All my life the biggest hill for me to climb in practicing Christian Science has been wondering whether I know God well enough. After some years in the public practice of Christian Science, it finally dawned on me that I’d been starting with me, human effort, and human reasoning in attempting to answer this question. It became clear that I had it backward: I was approaching Science as a mortal struggling to become an immortal.
Intellectually I knew better, but this was where I honestly was in my heart. Then a light shone, showing me that it’s God who heals, it’s God who knows, and we reflect His healing power and knowing. I’d been thinking mostly about who man is and had given precious little effort to learning about who God is. But Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy states, “We know no more of man as the true divine image and likeness, than we know of God” (p. 258).
The shift in my approach, from starting with man to starting with God, has made my practice less labored and more inspired and fruitful. Instead of identifying myself as a little struggling “I,” I see my true identity as the reflection of the divine I, or Us.
Most of us would answer the question, “Who are you?” by stating our names. Or if we’re speaking only for ourselves, we may just say, “I.” But who, really, is this I?
The Hebrew prophet Moses, known for leading the Israelites out of slavery and giving us the Ten Commandments, wasn’t always sure of his identity and purpose. When he first learned of the magnitude of God’s request of him, he hesitated and asked God two questions—basically, “Why me?” and, “What is Your name?” or “Who are You?”
In regard to Moses’ first question, God reassured him, “Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:12). As far as His name or identity, God replied, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14).
Eddy defines I Am in the Glossary of Science and Health in part as: “God,” and “the only Ego” (p. 588). And in the definition of I, or Ego, she says, “There is but one I, or Us” (p. 588). And she defines God, in part, as: “the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal” (p. 587).
I’d been thinking mostly about who man is and had given precious little effort to learning about who God is.
Moses’ receptivity to spiritual ideas made it possible for him to know God. Science and Health describes this type of seeing or knowing as spiritual sense: “Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (p. 209). Moses felt, heard, understood, and obeyed God—and God was with him.
Developing spiritual sense opens the way for all of us to begin seeing and feeling God as the only real I, or Us, and ourselves as His reflection. This is the opposite of what we might consider the normal way to identify ourselves—with physical bodies, human personalities, and limited minds. The human I is so familiar to us that it can feel unnatural to contemplate a different Ego, or “center of the universe,” than ourselves. To read or be told we are spiritual and at one with a higher Being is one thing. But to internalize this—to feel it in our hearts—requires sincerity, humility, persistence, patience, and intuition.
Science and Health also says, “Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality” (p. 298). Human consciousness is awakened by Christ—the spiritual idea of God, which Jesus demonstrated—and lifted higher. Our problems and challenges nudge (or force) us to consider and explore these new views of identity.
We all must grow. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, we are transformed through spiritual development. But spiritual growth isn’t physical growth. It actually can turn our material view of life completely on its head, so to speak.
Spiritual growth upends conventional thinking about life. Material premises crumble and yield to the solid base of divine Spirit. The so-called human mind diminishes in our lives in proportion as Mind, God, becomes more real to us. Spiritual sense becomes more vivid, more substantial. We find ourselves beginning to see and hear, like Moses, the voice of God.
This is evidence we’re beginning to experience what Eddy terms a change of base of thought. “The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind” (Science and Health, p. 162).
One thing spiritual sense has opened for me is a better understanding of this divine Mind and its seeming opposite, mortal mind (see Science and Health, pp. 115–116). I used to see myself as a mortal man climbing up a ladder, from sinner to saved. This material-sense reasoning turns out to be a backward perspective. Eddy writes: “Delusion, sin, disease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down” (Science and Health, p. 301).
This new light was showing me that God is the source of, and constitutes, my identity.
The so-called mortal or human mind is a limited conception of the one and only true Mind, God. Limited mortal concepts don’t grow or ascend a ladder; they diminish and, by degrees, disappear as Spirit, Mind, and Mind’s real idea, man, appear or are understood.
Some years ago I experienced a significant moment of spiritual light. Instead of continually worrying that I didn’t know enough about God, or hoping that maybe someday I would, I glimpsed the awesome fact that only God knows, and only God does, and His knowing and doing are manifested through man, His idea, rather than man being a separate expression or a separate being trying to know God.
This inspiration shifted my approach to Christian Science. I began to see that it’s not what man does (or doesn’t do), as if I were an originator, a source, a separate entity. I reflect. I am the reflection of God, the expression of His being. This was showing me that God is the source of, and constitutes, my identity. God is the impetus, cause, and strength of my entire being. I saw more clearly that because nothing can impair God, nothing can impair His individual expression or manifestation. Our unique identity is in our unique expression of Him. I’ve felt my oneness with God more clearly, knowing that God isn’t expressing Himself to us but as us.
The First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), was Eddy’s “favorite text” (Science and Health, p. 340). What can this mean except to have no other sense of I than God? Aren’t we breaking this First Commandment when we think that God is Ego, but we are also another ego? To think that God is Mind, but we also possess another mind which He inspires? God is all-knowing. Doesn’t this mean God does 100 percent of the knowing that is known, and man reflects that knowing? This precludes a separate ego knowing Him.
We must let go of the belief that we are another god, ego, soul, or mind, doing our own separate knowing, seeing, acting, and feeling. The great I am is our I am. That is, the one God is the only I, or Us. Moses initially felt unworthy and unqualified to carry out God’s assignment. What changed? He learned the I am was his I am and was always with him, always guiding him. Moses reflected the intelligence and wisdom of God.
Christ Jesus claimed no personality or personal abilities. He said, “I cannot do anything on my own” (John 5:30, Contemporary English Version) and “The Father who lives in me does these things” (John 14:10, CEV).
Learning from the prophets—and, especially, Christ Jesus—Eddy devoted herself to the First Commandment’s command to lay aside a mortal ego. She once told a student: “All I have ever accomplished has been done by getting Mary out of the way and letting God be reflected. When I would reach this tone, the sick would be healed without a word” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Vol. 1, Expanded Edition, p. 270).
The First Commandment isn’t only a command—it’s also a promise and an assurance that we, as God’s beloved ideas, will never have another ego, identity, or self separate from the great I am. Eddy also writes, “The one Spirit includes all identities” (Science and Health, p. 333). We will forever be individual expressions of the one Ego, each reflecting Him in our own unique, original, intelligent way.
So, for each one of us, the true answer to “Who are you?” will always be “I am the manifestation of God—Life, Truth, and Love individually expressed.”
