“I need more ___.” How would you fill in the blank? I need more money? More time? More friends? More patience? Isn’t it interesting that the underlying premise for all these desires is the belief that we are somehow incomplete, and that we can find fulfillment only by filling this assumed void through the addition of something that is not presently ours?
The desire to accumulate things or knowledge or attributes to correct some lack or deficiency seems to enter into almost every aspect of human life, and it parades itself under the guise of personal growth or personal fulfillment. Examples of this are all around us. We seek happiness through the accumulation of wealth and possessions. Nations try to expand by conquest. This process, whether it is personal or political, can be summed up in a single word—accretion—which Merriam-Webster defines as “the process of growth or enlargement by a gradual buildup.”
I have come to realize that accretion does not accurately describe the true, spiritual method of growth or progress, nor does it lend itself to true security or fulfillment. It is solely materially based and is the method of mortal mind—a counterfeit mind, apart from God—to portray its own supposed development. As such, it ends in decay. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science and the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, touches on this subject in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In this textbook she writes: “Christian Science presents unfoldment, not accretion; it manifests no material growth from molecule to mind, but an impartation of the divine Mind to man and the universe” (p. 68). This statement should serve as a call to reevaluate our thinking concerning the nature of growth and fulfillment, for there is a stark difference between unfoldment and accretion.
