Some time ago I was hiking in the Swabian Alps [a low mountain range in southern Germany]. The ruins of a castle on the mountain across from me were lying in the sunshine and seemed to invite me to come and experience the sunset from there.
As a strong hiker I was confident I would get there by sunset. But the trail sign first sent me around the mountain to its backside. I walked and walked, and slowly began to be concerned. Was this the right path? It ascended the mountain only very gradually, and it led me in a direction away from the castle ruins. Had I missed a signpost? Should I turn around?
In spite of these concerns, I kept moving forward faster and faster. I began to think of a labyrinth. And I don’t mean a maze such as the ones that are often cut into corn fields in the fall, with many paths that lead nowhere. A labyrinth in its narrower sense is an old symbol that can be found in early Christianity. Maybe the one most people know is the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth.
When you enter such a labyrinth, every step leads toward the center without fail. The path has many switchbacks and turns. At some points, you think you’ve almost reached your destination, but a moment later the path leads almost all the way back to the beginning—and yet it is still moving steadily and surely toward the center. Getting lost is impossible.
Images of thought and reflections from earlier experiences, as well as helpful passages from Mary Baker Eddy’s writings and the Bible, now came to me on my way to the castle ruins.
The labyrinth is a symbol or illustration of life as a complete whole. No matter where I see myself in my present life experience—at a beginning or a fresh start, on a straight path where everything is going smoothly, at a turning point, somewhere in the middle, or at a long-awaited destination—I’m always within a perfect round of completeness.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in Unity of Good: “Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The universe and man are the spiritual phenomena of this one infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena
never converge toward aught but infinite Deity. Their gradations are spiritual and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their opposites, for God is their divine Principle. They live, because He lives; and they are eternally perfect, because He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth of divine Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre and circumference” (p. 10).
With God as the center and circumference, the spiritual phenomena of infinite Mind, man and the universe do not reach perfection by taking certain steps, and only by doing so. Perfection is a present fact. Right here. Right now.
But doesn’t it often seem to be just the other way around? Doesn’t it seem as if we are living as imperfect mortals together with other imperfect mortals in a finite, imperfect world? Doesn’t it seem as if we first have to develop from an imperfect mortal into a perfect spiritual being?
Probably most of us have experienced times when we felt literally compelled to change something in our life experience in order to move forward, to make progress. We may sometimes perceive this as a kind of painful pressure. Yet, in the infinitude of divine Mind it is our spiritual perfection that wants to be lived and expressed consciously. What we really are as the expression of divine Mind is what determines our steps—not our trying to reach perfection.
What seemed to be doubts about whether I had taken the right trail were, in the final analysis, simply a kind of “nudge” by divine Truth and Love. Perfect divine Principle makes it impossible to get lost. It perpetually works to correct, to lead, to supply, and to create balance.
The Bible puts it this way: “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left” (Isaiah 30:21, New King James Version). We cannot help but be the purposeful and orderly expression of the infinite and perfect divine Principle, Love, in the way this loving and intelligent Mind unfolds it to us right now and at every moment.
In the Gospel of Matthew we also read about a “narrow” path (7:14) that is apparently hard to find, which Mary Baker Eddy describes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in this way: “All that really exists is the divine Mind and its idea, and in this Mind the entire being is found harmonious and eternal. The straight and narrow way is to see and acknowledge this fact, yield to this power, and follow the leadings of truth” (p. 151).
Here again, Mary Baker Eddy’s clear reasoning starts from the divine Mind. In the indestructible unity of Mind and idea, the entire being can never be anything other than the expression or unfoldment of eternal perfection and infinite harmony. What we call intuition or inspiration, what we feel as an impulse, hear as an inner voice, or perceive as a “nudging,” never comes to us from the outside. It is the perfection of infinite Love, the presence of infinite Mind, the one Life, that perpetually unfolds in and as itself—as an infinite idea, always complete, never fragmented or material, even though it may seem to us that we are “walking in the way,” “taking steps,” “thinking thoughts,” or “pursuing goals.”
On my hike, I soon came to a sharp turn. The path now led straight upward, and it was fairly steep toward the end. Soon I reached my destination, just in time to be able to enjoy a beautiful, flaming orange sunset and evening sky. On the way down, I discovered a shortcut that I jogged down. It took me back to the valley in a short time and before the onset of darkness. What an unforgettable and rich experience! And what a blessing is the revelation of God as the center and circumference of all being!
