In search of an explanation of present difficulties, some people try delving into their past by means of a psychological technique called regression therapy. The assumption is that this is necessary to the successful establishment of a healthy, balanced outlook on life. The claim is also made that certain shortcomings or failures in an individual can be directly attributed to an abusive past. It's assumed that one who has been abused, physically or mentally, may find it difficult to cope with recurring, sometimes jarring memories.
A friend of the writer, at the age of three years, bore the brunt of severe parental domestic violence. Then he was abandoned on a street corner, along with his sister, who was one and a half years old. Their mother had put them out, and they never saw her again. They were placed in various other homes, sometimes with strangers who were even more abusive. Later in life, this friend reexamined many times what had happened in those earlier years in an attempt to sort out his concept of the world, searching for meaningful answers, but he faced what seemed a stone wall. It was a wall of frustration based on his belief that his history as a battered child had been allowed by a punishing God. The acceptance of this belief about God and His relation to him thwarted all his efforts to come out of the mire.
When, however, he was given a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy and began to read it, the Scriptures became illuminated for him. Through consecrated study of this book in conjunction with the Bible and through daily prayer, he experienced permanent freedom from the belief that past injustices had power over him. The initial breakthrough came when he read with fresh insight Paul's statement "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." II Cor. 5:17 He realized he must see this more clearly and stop returning to the past, endeavoring to blame present failings on someone else.
Nowhere in the Bible does Christ Jesus ever recommend or practice the analysis of someone's past experience in order to restore that individual to wholeness. This, however, does not mean his disciples were not tempted to explore a false theory of cause and effect that was accepted in their times. Once they asked Jesus, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus replied, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." John 9:2, 3 And Jesus went on to heal the man.
Whatever ghastly experience one seems to have gone through, placing blame on others is of no use in solving the problem of being. Instead, by looking straight ahead in our desire to know God and our relation to Him, and not stopping to analyze the supposed material causes of our own faults or those of others, we find harmony and freedom. Science and Health states: "Citizens of the world, accept the 'glorious liberty of the children of God,' and be free! This is your divine right." Science and Health, p. 227 To claim this divine right requires self-examination, not self-criticism. All wrong belongs to the dream that life and intelligence begin and end in matter. As we awake from this dream and realize that sin, in whatever form or disguise, has never touched the child of God, we not only forgive but totally forget injustices perpetrated against us. This correct sense of man's nature opens wide the vision and enables one to cut through the illusion of a poor, sick, and sinning mortal, struggling with a history of pain. Our Father-Mother God supplies all good to His beloved reflection, man. Where, then, is the necessity of returning to a material past to eliminate something that was only a false belief in life separate from God?
As my friend found, it is useless to analyze the memory of past injustices, since they have no place in the divine Mind or in man, Mind's perfect reflection. Furthermore, healing in Christian Science is not a human effort to wipe out or adjust to a material past; rather, it is an awakening to the allness of good alone, as proclaimed by God. "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Gen. 1:31
The recognition of good as the only power eliminates the belief that there is an opposing brute force or that God could allow evil to exist or operate. Understanding that there is but one power, God, good, the All-in-all, and that man reflects this power, we become followers of good, which shields us from wrong. This divine power is implied in this question from the Bible: "And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?" I Pet. 3:13
The child of God can never lose his identity or suffer loss or impairment of any kind. The safety of each of God's children is the result of the equipollence of God, which signifies equality of power at all points. Only God, good, is present at all times, in every place. Mrs. Eddy writes of the implications of what she discovered of God's nature: "The equipollence of God brought to light another glorious proposition,—man's perfectibility and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth." Science and Health, p. 110 Our real being has never been maligned in any way, is absolutely untouched, unmaimed, unstained, and unblamed. Science and Health states, "The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal and real." Ibid., p. 300
One definition of progression includes these words: "a moving forward or onward; progress"; while regression is defined as "a going back; return; movement backward." It's vitally important to choose rightly the direction in which we are heading. Progress toward total freedom from any belief that one has been wronged is assured us as we follow the behest of Paul: "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Phil. 3:13, 14
By looking straight ahead in our
desire to know God and our relation
to Him, we find freedom.
The Lord shall guide thee continually, and
satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones:
and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and
like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
Isaiah 58:11
