Most word processors include a review mode that allows you to suggest changes to another person’s document or review another’s suggestions regarding your own writing. These programs include a feature typically called “accept or reject changes” that requires you to decide if you should or should not incorporate suggested changes into your document. Many times a day we apply this same concept to suggestions coming to our thought. They can be as simple as the suggestion that drinking coffee makes one more alert, or that a white lie now and then doesn’t hurt anyone. Because suggestions of every type have such a big impact on our health, finances, relationships, and more, let’s explore the spiritually based rationale behind this decision-making process.
Synonyms of the word suggestion include insinuation, hint, implication, intimation, and innuendo—things that often carry with them a negative influence on one’s thought. This isn’t to say that a person suggesting changes to our document (literal or figurative) doesn’t have our best interests in mind. But it’s wise to always consider the source of a suggestion, as well as the motives behind it.
In the Adam and Eve allegory, in the third chapter of Genesis, the serpent told Eve, “Ye shall not surely die” if she and Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Eve accepted this suggestion, and her decision to do so, along with Adam’s, made them both susceptible to the mistaken belief that man can find life and intelligence in matter. This belief is in direct opposition to the truth previously stated in Genesis 1: that we need look nowhere for our true life and intelligence other than to God, in whose image we are created. The subtle, serpentine suggestion to the contrary weaves its way into the thoughts and actions of the antagonists in many beloved Bible stories, culminating in the account of the red dragon in the twelfth chapter of Revelation. This underscores the importance of rejecting serpent suggestions before they can swell into something bigger.
Christian Science teaches that what brings suggestions of this sort to our consciousness is animal magnetism. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, defines animal magnetism as “the specific term for error, or mortal mind” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 103). Animal magnetism and its associated terms, mesmerism and hypnotism, have a close kinship with the definition of suggestion we’re considering. They are the suggestions of mortal mind (the supposed opposite of God) that would negatively impact our happiness, health, and well-being if believed.
Mrs. Eddy deemed combating and defeating animal magnetism so important that she devoted a whole chapter of her textbook to it (“Animal Magnetism Unmasked”). She also provided students of Christian Science with the ongoing means to overcome mesmerism and hypnotism by including “Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced” as one of the 26 subjects covered twice each year in the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons. These Lessons are read each week during Sunday church services around the world. All this attention makes it clear that we need to identify animal magnetism as the “suggester,” and be spiritually ready to respond with a resounding “reject.”
With the stage set, let’s look at a couple of suggested changes known to knock on the door of one’s consciousness, together with some ideas to help shed light on their devious nature.
Suggestion #1: The change of seasons brings suffering due to allergies.
Each year, the health-care industry takes in billions of dollars from people seeking temporary relief from allergies. So common and supposedly safe are the material remedies available, that a person dealing with this suggestion may be tempted by a secondary suggestion: Wouldn’t it be easier to opt for material means to relieve my suffering rather than rely on God to eliminate it?
In her Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mrs. Eddy writes, “If the error which knocks at the door of your own thought originated in another’s mind, you are a free moral agent to reject or to accept this error; hence, you are the arbiter of your own fate, and sin is the author of sin” (p. 83). So, doesn’t this say that regardless of any pressure that tempts us, the decision to accept or reject erroneous thoughts is ultimately in our own hands?
The decision to accept or reject erroneous thoughts is ultimately in our own hands.
What, then, is required to firmly and confidently reject this suggestion of allergies? From Genesis 1 we know (generic) man is made in God’s image and likeness. What’s more, Psalms 17:15 tells us we will “be satisfied, when [we] awake, with thy likeness.” And who is that likeness but man, the child of God? And what is that awakening but a spiritual one—in this case, from the mistaken belief that we are material mortals subject to allergies, to the truth of ourselves as the spiritual expressions of God’s being, reflecting His changeless goodness?
