Christian Science practitioner and teacher David Haughton has a message—less is more. Less searching for a specific truth to heal a specific problem. More a sense of release, which comes by yielding to Truth’s already present activity as infinite Mind.
As a Brit, one of his country’s sports provides just the analogy. “It’s like in cricket. The bowler can put all his efforts into bowling. But if he doesn’t release his fingers ever so slightly and let go of the ball, it can’t go flying down the wicket to bowl the batsman out.”
When he spoke from his home in Wiltshire, England, David talked about everything from power to pondering to Post-it notes—all pertaining to God. And the welcome freedom that comes when our lives do just that—pertain to God.
The lake at Stourhead, a National Trust property near David Haughton's home in England.
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Well, David, what are some of the sweetest ideas you’ve been savoring these days?
What I can start with is the thought that came to me when I got your e-mail about our shortened deadline for this interview, because it fits so perfectly with some ideas I’ve been cherishing for several months about Life—God.
Jesus never had any deadline—he just knew a Life line. When he heard Lazarus was sick (see John 11:1–44), he waited two days before going to him. He knew that a pure Life line was already established, in and as one infinite Mind. While he was on his way to heal Jairus’ daughter (see Matthew 9:18–25), he encountered the woman with an “issue of blood twelve years.” That pure Life line was already established, and it healed her. And then he so naturally continued on, to heal Jairus’ daughter.
I suddenly saw every Journal article as a Life line to mankind. And that means everything fits into place smoothly and harmoniously under Mind’s supreme government and control—and in just the right time.
Yes, I get it. That word deadline is comprised of two really limiting words.
This thought about a Life line instead of a deadline was the direct outcome of what I have been thinking about for many months now. About a year ago, I felt a gentle but very firm impulsion to understand more clearly what Life, God, actually is—and my relationship to it. Mary Baker Eddy explains that “Life” is a synonym for God. Let’s just say I had a deep desire to understand this spiritual fact more fully.
So I started looking up lots of references on life in the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s writings, and there are a great many. Over a period of weeks, I felt somewhat overwhelmed. So I did what I usually do when I feel overwhelmed. I paused and listened to hear what spiritual sense had to say, and I heard the angel message, “Stop studying. Just ponder God for a bit.” What that meant to me was to consider thoughtfully what God is.
So that’s what I did. And what came was very simple. I reasoned that if God has always existed, then Life must have always existed. And if Life, God, has always existed, then Life, God, never had a beginning—Life just is. And if Life is and never had a beginning, then it cannot possibly have an end. All there is, is Life. Limitless Life.
So my next question to myself was, “So if Life never had a beginning and never has an end, how does this relate to me?” With that question, I realized emphatically that there couldn’t be a “mortal” me. And that’s because God is Spirit, and I am Spirit’s image and likeness. When it really dawns on us that we are not mortal, it changes our viewpoint entirely. The reality is that we have always coexisted with Life, in and of Life. These thoughts have an immediate effect in our daily experience.
I can see that this idea of “Life line” instead of deadline can also be so healing when it comes to the constant drumbeat about death, dying, diminishing faculties. Or even a ticking clock in terms of getting employment or being a “success” by a certain age.
Absolutely. It is so important that we understand—not just intellectually accept—the spiritually scientific truths that Christian Science reveals to us. A couple of months ago I wrote something on a Post-it note and stuck it to my computer screen as a constant reminder: It says, “What is spiritual sense telling me?”
That sense of pondering I mentioned a few moments ago came from something a practitioner once said to me: “It’s not how much you read, it’s how much you ponder, which moves you forward in your spiritual understanding.” I think we often spend too much time reading and not enough time pondering the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings. We need to remember that we don’t gain the facts of divine Science by accretion, but by revelation. Do we “read” the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson, or do we take the time to ponder it? To really savor what it’s saying to us?
One cannot have one part of daily life that relates to family, one part that relates to church, another that relates to a healing practice, and so on. Life is whole, complete—one activity.
— David Haughton
And that cultural pressure you mentioned—that “deadline” of needing to succeed at something by a certain age—well, spiritual sense is never telling us that. It couldn’t.
We tend to come at daily life by thinking of ourselves back to front. I’m a lawyer who’s a Christian Scientist; I’m a student who’s a Christian Scientist; a bricklayer who’s a Christian Scientist. Actually, it’s the other way around. I’m a Christian Scientist who’s a lawyer or a bricklayer, etc. If we get it right, the whole of our day-to-day experience is as a Christian Scientist who happens to be a lawyer, etc.
Mary Baker Eddy explains in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that man is the expression of God’s being. Keeping thought focused on expressing God’s qualities in everything we do, we find we’re living Christian Science throughout our day. Not just trying to use it when there seems to be a challenge.
How do these thoughts manifest in your practice of Christian Science?
The first thing that has become very clear to me as a result of these thoughts on Life, and man’s coexistence with Life, is that one cannot compartmentalize one’s daily life. One cannot have one part that relates to family, one part that relates to church, another that relates to work, another that relates to a healing practice, and so on. Life is whole, complete—one activity.
