Messages from the media— or from God?

What if the billboards on the highway were filled with the qualities and synonyms of God, instead of alluring advertisements?

In my study of Christian Science, I recently started examining what it means to consciously live my life in a way that starts from a spiritual basis—and disproves the attempts of mortal mind to drag my thinking into a material, culture-driven atmosphere. I have learned that my communion with God comes through thinking clearly, recognizing the allness of God, and glorifying the spiritual qualities that I reflect as His child.

At the beginning of this year, it dawned on me that various aspects of my lifestyle needed to change. On a day-to-day basis, I was not living my life in a way that allowed me to have the clarity of thought that is essential for healing through Christian Science. Specifically, I was listening to music and watching TV shows that were contradictory to what I wanted to entertain in my consciousness as a healer. Plus, the judgments I was passing on others were hindering my ability to be loving. I was riding the roller coaster of the “media message,” which was distracting me.

I decided that these elements of my daily walk needed to be eliminated. By trusting my desire to live a Christ-inspired life, doing good and blessing others, I found that the clarity of my thought improved over time. I took practical, human footsteps to monitor the content of the “messages” I was entertaining. For example, not listening to music or watching movies that were less than inspiring was one way to avoid becoming distracted from the prayers that can heal the world. 

Yet, cleaning up my thought by eliminating the voices of evil and temptation is only half of the battle. This is why I love the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson. It fills my consciousness with a message from God each morning, and faces down any guise of evil that tries to cloud the purity of my thinking. To proactively entertain spiritually based ideas is, to me, to “stand porter at the door of thought” (Science and Health, p. 392), and these ideas automatically reduce the suggestions that attempt to lodge themselves in thought. It is just as important to pour the truth of being into consciousness as it is not to allow impairing substances to linger in thought. 

All of this is still a daily task, since this fine-tuning is not something that always happens instantaneously. But the stages of progress in my spiritual journey are elevating and enriching. As I become more receptive to the voice of the Christ, this inspires my words and my actions—leading me to a life of peace, love, and healing.

Eric Pagett, West Hartford, Connecticut, US