The poet Robert Bly hints at the illusory nature of mortal life when he writes:
For we are like the branch bent in the
water...
Taken out, it is whole, it was always
whole.... From "The Night Journey in the Cooking Pot," Sleepers Joining Hands (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 61 .
At times, we may find ourselves feeling very much like that "branch bent"! We might try to straighten what's "bent," or mend what's broken. But the way things appear can be just as illusory as the branch that appears to bend at the water's surface. And we can pray to see that God's creation is forever intact and perfect.
When I attended the New York World's Fair as a child, one of the exhibits was a sparkling precious stone. Its many-faceted beauty invited visitors to touch it. I haven't forgotten how amazed I was when my finger went right through the stone! It wasn't a stone at all, but a hologram, a 3-D image made of light. This incident helped me to learn that an illusion can seem very solid.
If it isn't broken, you don't have to fix it.
The Bible gives some excellent examples of individuals who perceived spiritual harmony in spite of apparently threatening circumstances. When the Hebrew leader Moses obeyed God's command to throw down his shepherd's rod, for example, he saw it turn into a snake. But as he started to run from it, God told him to take the serpent by the tail. With absolute trust in God, he did, at which point he found himself holding his own rod again. See Ex. 4:1-5 . Once Moses saw the snake as an illusion, his fear of it was gone.
I'm learning to challenge material appearances more and more. A couple of years ago, my daughter was ill and couldn't go to kindergarten. All day, as I took care of her, I kept thinking about God as divine Love, and about God's infallible care for her. By late afternoon I was grateful to see my daughter up and playing normally. The next morning, however, she refused breakfast and lay on the couch.
As I sat beside her, I thought of a passage in Science and Health that says: "When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought." Science and Health, p. 495. In obedience to this counsel, I silently and vehemently denied the reality of sickness, which God neither creates nor enforces. I mentally insisted that Love was caring for her; that God is Life, and was expressing health and vitality through her: that God is Spirit and was manifesting strength and harmony in her; that God is Soul and was giving her joy and freedom; and that God is Mind and was causing her to reflect its perfect action. In short, I held to the fact that harmony comprised her entire being as the spiritual expression of God.
For about an hour I prayed this way. Suddenly, I noticed my daughter was getting up and asking for breakfast. She went to school, and that was the end of the problem.
No matter how real an illusion of sickness or danger seems to be, the Christ—the influence of divine Love in human consciousness—gently opens our eyes, dispels the illusion, and heals.
The illusion is not part of our true consciousness.
Really, it isn't just isolated mortal difficulties that are the illusion, but the whole notion that existence is mortal, and that life and mind are material. Our real individuality as God's creation is not in that mistaken view. Neither is the illusion, or mistake, any part of our true consciousness. God is the only consciousness, the only Mind we really have. To realize this helps to lift us out of the loop of material thinking so that we can discover our forever-intact harmony—like the "bent" branch taken out of the water that we find has always been whole.
In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious,
and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely
for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass,
that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem,
shall be called holy, even every one that is written
among the living in Jerusalem.
Isaiah 4:2, 3
