"Maybe if I get a diagnosis, I might find out that my difficulty isn't what I think it is. Then I wouldn't be so afraid. Then I could work it out through prayer." These were thoughts that a friend of mine had one night when she wakened with pain in a breast, as she had many times previously. Yet the aggressive mental suggestion to get a diagnosis didn't also inform her that the very desire to hear a medical opinion could in fact invite confirmation of fears, making it even more difficult to erase them—weakening her position, not strengthening it.
She refused to accept the suggestion to get a diagnosis. And it wasn't only because her position would have been weakened. Nor was it because she was a lifelong Christian Scientist and felt that she must take a stand for what she believed in. It wasn't even because she had had numerous convincing proofs of healing throughout the years as a result of prayer. Instead, her reason in this instance, and what was the turning point in her healing, was that she caught a glimpse of absolute reality, of her spiritual identity. She saw that this was the only identity she really had. She said that thoughts came to her along this line: "How could a diagnosis of matter tell me anything about the real me, about my spiritual, permanent, eternal identity? The individual doing the diagnosis wouldn't be looking at the actual me. Unless that person could see me spiritually as God knows me to be, he wouldn't be seeing me. He wouldn't really know anything about me—who I am, what I am, even where I am."
She saw that the more she looked to opinion or human expertise for help, the less she would look to God for the answer. Also, she knew that the suggestion to have a diagnosis wasn't coming from divine Mind and that it was impossible for her to mix opposites and arrive at what she considered to be healing. The moment that she detected this and settled it in her thought, she received her first glimpse of assurance and dominion. Even in this dark state of fear, she could discern divine Truth. For her, there was no other option but to conquer fear by working this difficulty out through prayer to God.
