If some alarming physical symptom has presented itself, did you ever wonder what caused this? What has gone wrong now? Fear and ignorance immediately start thought in the wrong direction. How can we stop these disturbing suggestions and find right answers? We can reverse and wipe out false symptoms by reasoning from the spiritual fact.
Christian Science teaches the oneness and allness of God and His creation. Its teaching reveals that man is now, always has been, and forever will be manifesting God's perfection by reflection, for he coexists with Him. On this basis we can readily distinguish between disease symptoms and fact. These symptoms are always opposed to good and are deception. They are never fact, and a true fact is never a false symptom. Whatever is good is of God and it's true. If it's not good, it's not of God and it's false.
The exact opposite of deception is provable right here and now by the eternal fact that perfect God and perfect man coexist. How? By prayerfully focusing every thought toward God, we expel fear and its symptoms. We establish more firmly in human consciousness the spiritual fact. This divine authority brings into operation hope, reassurance, and the expectancy of good. The fact that Truth's ever-present total reality is always reflected in man gives us the understanding to correct deceiving mortal appearances. Mrs. Eddy shows the way to prove this in the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health: "If you wish to know the spiritual fact, you can discover it by reversing the material fable, be the fable pro or con,—be it in accord with your preconceptions or utterly contrary to them." Science and Health, p. 129. The spiritual fact, understood, wipes out symptoms. It excludes the fable. The resulting healing confirms that man can never be separated from his God-created perfection.
At one time I had been incapacitated with pain in the hips and legs and was fully healed through Christian Science. I had many lessons to learn. I steadily progressed as I persistently reversed the symptoms of pain, discouragement, and especially dread of the future, with the divine fact that God's love for me was ever present and operating in my behalf. The greater the suffering, the more tenaciously I held to this spiritual fact recorded in Science and Health: "God is at once the centre and circumference of being." Ibid., pp. 203-204. From this all-inclusive spiritual premise of God's wholeness I could anchor my reasoning beyond what the mortal appearances suggested. I could exchange those foundationless symptoms for the present fact that God's wholeness and comfort included me that very moment. With simple faith and radical trust in this spiritual fact I claimed my unassailable oneness in God.
When I hurt, I disputed pain with the fact that I reflected the ease of divine Love. I acknowledged that this state of ongoing Godlikeness makes me fresh and new every minute. Therefore freedom, comfort, and peace were mine to experience right then and there. When I couldn't move, I knew that all action proceeds immediately and directly from God because Life is always being expressed and can't be interrupted. My prayer was uncomplicated and went straight to this divine source. With this authority I could refuse to accept any separate cause in matter. I could think right through and beyond the unreal appearances. I saw that concern for my body was a self-imposed lie being ignorantly consented to. In its place I established the truth of my eternal origin in Spirit and faithfully held to this standard.
Gradually this correction of thought strengthened my reliance on the spiritual fact of man's oneness with God. Human consciousness was steadily lifted to the divine, perfect standard of health, holiness, and dominion in my God-endowed freedom. In the light of spiritual fact each of us can do the same and progressively expect healing to take place, confirming our indestructible, pure spiritual selfhood.
Physical appearances deceive. They urge that we look at symptoms, call them real, and then try to explain their cause. Symptoms and suffering cannot be explained. They have no spiritual reality or value. However, trials and affliction can arouse human thinking to the need of something better, a need for something outside itself. The Apostle Paul dealt productively with the deception of adversities. He said, "I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong." II Cor. 12:10. He recognized the demand to denounce the error, turn from weakness, and find strength in the Christ ideal. Science and Health teaches: "When false human beliefs learn even a little of their own falsity, they begin to disappear. A knowledge of error and of its operations must precede that understanding of Truth which destroys error, until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears, and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit, is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his Maker." Science and Health, p. 252.
