I was surprised to discover that my pursuit of greatness had actually been a search for God. And I was glad. Because what I was beginning to understand about God was immeasurably greater than what I had thought I could gain through personal success.
I was attending an academic conference in my field of study—the type of conference many graduate students use as a means of landing a job and which my friends and I jokingly referred to as "the cattle market." Academic positions were scarce. If a student gave a brilliant paper, met the right people, and said all the right things, chances for employment would be increased—or so we thought. But that weekend I suddenly had a strong desire to quit the whole scene. For some time the push of personal ambition had been making me uncomfortable— even miserable. I felt like someone trying to walk up a steep slope covered with loose gravel. And recently some frightening physical symptoms had appeared. I wanted out.
I had to admit that the problem was a precarious sense of identity. The job itself wasn't the important thing. I just wanted human opinion to say, "You're somebody"—especially the academic community that I so highly respected. Now the questions came: What could fill the gap where ambition had been? As I ceased trying to manipulate my little world in order to gain a satisfying sense of selfhood, what would motivate me now?
I prayed earnestly to understand the spiritual truth of which mortal ambition is the counterfeit. The study of Christian Science had taught me that man is the spiritual reflection of God, living in God, and not a mortal trying to make it in a material world as the physical senses would have us believe. I knew there was an exact truth, a spiritual idea of God, a particular insight into His nature, that would reverse the false ambition, give me peace of mind, and meet my need for progress in my career. What was this understanding?
It was the realization of God's incomparable greatness. One who seeks personal greatness is unwittingly seeking God's greatness, for such understanding alone satisfies the human need for greatness. The true identity of everyone as the creation of Spirit reflects God's infinite glory and absolute perfection and God's consciousness of this glory and perfection. That is the only true greatness possible for you and me, and it is infinitely beyond the so-called greatness that we may imagine for ourselves.
Right when and where people are arguing about who will be greatest, as Christ Jesus' disciples once did,Mark 9:33, 34; God is the infinite and only I am, the supreme Ego, the sole substance, Mind, or consciousness of the universe. Man's role as the reflection of God and of His total power and all-encompassing presence satisfies absolutely. And the human being's understanding of man's brilliant and fulfilled identity as the image of infinite Love makes the drive to be somebody obsolete and fills the ambition-gap that would otherwise be left.
I never really was an ambitious mortal seeking material identity in the first place, I realized!
By the time I returned home from the conference, I found I had gained total peace of mind, and the physical symptoms just dropped away.
Then an unusual opportunity to participate in an activity related to my field opened up. It was an opportunity not to ascend a rung on the ladder of success but to reflect the action of divine Love and intelligence in meeting some specific needs of mankind. The spiritual opposite of selfish ambition had healed me, and my true function as God's active witness was becoming more apparent.
The understanding that it is God's function to be the ultimate in all things heals false ambition. This understanding reveals that whatever the category in which we may wish to achieve true greatness, God is already the incomparable One in that area and man is simply His reflection. Such recognition empowers us to express the desired quality or ability here and now. Thus if intelligence is what we need to excel in, we may need to learn that God is the one infinitely brilliant Mind. If our work demands a high degree of creativity, we need perhaps to discover that God is the supreme Principle of all, the universal cause. In every category God expresses ultimate perfection as a natural function of His absolute being.
If our concern for greatness is in the realm of loving and giving, we will be helped by learning that God is infinite Love and man His representation. If greatness of character is what we seek, we can find it in the conscious reflection of God, the one all-encompassing self-existence. And because this pursuit of our true career of showing forth God's multifaceted greatness is infinitely satisfying, we see the ridiculousness of the notion that we need to seek another sense of selfhood and accomplishment.
Even if we consider the question of greatness simply by comparing the achievements of human beings, we must admit the issue is closed. When we look to the essence of any field of human endeavor, we find that the greatest accomplishments by far belong to Jesus because of his spirituality. Think of some of the professions in which the essential aim is to show forth and interpret reality: art, philosophy, natural science. The painter seeks to portray or symbolize his vision of truth by what he paints on his canvas; the philosopher attempts to describe reality through philosophical concepts; and the natural scientist seeks to discover it through research and to describe it with physical data.
Yet what great artist, philosopher, or scientist has ever conveyed even a single aspect of truth with anything like the incisiveness, profundity, and force that Jesus exercised? He referred to himself simply as "a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God." John 8:40; He cut to the heart of the matter, and with his truth-telling he healed blindness, insanity, suffering, selfishness, and even raised the dead. Someday all mankind will sit at the Master's feet.
The spirituality of Jesus caused him to excel in every area. Think of the fundamental aim of education, mothering, law, medicine, and then think of what Jesus did. Whatever our field of endeavor, we elevate our achievement, and ourselves, in proportion as we seek not to be personally great but to follow his example.
Anyone suffering the discomfort of selfish ambition can let an understanding of the truth of being reverse this false mental state. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, "Thought is borrowed from a higher source than matter, and by reversal, errors serve as waymarks to the one Mind, in which all error disappears in celestial Truth." Science and Health, p. 267.
When the desire for personal greatness and acclaim is reversed, images of God's greatness fill the hungering consciousness, and a solid sense of oneself appears: man as the manifestation of the supreme Ego.