Today, more than ever, I see my healing practice of Christian Science is 24/7/365. Wherever I am, I am practicing Christian Science as an image and likeness of God, Life. I am finding that the more consistently I do this, the quicker are my own healings and also the healings of those who specifically ask me for treatment. It’s so much simpler than we tend to make it so much of the time.
We hear so much about simplicity from teachers and practitioners in our work here at the Journal. Is that to say that in your practice, you see patients making it not so simple?
The simple answer is yes. I have observed a tendency in many of those who seek healing to want to turn Christian Science into an intellectual exercise, rather than just accept it as Truth. In this information age, there is so much emphasis on querying and challenging every statement ever made. While it is important—in fact, extremely important—to challenge the authenticity and validity of every one of mortal mind’s false beliefs, challenging statements of Truth in the same way can result in an individual’s losing that childlike trust in Truth, which is so essential to healing.
David, about the need to “ponder” that you were talking about. I looked up the word in the dictionary, and the Latin root is “to weigh.” When we spiritually ponder, we do “weigh,” don’t we? We decide what’s valuable to contemplate, and what isn’t? When we take the time, in earnest, to associate with ideas that are precious to us, meaningful to us, then the other thoughts that aren’t so precious tend to slide right off the scale.
Yes, that’s right. It is spiritual sense that communicates when we need to ponder something, and when deeper study is needed.
And I would imagine that deeper study can lead to some inspired pondering?
Absolutely. For instance, take a statement in Science and Health most of us know so well:
“A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive” (p. 463). Now many of us have been helped—healed—by that statement alone. And that is wonderful. But it’s also so important to consider what Mrs. Eddy is saying in the context of any statement she makes.
With this particular one, she is speaking about childbirth, as the marginal heading on that page indicates: “Scientific obstetrics.” But when one reads “around” that statement—those paragraphs before and after—she is bringing out the idea of purity, seeing man as the spiritual idea, the “child” of God, which transforms thought. One’s own purity as this child of God, not just as a “babe.” For me, this gives a far-reaching meaning to what she’s communicating.
I had a patient who had a skin condition that had plagued her for several months. In my prayer I was led to contemplate that statement and just cherish the idea of man’s purity. That the spiritual man is never born. He is not a developing or changing mortal. He is forever the child of God. It was something I just held to. And a complete healing came within days.
It’s just so important to consider the wider context. This makes me think of the weekly Bible Lesson, the statements that come up in the Bible and Science and Health. The ones we might be very familiar with because they can sometimes come up a few times a year. But we have to look beyond what’s just in front of us. We have to look deeply into why a particular passage is in that week’s Lesson, and also to go back to Science and Health and the Bible and read around those statements. What is Mrs. Eddy saying a few paragraphs before and a few paragraphs after? And the same with the Bible. When Jesus is talking about something, what came before? What comes after?
Can you give an example of another statement where reading around it can widen its meaning?
Sure. I love to contemplate “Heredity is not a law” (Science and Health, p. 178). When the paragraph opens, Mrs. Eddy is relating that statement to the human belief that physical conditions pass from one generation to another. But if one reads the several paragraphs before and after, how this comes through to me is that she’s very clearly talking about the basic hereditary belief that man is mortal, which is the main lie we’re all dealing with. The overall belief that I’m a mortal, you’re a mortal, everyone’s a mortal.
So it’s really spiritual sense that is leading us, whether we ponder a word or a statement, or move toward deeper study. I’m thinking of a time when I was very much led to just “let go.” It was during that same time I was talking about earlier, when the practitioner I was working with brought up that idea of “less study, more pondering.”
To me, getting too analytical actually goes against the simplicity of Christian Science. Think of Jesus. He gave a very clear message.
— David Haughton
I had a very severe condition at the base of my spine, which caused me a great deal of pain. I’d had help from two or three different practitioners over the course of a couple of years.
Then one time, about two o’clock in the morning, the pain became just so intense. I sat on the edge of the bed and asked God what I needed to know so that I could experience healing. In a short while, two statements came to me. The first one was when Jesus told the disciples, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets” (see Luke 5:4, 5), and the disciples responded that they’d already “toiled all the night” and hadn’t caught any fish. And I felt very much like that—that I’d been up to my ears toiling but not “catching” a healing!
The other thought that came was from Science and Health: “It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony” (p. 390). I realized my need was to gain a better understanding of God—not just apply statements of truth to a problem. I felt a great sense of peace.
I lay down on the bed again, and actually fell asleep. In the morning I awoke feeling so much better. I started reading the weekly Bible Lesson—and went right back to my old habits! How does this truth apply to the situation? And then, how does another statement apply? That really woke me up. I thought, What are you doing? You were led to just what you needed in the middle of the night, to have the “right understanding” of God. And to me that understanding means intelligent knowing. Knowing that God is Love and that this Love is infinite, every moment.
Within a short period of time, I don’t know exactly how long, because my thought had become so focused on God, I was completely free.
