could leave us unrepentant in self-absorption, or with an uncured disease, merely persuading ourselves that discord is not really going on. This is far from the case. There's no question that people can and should be more ethical and honest, more kind and unselfish, and that they should take proper care of themselves and be healthy. But what is actually the best and most scientific way to achieve this? Certainly not through going along with the mortal illusion of life in matter, floating down-current with the misleading claims of the personal senses.

To accept wholly—to admit without checking their logic—that we are what the senses say we are (finite figures made up of chemicals and a mortal personality) is to make a major mistake. Sleeping and dreaming in this bed of self-delusion, we're open to disease and loneliness, to a range of human dissatisfactions and sufferings. Far from being sensible and inevitable, to accept sense evidence as final truth is the heart of unwisdom.

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