LAST YEAR, I HAD a small growth at the base of my neck that had grown larger over time, making me self-conscious. Praying on and off for healing over several months, I felt I wasn't making much progress. I called a Christian Science practitioner and we prayed together to know that divine Mind, or God, was telling me what is true about myself, not physical symptoms.
In my prayers, I was inspired by Mary Baker Eddy's statement from Science and Health, "Observe mind instead of body." The whole sentence reads: "Observe mind instead of body, lest aught unfit for development enter thought" (p. 419). I realized that by looking at myself as a material body with a growth on my neck, I was never going to get the true picture of myself as God's child — a perfect, spiritual idea, without blemish.
I knew I had to turn away from what the body was presenting to my thought and get in tune with the fact that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation ..." (Science and Health, p. 468) — that God, Mind, is all-knowing and He created me perfect as His idea. I saw that God has such a wonderful, spiritual view of us. He is always communicating this spiritual view to me, and His view is what constitutes my being. I thought of God as like the sun, which warms and illuminates, and my job was simply to turn to that light of Truth.
