“These are not my thoughts!”

I had just taken up the study of Christian Science again as a young adult, when I found myself suffering from an impacted wisdom tooth. The dentist had warned me that my wisdom teeth needed to come out, but I had procrastinated. Now it was 2 a.m. and I was in intense pain. I decided to contact a Christian Science practitioner. He answered immediately and said he would pray right away for me. By noon the next day all the pain and swelling were gone, never to return, and the tooth came in normally along with the others.

When I called the practitioner to report the healing, I said, “The condition was only a belief after all.” I was learning in Christian Science that all that really exists is God and His reflection, spiritual man. Also, that everything takes place in thought, and discord is the outcome of a faulty understanding of God and His perfect creation. I saw that what I had thought of as a material condition—an impacted tooth—was actually a false belief I had been holding to. 

Or was it? Even as I said this, the practitioner spontaneously replied, “And in reality, not even that.”