The human mind—when unillumined by God's law and insensitive to it—is unaware of the vital role that spiritual perception plays in Christian healing. Without this vital element of spiritual sense, one might think he could wave away his troubles as nothing when there may be a great need for regeneration of thinking and living. Spiritual perception is an activity of the Christ that renews consciousness spiritually. This renewal heals sickness, frees from sin, and brings untold blessings into our experience.
Keen spiritual perception comes to us as we begin to see that God is the only Mind. Because man is God's expression, in truth each one of us reflects this Mind.
Radical as it may seem, this means that we really don't have a personal mind of our own! The human mentality that seems to be ours is a misconception of our God-constituted consciousness, and this distorted view of true mentality would make us believe that material personality with all of its failures and faults is what is real!
The truth of being that man is the very outcome of God uncovers, however, the mortal elements of human mentality, such as pride, inadequacy, resentment, and dissatisfaction. It shows them up as errors because they do not originate in God, the only Mind, nor do they reflect Him. Christian Science challenges the corporeal senses' lie that many willful and indulgent minds exist and are in conflict.
According to Christian Science, God, Mind, is infinite. Therefore the real self of each one of us must reflect this all-knowing and all-seeing Mind. Our true individual consciousness knows its divine origin and immortal nature—its innate Godlikeness. This individuality of God's making consciously fulfills its spiritual purpose in divine Mind. There is no other mind to interfere.
Spiritual perception—the enlightened recognition of reality that Christ, Truth, gives us—beholds men and women in their real being as complete and whole, harmonious, and radiant in pure love. When this spiritual view is accepted as the reality of being, the mistaken sense of existence gradually dissipates into the nothingness it really is, and proportionably the human condition more fully approximates the divine.
In the degree that man, the reflection of God's being, is admitted to be our genuine selfhood and we strive to live in accord with the truth we comprehend, material-mindedness—the basis for all discordant material conditions and limitations—fades from consciousness. This admission of our true selfhood, together with unselfish living in accord with God, is a form of healing prayer and causes human experience to yield in a degree to the divine so that it better represents the Life that is God, good.
The spiritual process of replacing carnal-mindedness with Christliness—and the conscience to carry this through until sin and disease are overcome—are taught and practiced in Christian Science. The Christ, the spiritual idea of true manhood, liberates people from all sorts of difficulties.
In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy explains, "We approach God, or Life, in proportion to our spirituality, our fidelity to Truth and Love; and in that ratio we know all human need and are able to discern the thought of the sick and the sinning for the purpose of healing them."
Science and Health, p. 95.Spiritual perception of this kind brings wisdom. It enables us to get to the root of difficulties and to cease to be confused or deceived by outward appearances.
Trials are never what they appear to be. They appear to be personal and world difficulties, but actually they mirror erroneous thought that needs to yield to God and to real being. Spiritual perception, however, sorts out ungodlike thoughts and casts them out. It restores our consciousness of at-one-ment with divine Mind, as its idea.
Mortal mind's ignorant or malicious attempt to harm—to make us think we are separated from God—needs to be recognized. Its injurious effect on human thinking and experience needs to be neutralized and so dissipated spiritually, through our prayerful recognition that God, good, is the only Mind.
We are naive if we overlook the malicious intent of the carnal mind. Its devastating indulgences and reactions would, if they could, destroy spiritualmindedness and so wreck health, happiness, and success. We need to meet realistically, with firm assurance that God is the only Mind, their claim to diminish, to stifle, or even to shut off individual spiritual growth, effectiveness, and prosperity.
The spiritual understanding of our true being as God's idea and the accompanying inspiration and perception make prayer effective; they give us the ability to demonstrate our prayer. They maintain the consistent spirituality of thinking and living we vitally need in order to cope successfully with the challenges of human existence.
How is the perception of divine Mind, which man reflects, utilized in Christian Science? Since spiritual perception comes from God, its accuracy and effectiveness zero in on the offending false material sense that evil is real and destroy it with the consciousness that good alone is the reality.