Sometimes the search for too many spiritual truths confuses us. I liken it to going into one of those huge stores. Rows and rows of choices—after a while it becomes overwhelming. To me, getting too analytical actually goes against the simplicity of Christian Science. Think of Jesus. He gave a very clear message. The Sermon on the Mount. Entering through the straight gate. It’s the simple Christ way of living, I think.
In regard to the spiritual sense you’ve been talking about, David, I keep thinking of what Mrs. Eddy said in Retrospection and Introspection, “All things earthly must ultimately yield to the irony of fate, or else be merged into the one infinite Love” (p. 23). Would you say this “merging” she’s speaking about is spiritual sense?
That’s it. It’s the activity of spiritual sense purifying thought. So often we find ourselves mesmerized by “things earthly.” I find this in the practice. A patient will call and want treatment, and maybe they tell you more than you actually need to know. This happens quite often. I’ve had to learn over the years to filter out that pack of lies and discern what spiritual sense is telling me, and what it is telling them, about their perfect and immortal relationship with God, divine Mind.
Yes, I admit to having been there myself. On the phone trying to convince a practitioner that my challenge is really, really serious—so in case they missed it, it’s going to need some really, really serious prayer on their part. It’s kind of missing the point about divine Mind’s continuous activity, right?
Well, what I’ve come to see is that the one really, really serious thing is God’s love for man. I find that if I am properly “prayed up” and conscious of God’s enduring love for His dear child, then this cuts right through the patient’s fear, which is all that is suggesting to them that their claim is big and important.
Error doesn’t come in sizes, although from the human point of view, it seems to. It’s just error. Nothing. This is the great revelation of Christian Science. This is what divine Mind is communicating.
It goes back to what I was saying about each one of us being in the ongoing practice of Christian Science: 24/7/365. One time I was waiting on a station platform on a very cold winter day, when an announcement came that the train would be half an hour late.
Each one of us is in the practice. Even that three-year old in Sunday School, learning the Beatitudes.
— David Haughton
My instant thought was, What can I do to bless everyone on this platform? What I can do is know that one, infinite Mind is at work right here, governing all harmoniously.
I just thought about that, just got a lovely warm feeling that there is only one Mind, not a collection of mortals waiting for a train. And then the train came in, and we boarded, and it was absolutely packed—everyone standing very close to one another. Two women right next to me had very heavy colds. Because my thought was filled with the spiritual fact that everyone was embraced in divine Mind’s infinite care, I knew that this discordant picture could not be true.
In just a few moments one of them said, “It’s funny; my cold is completely gone.” And then the other one said, “So is mine.” As I got off the train, it really came to me that when we pray impersonally about any situation—whether it be two women on a train or the war in Afghanistan—we can know that our prayers have an effect.
Sometimes the thought comes: Do my prayers have an effect? Well, “a right understanding” of God confirms that they do, and we don’t have to be present to know how.
Being in the practice is not just taking calls from patients. It’s about every area of our daily life, because each one of us is in the practice. Even that three-year-old in Sunday School, learning the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8).
I just realized that your Post-it note: “What is spiritual sense telling me?” dovetails with what Mrs. Eddy asks in Science and Health: “Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question” (p. 462).
And what she’s saying by asking that question is that spiritual sense is innate in everyone. It’s just that there are times when we allow our perception of spiritual reality to get tarnished—sometimes badly tarnished—like a piece of silver. The shine is always in the silver, and all we have to do to bring the shine back is to give the tarnished piece of silver a really good polish.
One thought I find enormously helpful when polishing the silver of my thought is: “Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you either when asleep or when awake” (Science and Health, p. 442). I think we so often interpret what Mrs. Eddy is saying here as relating to someone who might not be holding good thoughts about us—or even holding malicious thoughts about us. But that statement appears at the end of the mock trial scene (see pp. 430–442) about a man “charged” with liver disease, and the ultimate judgment in Spirit’s favor: “Not Guilty.”
To me, Mrs. Eddy is giving us an overriding message in the trial sequence: Wake up to the malpractice that is put upon us by the world’s belief of sin, sickness, and death. That we’re mortal and that we die.
The dream of mortality is the mental malpractice we need to be dealing with as Christian Scientists on a daily basis. I have observed in my practice that sometimes when healing is not taking place, a patient may be entertaining, without even realizing it, a latent thought such as, “Well, if Christian Science doesn’t work, I can always try the medical.” This thought is not the patient’s—it is the hidden hypnotic pull of mortal belief to its own creation, material medicine.
Perhaps it was a latent thought such as that which Jesus had to contend with when he had to have more than one go at healing the blind man at Bethsaida (see Mark 8:22–26). I find it interesting that Jesus had to take the man “out of the town”—or we could say, take him away from mortal mind’s mesmerism, before the healing took place.
When our practice is based firmly on the rock of divine Science, healing is the inevitable outcome. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901, Mary Baker Eddy said,“Only a firm foundation in Truth can give a fearless wing and a sure reward” (p. 2).
Well worth pondering, David.
Oh, yes! And full of sure rewards. Spiritual sense always reveals them.
