Treatment in Christian Science, or healing through prayer, is definitely not staid or formulaic—a materially structured way of addressing a materially structured abnormality. It's just the opposite. It's a fresh, vital, spiritually based approach to perceiving spiritual facts. Those facts are the way things actually are, the way God has fashioned them and maintains them under His own loving care. No matter how things appear to be, the facts of our being are entirely good, because our creator, God, is good. And discerning those facts through divine inspiration has a direct healing effect on our experience, including the physical body. This spiritually based approach to healing expresses a higher sense than physical seeing and reasoning. It destroys abnormalities by revealing their falsity—their impossibility in the allness of good.
Christian Science treatment in any instance is entirely individual and inspirational. The most important thing isn't so much the process—for instance, merely affirming specific spiritual truths—but the reality that's glimpsed and the result that comes as the process fades into the background. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health, "By the truthful arguments you employ, and especially by the spirit of Truth and Love which you entertain, you will heal the sick." Science and Health, p. 418 The "spirit of Truth and Love" is primary, and it comes through listening to God, divine Mind, as we pray. Humbly listening to what God is telling us brings freshness and spontaneity to our prayers.
For instance, some time ago I had been experiencing a long session of severe pain. I had been attempting to bring my thought more into line with the reality of God and His perfection—His goodness, His allness, His onliness, and man's real being as His expression. I was attempting to "[bring] into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ," II Cor. 10:5 to use St. Paul's words. But I'll admit this process was more in the line of intellectual wrestling than of spiritual inspiration.
