To challenge pain as an illusion might sound downright impossible given that many people’s lives are built around managing pain. And most of us have felt intimidated at times by discomfort in the body.
When I have been faced with pain, it has been an opportunity to learn something more of the all-comforting love of God and how it can dissolve what appears to be an intractable and mesmeric wall of bodily inharmony. And each time I have found my way through the mirage of pain, it becomes clearer to me what a bullying but utterly bogus threat it is, and this gives me courage to walk through that illusion more and more quickly.
Mary Baker Eddy gives specific instruction on handling pain in a foundational passage in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious—as Life eternally is—can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not” (p. 495).
I saw that God would never filter our communion through a material brain.
That little phrase, “When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you,” is profound. It helps us see that pain is a temptation the way sin is—a temptation to believe that God isn’t omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient divine Love. Pain would dishonor God by making matter and discord more real and more powerful than God. And in a sense dishonoring God is sometimes the very sin that we need to reckon with.
Father-Mother God, divine Love, could never allow Her creation to be hurt. Love could never create, include, or allow a harmful element. So “cling[ing] steadfastly to God and His idea” is that which dismantles the temptation to accept something beside God, good, as true and actual.
But that’s not always easy. What if you have felt the aggressive nature of the temptation of pain to the point where you don’t feel able to pray for yourself? While it is helpful to call a Christian Science practitioner for prayer in such moments, the practitioner’s job is not so much to get you relief from pain, but to bear witness to your direct relation to God, through the Comforter, divine Science. The practitioner bears witness to the truth that God is ever present and omnipotent, and knows that there is nothing able to prevent God’s tender ministration from leading you away from mesmeric suffering. The Comforter reaches you and leads you to see how to challenge pain in a way that thwarts the temptation, reveals it as illusory, and sees it dissolve as you walk through the mirage to full healing.
I’d like to share here a series of healing experiences and a bit of what each one taught me about challenging pain and seeing it displaced by harmony.
Learning that we don’t pray with a brain
This particular healing involved an extremely painful foot. I was lying on my bed trying to pray, but kept moving my leg around trying to find a comfortable position because I thought that would enable me to pray better. Suddenly, in a moment of prayerful objectivity, I realized, “That’s nonsense!” I saw that God would never filter our communion through a material brain.
If our communion with God, Mind, were dependent on the brain, then someone who is unconscious, overwhelmed, depressed, not in their right mind, or even a baby would be unable to hear God’s messages. No! We pray through spiritual sense, which Mrs. Eddy tells us is everyone’s “conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Science and Health, p. 209).
With that, I told the foot to “stay still” (in the spirit of needing to “take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action”; see Science and Health, p. 393) and got on with enjoying listening for spiritual inspiration from God directly to me through spiritual sense.
I kind of pictured it like a satellite beaming communication directly to a receiver versus a phone call having to go through old-fashioned telephone wires (the brain). The pain was still hounding me, but now none of that was hindering the flow of reassurance and comfort I was hearing and feeling from God, divine Love.
After about 45 minutes of this prayerful enjoyment, my phone rang and it was someone calling for my prayer help in Christian Science. I spent about ten minutes sharing with them the beautiful truths I had just been hearing from God. When I hung up the phone, all the pain in my foot was gone. I got out of bed, ran freely down the stairs, walked to the post office, and went on with my day.
In thinking about this healing, I came to the conclusion that as we realize we don’t pray with a brain, we can take the first step of praying in spite of the pain. Then we find ourselves becoming what the Apostle Paul described as “absent from the body, and . . . present with the Lord” (II Corinthians 5:8). This is what happened to me when I was completely focused on sharing truths with someone else. These moments of unselfed love ruled out an audience for the discomfort. Spiritual sense left no mechanism of brain and nerves to transmit or receive messages of pain, and I was free.
Obeying God and walking through the mirage
One cold winter day I was struggling with a painful tooth. I made it through a busy day, had taken a hot bath, got into my pajamas, and was just about to crawl into bed, hoping to find some comfort there, when I heard a spiritual message saying, “Don’t give in to this mirage of pain by going to sleep. Stay awake and walk through.”
I thought about the way an apparent puddle on the sidewalk vanishes when you walk through it and discover it was only a heat mirage. Then a strong impulsion came to get dressed, take the car out of the garage, go back to my office, and pray there until the painful suggestion was silenced.
I have to admit that this was the last thing I wanted to do on that cold night, but I also knew that just trying to escape the pain in sleep was kicking the can down the road. It would not solve the problem, and I knew that prayer would. I knew it would bring my thoughts into alignment with real comfort, the Comforter that is revealing Love’s ever-presence, which holds all of us eternally in perfect and harmonious relation to the very Principle of harmony, divine Love. So, I obediently dressed and drove the ten minutes to my office. On the way there the pain melted away.
I was so thrilled that I stayed for an hour at my office just contemplating what had happened and giving gratitude to God, Love. It seemed clearer to me than ever before that pain, although it seems to have a cause, a location, a duration, some substance, and even a law to support it, is really nothing more than an aggressive suggestion. Humble obedience in challenging that suggestion is like Moses picking up the serpent by the tail and finding it was his shepherd’s rod as he followed the direction from God to see the serpent’s illusory nature (see Exodus 4:1–5).
Letting God comfort and heal you completely
One night, I was walking the floor of a hotel room in tears. I was in severe pain and was concerned about making a series of flights home the next day. I had been praying to feel God’s comfort and care, but I had not found relief.
At a particularly humble moment, I found myself just asking for God’s help. What I heard back was “Let Me comfort you completely!” Letting God comfort me completely meant to me, at that moment, letting go of any hygienic efforts to comfort myself. I had been doing some little nonmedical things to manage the painful sensations while I prayed, and I realized I needed to stop.
It seemed clearer to me than ever before that pain is really nothing more than an aggressive suggestion.
I felt led to lie down in bed in a normal position and, trusting that I could release all the concerns I was feeling, climb mentally into the arms of divine Love and let myself be carried. So I did that, and surprisingly, I was able to fall right to sleep, and slept through the night.
When I awakened in the morning, the pain was gone, and I was able to make the journey home freely. A couple of months later, as I was about to teach a class, the pain came back with force, but this time I knew what to do. “Let God teach the class completely!” I felt all the concerns for teaching drain away and so did the pain. It never returned.
I have had numerous healings that illustrate the power of refusing to favor, accommodate, or work around some part of the body. Mrs. Eddy says, “We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being” (Science and Health, p. 264).
I am still learning more about this concept. Mrs. Eddy invites us in her poem “Christ My Refuge” to “kiss the cross, and wake to know / A world more bright” (Poems, p. 12).
When an experience seems like a cross to bear, let’s kiss that cross and avail ourselves of the opportunity to learn more of what’s truly real. We will progressively find not just a cessation of suffering, but a spiritual bliss in which we can enjoy all of God’s tender care, and cannot suffer.
