On a recent flight I fell asleep and had a dream. I dreamed that I was working in my home office in Los Angeles, when I felt a rumbling. It felt like a small earthquake. Usually, when this happens in Los Angeles, it lasts for a matter of seconds, but this time it kept going on and on. Concerned, in my dream I went to my neighbors and friends to ask them if they felt it. They said no. I was incredulous. How could they not feel it? We were having an earthquake! It felt so real, I wondered why it wasn’t on the news. How could this be? My concern grew that we were having a cataclysmic event. How could I be the only one feeling this? Should I call the police? Perhaps I should call a Christian Science practitioner to pray about the situation.
Suddenly, I woke up and realized that I had been dreaming and it was the mild turbulence of the airplane that I had been feeling. The truth was that there was never an earthquake at all. It was all an illusion. I didn’t need to stop the earthquake. I just needed to wake up.
Immediately I saw the parallel between this dream and how sickness or inharmony is the illusion that we need to wake up from in order to see the reality of perfect God, Spirit, infinite good, and His perfect spiritual creation. Sometimes our challenges seem as big as earthquakes and it feels as if there’s no solution. Though we may attempt to solve the problems humanly, this is never a solution. The solution is to awake to God’s infinite, loving presence—a presence eternally with us, His reflection, His perfect children.
Though it may seem very real, any inharmony is, in reality, an illusion. God, infinite good, being the source of all being, nothing inharmonious can be real. In Genesis 1:31, we read, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
We can know that if God didn’t create it, it is not real and not to be feared, and when we are tempted to believe sickness or sin are the reality, we can hold fast to the spiritual truth that we are God’s likeness. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, explains how practical this is: “Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well” (p. 14).
I can relate to the word suddenly. In my dream experience, as soon as I awoke, I realized the unreality of the “earthquake,” and the fear and concern completely went away. The situation was seen to be unreal and powerless to affect me in any way.
We need to be one with the divine Ego and drop any sense of a human ego wanting to be noticed or justified.
Often when praying about sickness or some other discord, we may actually end up arguing for the problem. We may seek sympathy from others, as I did in my dream. We may say mentally, “Look at me, I’m suffering.” “Feel sorry for me.” “Notice me.” This is mortal mind—a supposititious mind in matter—clamoring for attention. This so-called mortal ego wants to be noticed. This only prolongs suffering. But Christian Science reveals that there is only one Ego—God. And man and the universe are the reflection of this Ego.
In my dream, I wanted everyone to believe me about the earthquake. It felt like a mission! I wanted the problem to be seen and acknowledged as real. But to find healing, we need to recognize that the problem is unreal. We need to not argue for error, inharmony, but against it. We need to be one with the divine Ego and drop any sense of a human ego wanting to be noticed or justified. Science and Health states, “Mortal existence is a dream; mortal existence has no real entity, but saith ‘It is I.’ Spirit is the Ego which never dreams, but understands all things; which never errs, and is ever conscious; which never believes, but knows; which is never born and never dies. Spiritual man is the likeness of this Ego” (p. 250).
Recently, I worked on new lease negotiations for our church. After some months of back and forth with the landlord, we seemed to be at an impasse. Our church attorney and I felt we had reached a fair deal. Some church members agreed, but some did not.
At first, I felt offended personally. It was tempting to think that I had done all this work—spent many hours in multiple meetings, emailing back and forth, working on these negotiations—and this was the thanks I got! But I soon woke up to the fact that this was not the right thought. I was indulging in a mistaken sense of ego, my own hurt feelings, when what I really needed was to gain a true sense of oneness with God, the only Ego. I realized that God can’t be offended; therefore, I, as God’s reflection, could not be offended. I needed to wake up and change my thinking—not through personal effort or human will, but through accepting the spiritual reality conveyed by Christ, the spirit of Truth which Jesus expressed so fully and said would be with us always.
In the article “Taking Offense,” from Mrs. Eddy’s Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, we read: “It is our pride that makes another’s criticism rankle, our self-will that makes another’s deed offensive, our egotism that feels hurt by another’s self-assertion. . . . Nothing short of our own errors should offend us” (p. 224).
As soon as I got my human sense of ego out of the way, the burden of the negotiations lifted and the feeling of being offended disappeared like the dream it had always been. Soon after the lease negotiations were concluded harmoniously and fairly.
A letter attributed to Paul, addressed to Christians in Ephesus, says, “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14). Whatever challenges we have, no matter how real they seem, can be resolved or healed through acknowledging and understanding that God is the only Ego. We simply need to let the Christ awaken us to the fact of our eternal, harmonious being as God’s perfect, spiritual reflection.
