How aware are you of your unlimited God-given abilities—your God-given dominion? Become more aware, and you will see limits of every kind give way to freedom.
IN TODAY'S WORLD, even with all of its remarkable equipment and technological advances, we still find many forms of limitation besetting and restricting humankind.
Truly, the advances that humanity has made are awe-inspiring. Consider the field of transportation alone, where over the last 150 years we have progressed from covered wagons to jets and rocket ships, where men and women rise higher and higher in their dominion of the skies.
But regardless of how rapidly we go, we continually come up against the limits of time and space. Chafing always to go faster or to arrive earlier, we are always somehow restricted. But Christian Science provides a unique lens through which to view life. When we look through this lens—the lens of divine metaphysics—we begin to see the mental nature not only of the limits of time and space, but of other limits as well. And we begin to see how equipped we truly are to break free of these limits.
Mary Baker Eddy's revelation of the Science of being, which she named Christian Science and explained in full in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, awakens us to our true spiritual nature as the image and likeness of God—an ontological fact recorded by the writers of the first book of the Bible,
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion. . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Gen. 1:26, 27). Mrs. Eddy discovered that the discernment and affirmation of our Godlike spiritual nature enables us to demonstrate the dominion that the Bible promises and that Jesus showed. Christian Science illuminates the fact that the theology of Jesus, who demonstrated total freedom from mortal limits and helped others to do the same, rests on the practical, provable truth that Mind, or Spirit (God), not matter, governs our lives and constitutes our substance.
The infinite divine Mind gives to its image and likeness or expression—namely you and me and everyone—infinite capacities. These infinite capacities become increasingly available to us as we learn more about our relationship to the divine Mind—about our relationship to God. And of course, that means cultivating a growing knowledge and awareness of our one and only source, divine Mind.
Now, we might ask: How earnestly do I accept and affirm that the infinite capacities of divine Mind are mine by reflection? Do I truly see myself as God sees me—immortal, whole, unlimited, trouble-free, and able? Do I know and accept that I have God-given power to triumph over any and every apparent limitation of mortality that challenges me?
The more we accept the basic truth of our own and others' spiritual selfhood, the more our answers to these questions will be affirmative and, in turn, the more we will experience what is good and true. We will find opening up for us something of the unlimited spiritual abundance hinted at (metaphorically) by the new TV program Deal or No Deal. This tremendously popular show offers the contestant an opportunity to earn a million dollars. The contestant is faced with a variety of boxes, all of which hold various amounts of money. He or she chooses a box, and very often comes into possession of a lot of money—perhaps as much as $400,000. The moderator then says to the contestant, "Deal or no deal?" And if the contestant says, "Deal," then the money already earned has to be forfeited in order to try again for the million. But if the contestant says, "No deal," then the chance to win a million is forfeited and the contestant gets to keep the money already earned.
Now, with God the good news is that there is no such thing as "Deal or no deal" because God gives us the full deal of His/Her benefits all the time, no strings attached. God gives us all. And we are free to accept that allness all the time and find liberation from every kind of limit. When we accept that our true being and condition includes and expresses divine Mind's infinite capacities, we have accepted God's highest deal—the fullness God gives us so freely. God's deal, as revealed to us by Mrs. Eddy, gives us the fullness of being as our inheritance, and that fullness includes God-given dominion over limited finances, illness, fear, frustration, or obstruction. We gain the freedom that comes from this understanding of being that stands, as Mrs. Eddy described, "in startling contradiction of human hypotheses . . ." (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 361).
As we know, human hypotheses project us as mortal, vulnerable, physical, and with limited access to good. But Jesus taught his disciples—and everyone who would listen—an opposite, spiritually based view of being, a view in which God continuously says to each of us, "Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine" (Luke 15:31). As the image and likeness of God, every individual is truly ever with God, one with God—inseparable. And therefore inseparable from good. God imparts to each individual all good. Unlimited good. And unlimited means having no restrictions, no boundaries, no lack, deficiency, or insufficiency, whether of health, time, supply, opportunity, ability, harmony, or peace. Good—God—is always within reach and available.
Yes, God gives everyone dominion. And this dominion can never fade, be interrupted, or taken away. Though it may appear otherwise when viewed through the distorted lens of materiality and the physical senses, the absolute fact is that we continuously express the priceless infinite capacity to do well and to be well. The unlimited capacities to feel God's complete goodness are ours by inheritance. And the good that divine Mind—divine Life, which is another name for God—imparts to its ideas represents an airtight, irreversible "deal." A deal that is final, permanent.
Why do we give thought to this today? Because even though limits continue to bind people in all kinds of ways, there is an escape now—an escape through consecrated prayer based on an acknowledgment of God's dominion and presence, and on the unshakable conviction of our coexistence with God.