Devoid of the true understanding of being, we would be groping in the dark, unable to pinpoint errors of belief and replace them with spiritual truths that come from God. But God's healing law endows the receptive individual with spiritual sense, with the consciousness of God's presence and power that enables one to challenge mortal mind's and matter's deceptive nature with real being.
Christian Science isn't just another metaphysical system, nor is it a psychological exercise of the human mind. It isn't "positive thinking" or even just a "mental" science. It isn't acting like the proverbial ostrich by burying one's head in the sand and hoping that problems will fade away! Spiritual perception removes the veil of mind in matter and reveals instead that individual true consciousness is constituted solely of God's law, presence, power, and substance.
Mrs. Eddy shares with us some of the God-inspired ideas that prepared her to grasp the Science of spiritual healing. She writes: "I had learned that thought must be spiritualized, in order to apprehend Spirit. It must become honest, unselfish, and pure, in order to have the least understanding of God in divine Science. The first must become last. Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of and dependence on spiritual things."
Retrospection and Introspection, p. 28.
Christ Jesus, who understood most fully the vital role that spiritual perception plays in Christ-healing, pointed out to his disciples, "Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them."
Luke 10:23, 24.
Spiritual perception gives one an acute awareness that his genuine consciousness proceeds from God. The spiritual qualities of God's being stand out as what really constitute all true individuality. So mortal mind and matter are exposed as supposititiously self-created. The spiritual understanding of being gives one the needed sensibility to pray importunately until various phases of unspiritual thinking and feeling are resolved into real being.
Many of us tend to overlook, disregard, or even wave away specific errors of human character that would undermine health, happiness, and spiritual effectiveness. The sense of being a discordant, unhappy, or frustrated material personality impoverishes us spiritually. Such a state of thinking would make us sick, sinful, unproductive, and unfulfilled.
But persistent prayer—moment by moment and day by day—awakens us to our God-bestowed identity. When consciousness is sufficiently imbued with the power and presence of God—the only Ego—the grasp of errors of character that would cling to us tenaciously is unloosed. We are liberated from them.
The consistency of Christ's action in consciousness reveals that individual true consciousness is unaffected by discordant material relationships or traumatic circumstances. Mortal mind's various matter-based thought pictures are exposed as illusory. We see that injustice, friction between people, loss, disappointment, and the like, are supposititious opposites of the uninvadable harmony of being that reflects God as the only genuine life.
Spiritual perception enables us to identify ourselves and others with the consciousness that is invulnerable to everything that "worketh abomination, or maketh a lie."
Rev. 21:27. When spiritual perception clears away sufficiently the limiting and debilitating debris — the false sense of material-mindedness and matter —our experience flourishes and is good. We have the necessary spiritual insight to uncover and to correct the mortally mental impediments that claim to keep us from health and well-being.
Unless we are spiritually alert and approach human difficulties scientifically, our prayer may be abstract and ineffective. We miss the mark if we expect our prayer to further the misguided desires of human will—desires for the adjustment of matter or human circumstances to bring satisfaction. Instead we need to establish a more spiritual consciousness of the inherent kingdom of God.
When spiritual perception guides us into a holier way of thinking and feeling, healing and enrichment come naturally. If we aren't thriving, unsolved difficulties can and should serve as guideposts to more important spiritual priorities.
Instead of succumbing to human challenges—feeling dominated by them and helpless to find a solution—we need to let them incite us to be more spirituallyminded. As this change of heart takes place, wonderful things happen.
According to spiritual perception, all of the elements of our real being are in full bloom. The door of unlimited opportunity for good is wide open.
Affluent spiritual good exists now —irrespective of human conditions. Through spiritual perception, Mind's illuminating light penetrates the mask of false beliefs and removes it, revealing in its place the ideas of God. This effective prayer heals because it awakens us to our God-bestowed abundant good.
