Once when I was feeling burdened, I spoke of several problems with some intensity to a friend. She said quietly: "You know, you should watch your adjectives. You have just described some discords very vividly. But a discord is error, and error is untrue; and that is the only adjective that really applies to error."
How does Christian Science define error? As the ignorant sense of things that believes life, intelligence, and substance exist in matter. My friend's gentle rebuke gave me new insight into the mesmeric action of error, or animal magnetism. Error first deceives us into accepting sentient matter as real, supposedly located where God, infinite Spirit, is not, and then on this false premise builds graven images, evil mental pictures, often through vivid, definitive words. This is mental malpractice— against ourselves!
Mrs. Eddy writes: "What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God." She continues in the same paragraph, "The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because they are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the sole cause." Unity of Good, pp. 9-10;
So how do we talk about the unreal? What do we say to ourselves and others about evil or discord—the imaginary product of ignorant material sense? Do we call it dangerous, awful, longstanding, acute, hopeless, stubborn, mysterious? Do we tell ourselves we are tired of it, afraid of it, helpless before it, discouraged over it?
To build up ignorant error in our thought in this way is to intensify our belief in error. It is to continue to break the first and second commandments, which plunges thought deeper into darkness and idolatry. It is to promote fear. A little boy was given a kit for constructing a cardboard monster. After building it, he took one look and ran crying to his mother, exclaiming, "I'm scared of the monster I made!"
Belief in matter is the foundation of the monsters error so zealously builds: disease, violence, lack. But matter is only illusory mortal thought—thought that is wholly ignorant of the divine Principle, or Life. To defeat matter's monsters, one must gain a scientific understanding of divine Spirit as the only Mind, of Spirit's thoughts as the only substance, and of man as Spirit's reflection. Mortal concepts of mind and substance must be corrected with the living truth. The mortal spirit, or will, must be dispelled by one's knowing, loving, living, the one true Spirit, Love. In this process of spiritual education it is unintelligent for one to emphasize the mortal and material, to assign to it quality, quantity, and form, for this endows it with a reality in one's thought that it does not actually have.
The adjectives applied to the innumerable gods mankind have pictured down the ages—beautiful Venus, powerful Jupiter, swift Mercury, fear-producing Phobos—did not make them real but did make them seem more real to human consciousness.
Because thought moves swiftly and often not in clearly defined words, we may not always be aware of the buildup of verbal imagery that denies God and deifies evil. But a disturbed consciousness reveals it. Under the top layer of depression or agitation can be found the graven-image-building terms. Something is threatening, fatal, unfair, discouraging. I am sick, afraid, tired, frustrated, hurt, lonely, sad, envious.
Mrs. Eddy writes: "Animal magnetism, in its ascending steps of evil, entices its victim by unseen, silent arguments. Reversing the modes of good, in their silent allurements to health and holiness, it impels mortal mind into error of thought, and tempts into the committal of acts foreign to the natural inclinations." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 211; Later in the same article she admonishes: "Be ever on guard against this enemy. Watch your thoughts, and see whether they lead you to God and into harmony with His true followers. Guard and strengthen your own citadel more strongly." ibid., p. 213;
We protect our consciousness by understanding that in reality we are the reflection of infinite, divine consciousness. And by perceiving that this great house of the Lord, this infinite Spirit that includes and expresses all, has these great dimensions: omnipotence, omnipresence, omniaction, omniscience. So we see there is nothing else to talk about. Words that do not describe infinite Mind are counterfeit concepts.
One way to rule out negative thought-building, or animal magnetism, and to keep our thought reflecting God's nature—the Christ—is to review God's qualities and realize they are the substance of our own true nature. Lovingkindness, joy, serenity, spontaneity, fearlessness, loveliness, strength, come easily to thought as we consider our divine Mind. Each morning we can pick one such characteristic and consciously practice it through the day, seeking to let it permeate every thought and shine through every act. This will so involve us in living our unity with God, there will be no room for graven image building.
Animal magnetism is the ignorant hypnotic activity that would reverse good and vividly depict evil. But through Christian Science we can break this mesmerism, reverse its lies, and awake to Truth.
When ignorant sense argues that a condition is hopeless, we can know that only evil itself is hopeless—a blind belief without a mind to conceive it. When something seems awful, we can remember that God's love for His creation is awe-inspiring and that what is awful is to imagine that anything is arrayed against that love. When illness asserts that it is chronic and has gone on too long to be healed, the realization that God's omniaction is all that ever goes on exposes illness as an impossibility. If we feel frustrated, we can know that God is every instant fulfilling Himself through us as His own manifestation and that this eternal action precludes frustration. Only that which is without God as its source and substance can be sad, afraid, helpless. And what is without God is without power, without life, without any reality whatever.
"The words of the pure are pleasant words," Prov. 15:26. says the Bible. The adjectives we use convey attitudes, states of thought. As we purify consciousness by rejecting the material sense of existence and dwelling in the light of Truth, we will voice this new purity of thought in "pleasant words."
