One day, while I was sharing a quick, one-sentence thought with someone in need of healing, the words flowed out of my mouth spontaneously as if they had been said through me, instead of by me. I knew the words were true, but I didn’t know I understood them. I didn’t know I knew!
In thinking about that experience, I realized I had to have known the truth of the statement at one level, but hadn’t consciously claimed that knowledge as my understanding or the awareness of it as an active foundation from which we “live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
The analogy of riding a bicycle came to mind. Initially you focus on the mechanics of riding that bike, trusting the instructor, the theory, and having an image in thought of doing it just as you have seen others do. You know you can do it and claim it as your own, because you know it can be done.
You intellectually and physically coordinate and put into operation all the instructions you’re given, until one day you just push the pedals . . . and the bike takes off. Now you know you know!
You sail along with this wonderful feeling of dominion and being at one with the bicycle and the whole environment around you. It has become your expression, your understanding—not just that of others. It has always been there for and in you.
Although the mechanics may be shared in helping others learn, as the bicycle instructor does, and as I did when sharing those words with my friend, the real event takes place in individual consciousness—when you know you know. It happens when we move from the mechanical, material, mortal belief focus, to spiritual sense, spiritual understanding, and trust. Then the bike takes off, and we know that the demonstration is ours.
“And understanding prayer is fully answered, / When trustingly we turn to God aright” (Susan F. Campbell, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 149).
