The scenario may sound familiar. We sincerely want to draw closer to God, to understand Him better, to become more spiritually-minded. We set aside time for prayer and in-depth study, determined not to be distracted from this goal. We settle down but then remember there's something we really must take care of first—a telephone call, a bill to pay, a household chore.
We start again but soon drift into mundane thinking. We've gone to sleep at the switch! With an effort we pull ourselves back to our prayer or study only to be distracted again a short time later. What's going on? What's pulling us away from our spiritual focus? How can we prevent it?
Throughout the day we're responding either to the gravitational force of divine Spirit, drawing us toward the things of God, or we're reacting to the counterfeit of this force, called animal magnetism. Animal magnetism pulls us toward anything and everything that would distract, interrupt, or interfere with thought gravitating Godward. Mary Baker Eddy well understood these opposing "pulls." She observes in Miscellaneous Writings: "Between the centripetal and centrifugal mental forces of material and spiritual gravitations, we go into or we go out of materialism or sin, and choose our course and its results. Which, then, shall be our choice,—the sinful, material, and perishable, or the spiritual, joy-giving, and eternal?" Mis., p. 19.