Thus, if we are ever lulled into thinking the changing seasons can negatively affect us, we can immediately reject the suggestion, knowing that we each are now, not shall be, the child of God, immune to suffering the symptoms associated with allergies.
Suggestion #2: What did I do to my (blank) to make it hurt so much?
This suggestion is a particularly insidious one, corresponding to much of the world’s thought of looking to matter for cause and effect, as well as cure. And unless we’re metaphysically prepared to immediately reject the suggestion, worldly belief can overwhelm our individual thought, leaving us with what Christian Scientists frequently term “a challenge.”
Christian Science looks at such challenges through a purely spiritual prism. Science and Health says, “Banish the belief that you can possibly entertain a single intruding pain which cannot be ruled out by the might of Mind, and in this way you can prevent the development of pain in the body” (p. 391). What a comforting statement! When we follow this instruction, it becomes impossible for the thought of suffering from a supposed pain somewhere in the body to gain a foothold in our consciousness.
One morning, I awoke to a soreness in one of my knees. Figuring that I must have slept on it funny, I didn’t give the initial suggestion—of a change from a healthy material knee to an unhealthy one—a second thought. However, by the time I arrived at work, the suggestion came that the soreness was worse. As I trudged from the parking lot to my building, I searched my memory. What had I done the previous day that might be responsible for this suggestion of change? As if in answer, a far more important question occurred to me: How can dwelling on the supposed causes and effects of matter possibly provide spiritual healing? I knew it couldn’t; I knew I needed to turn my thought away from the problem and seek the solution in Christian Science.
That evening, my appearance was that of a person stuck in a mortal, aging body. This began a flood of additional suggested changes, including, What if this change is permanent? And while a lifetime of relying on Christian Science for healing made it clear that I needed to firmly and absolutely reject the suggested change, as the evening ended the pain seemed so intense that sleep was next to impossible.
The following day brought with it the suggestion that, depending how I walked, how I sat, and how much weight I put on my leg, the soreness would be lesser or greater. During lunch, I called a Christian Science practitioner for assistance. She recommended that I pray to know there is only one cause, one creator: the all-powerful, omnipresent, and law-giving God. Pondering this, I realized that the belief of aging has no power, presence, nor standing in Christian Science, the law of God.
Spurred on by this divine truth, I turned to the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings for fresh insights, looking up passages regarding true law, true power, and cause. One inspiration led to another until I found this passage: “Meet every adverse circumstance as its master. Observe mind instead of body, lest aught unfit for development enter thought. Think less of material conditions and more of spiritual” (Science and Health, p. 419).
These instructions led me to realize that I had indeed accepted several thoughts “unfit for development” into my consciousness, instead of immediately rejecting them. It became clear that I needed to open my thought to ideas from God fit for development. I typed out about fifty qualities worthy of development in thought, printed them out, cut them into strips, and put half on my home desk and half on my work desk.
Each day, I studied one or two of the words by looking up references to them in the books mentioned above. Simultaneously, I made a concerted effort not to observe how hard or easy it was to walk and bend my knee. I also renewed my pledge to follow Jesus’ frequent command, “Be not afraid.” It is a command so important that under the subtitle “Mental Treatment Illustrated,” Mrs. Eddy says that “Christian scientific practice begins with Christ’s keynote of harmony, ‘Be not afraid!’ ” (Science and Health, p. 410).
My work in observing thought instead of body, and nurturing the development of God-derived qualities in my thought, resulted in a complete healing in a matter of days. Just as importantly, pondering and praying about qualities fit for development remains a part of my daily defense against suggestions of animal magnetism.
The Christian Science pastor, the Bible and Science and Health, is packed with ideas that help us reject every one of animal magnetism’s suggestions, including any that would say regular church attendance and spending time “in the books” aren’t all that important.
Each day, we have countless opportunities to either accept or reject changes suggested to consciousness. By keeping our thought aligned with God, we prevent what we might call the “malware” of mortal mind from gaining admittance to our thinking. And we become more and more confident and alert to make the right choices.