Limits of every form come wrapped in the fabric of material living. And it is wise to consider what limits we impose on ourselves simply by adopting and accepting the false limits of mortality in our own thought. But we can neutralize any limit that we have accepted mentally by turning to our limitless Father-Mother God for freedom. God knows and permits no limits for His/Her image. God's child—the real you and me—is the very expression of infinite divine capacities. Every capacity.
For example, health is an aspect of infinite capacities. Health ensues from the consciousness that all is well. Health in human experience results from the prayerful recognition that God's creation is eternally whole and well, and that each of us, as the image of divine Spirit, Life, has the capacity without limit to know and experience this truth. Disease is a misunderstanding of our infinite capacities as spiritual beings—or an ignorance of these inherited capacities. Or even our ignoring of them. Disease represents false limits accepted and adopted in thought. It is important then to accept health as a basic fact of being, to know that health is as natural to us (because we are God's infinite expression) as health is natural to our source, God.
The question of someone's health—physical health, mental health, as well as the health of finances, business, family, career—has a lot to do with what we permit ourselves to entertain in thought. So freedom from problems of limited health involves learning to deal with thoughts, not things. That leads us not only to consider what we are thinking, but also to choose what we are thinking—to consciously separate thoughts that we desire to have from those that we do not. We could call this choosing or separation of desirable and undesirable thoughts divesting. To divest means "to rid" or "to free."
So divesting our thinking means ridding or freeing our consciousness of any thought that suggests anything about ourselves or others that is unlike God. Mrs. Eddy explained how important editing our thinking is when it comes to health. She wrote: "Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them. The issues of pain or pleasure must come through mind, and like a watchman forsaking his post, we admit the intruding belief, forgetting that through divine help we can forbid this entrance" (Science and Health, pp. 392-393).
The main obstacle to well-being is a false sense of one's self, which generally comes from a false sense of God or of our relationship to God. That is where mortal thought tends to start—at the bottom—with a limited sense of God as our Creator. All problems actually stem from ignorance of God, or where we ignore God's power and His care for us, or from an ignorance of the allness and fullness of God's being. And that word Being, capitalized, signifies God and God's expression, the spiritual being of God's creating. God and His child are never separate but always individual, as divine cause and effect.
There is always more to know about God. One cannot be satisfied with yesterday's knowledge of God. It is imperative to stay abreast of every day's unique demands to know God better. And it is vital to know Him better—better and better and better. This daily—moment-by-moment—knowing of God in turn becomes reliance on God. And reliance on God immediately dispels limits. And that is called healing.
It is important to be alert to the rapidity with which one can fall down on the job mentally and fail to vigilantly "stand porter at the door of thought." Failure to divest thinking can lead to an acceptance of limits so deep that they seem real and almost natural. It is not always easy to recognize limits in their subtle forms—subtle acceptances of a limited sense of health, of seeing, hearing, wealth, holiness, and even of limited intelligence, memory, coherence, and ability to think. Limits come in the form of subtle acceptances of a deficient sense of mercy, compassion, companionship, and of failures in relationships and love. We may feel limited by a feeling of lovelessness itself—of being unloved, unlovable, or unlovely. Limits may present themselves in the form of an incomplete sense of home or of being homeless. Limits often bounce right into one's thought through a sense of lack of opportunity or through the devious subtlety of counting ages and thinking of oneself as too young or too old. Defining ourselves by age is a most vicious presentation of limits because it usually brings with it all the harmful effects that attend mortality.
FREEDOM from problems of limited health involves learning to deal with thoughts, not things. That leads us not only to consider what we are thinking, but also to choose what we are thinking — to consciously separate thoughts we desire to have from that we do not.
Hiding behind every belief of limitation is a sense of lack. Lack is just another name for accepted limitations. It is important to understand about lack or limits: They flock together like birds—yes, "birds of a feather flock together." One lack will soon find itself accompanied by another lack, maybe even the lack of desire to live, lack of willingness to live, lack of joy in living, lack of desire for living, lack of the capacity to love and be loved. All these forms of lack—these "birds of a feather"—attempt to impose limits on the infinity of good that everyone actually possesses as God's heir. Yet, we are all free to turn away from acceptance of any and all forms of limitation and lack. As the reflection of divine Mind, we are intelligent. This intelligence underlies our capacity to guard our thinking and to experience increasing freedom from limits in all ways.
The Bible and Science and Health teach that we can be divested of every form of error, including limitations and lack, through prayer and fasting. Mrs. Eddy defined fasting as "refraining from admitting the claims of the senses" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany,p. 222). So true fasting requires mentally rejecting the "human hypotheses" that seek a foothold in our thinking, and accepting instead the divine facts of our nature as the unlimited image and likeness of God.
We can stand steadfast with the prayer that fasts from material evidence. We can guard the door of thought, accept only what God, divine Principle, imparts to us, throw off the false imposition of limits, and thereby experience more of our unlimited capacities.