God's unchanging, uncompromising, unadulterated law reverses and wipes out all false evidence, regardless of its appearance. Spiritual reality shows material belief to be mental trickery, a lie perpetrated upon imagination, presenting a foundationless fraud without authority, source, or cause. The correcting fact that Spirit is already present, beautiful, spotless, in its indestructible wholeness, bears witness to spiritual man's unassailable perfection in God. It shows forth the glorious evidence of our present, ongoing spiritual existence revealed in the radiance of God.
Spiritualizing thought excludes material symptoms. In my healing I didn't spiritualize symptoms. I did away with them. I asked myself, Can unreality have substance or intelligence? No! Then I can't know that which isn't. Symptoms were only suppositions premised in false propaganda. They were not my legitimate thinking. Yet they could not be ignored as simply irrelevant. They seemed very real in their frightening appearances, but since they were only the substanceless mythology of materialism, they could be disposed of with the true understanding of the presence and actuality of Truth.
Gradually this correction of thought strengthened my reliance on the spiritual fact of man 's oneness with God. Human consciousness was steadily lifted to the divine, perfect standard of health, holiness, and dominion in my God-endowed freedom.
We can and must always look beyond the ignorant deceptions of mortality to see the true facts that spiritual inspiration reveals. This enlightened vision will detect, uncover, expose, and specifically denounce every false evidence that implies something separate from health, purity, and holiness in God. The false symptom is invariably destroyed by the specific spiritual counter fact and the understanding and conviction that God is the only cause. God is All-in-all; therefore there can be no other cause or effect but that which is Godlike. As His spiritual creation, we coexist in oneness with and in Him. Disturbing symptoms haven't any actuality, because they are not of or in this total realm of harmonious being. They are substanceless, therefore not real, and they disappear in the light of this spiritual fact.
How could I always be sure I was working with truth, with fact? As I became more at peace with the correctness of my reasoning, I felt satisfied I had done my part, and the conviction prevailed that I could leave it with God. Since my thoughts, in reflecting God, were correct, my body had to correspond to this truth. What I was seeing inwardly in thought had to be manifested outwardly in body. Therefore healing was inevitable.
The sweet comfort of this statement by Mrs. Eddy steadily reassured me: "The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares." Ibid., p. 574. I steadfastly held to this constructive, corrective truth until I was completely free of any pain and physical restrictions. During this time a rupture of long standing was also healed.
Spiritual healing proves that divine Love is ever present and totally in control right where fearful appearances seem to be. We can take charge of our lives and overcome concern for the body or the environment in which we live. When we acknowledge and accept this supreme presence of Love, we unite with it in positive results. We can't be fooled into trying to rid ourselves of a bad material condition that doesn't actually exist. We rid ourselves of the deception, or the mortal assumption calling itself a bad material condition. We may only partially glimpse these facts of truth at the time, yet they are present and operating with their full healing power right where the false evidence appears to be. Spiritual growth and regeneration are essential. As we continue to discipline and exalt our thinking, our human experience is purified and spiritual awakening breaks through with proof of physical healing.
Each of us, wherever we are and in whatever situation we find ourselves, can immediately begin to claim God's perfection to be the existing fact. Living this truth, we will find it evidenced in our body, and in our business and personal affairs. We are not material mortals existing by chance on our own. We can never be outside of God's care, since there is no outside to His all-ness. We reflect with divine authority all the beauty, harmony, grace, dignity, health, and holiness of Truth and Love. It makes no difference how distressing, hopeless, crippling, or agonizing the symptoms may temporarily appear to be, we can immediately reverse this charade. We can productively acknowledge the truth of perfect God and perfect man to be the spiritual fact right then and there.
Christ Jesus declared emphatically, "I and my Father are one." John 10:30. He was so convinced of this fact that anything to the contrary was utterly inconceivable to him. This enabled him to heal instantly. He tells us in a clear and decisive manner how we too can prove our oneness: "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:31, 32. Truth is already the established fact, and it doesn't need to fix anything.
So we don't try to explain or fix symptoms, and we need never fear them or be sidetracked by what has gone wrong. Instead we can joyously and expectantly reverse the fable with factual Truth and be healed. I was!
