If you have had an unhappy or ugly past, there are three things you can do. You can carry it along with you and so make the present and the future unhappy and ugly too. Or you can try to burn it up mentally, as it were; but this would leave a pile of ashes smoldering at the back of your thought. Best of all, you can put something new and beautiful in its place.
Mrs. Eddy writes: "All that is beautiful and good in your individual consciousness is permanent. That which is not so is illusive and fading."Unity of Good, p. 8. There's nothing abstract or ethereal about spiritual beauty and goodness. They are the essence of true substance and therefore of true consciousness. Individual consciousness is a reflection of the one divine Mind, or God. It isn't a separate mortal mind that includes the ugly and evil alongside the beautiful and good.
The Mind, or Life, that is God neither originates nor registers anything ugly and evil. Nor does the individual consciousness that reflects this Mind know such states. And like the sundial that records every moment of sunlight but no darkness, we can begin to make our own individual record of light. Are we willing to let the past go and look confidently to each day to bring spiritual beauty and goodness? Properly lived, each day unfolds to us more of Life and Mind. Today brings new vitality and beauty, not to make up for yesterday but just to be today.
