Soul
January 8, 1998
Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life's cup and to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in fragments before our eyes. Perchance, having tasted its tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethargic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction; else, the contents of this cup of selfish human enjoyment having lost its flavor, we voluntarily set it aside as tasteless and unworthy of human aims.
And wherefore our failure longer to relish this fleeting sense, with its delicious forms of friendship, wherewith mortals become educated to gratification in personal pleasure and trained in treacherous peace? Because it is the great and only danger in the path that winds upward. A false sense of what constitutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements wherewith to obstruct life's joys and enhance its sorrows.
Participants felt that Soul was the broadest and most illusive of the synonyms for God. It controls infinite individuality, uniqueness, beauty, taste, wholeness, depth. It is the synonym availed often in healings of sight and hearing (Soul senses).
One participant liked to experience Soul as the wholeness of any event — as living infinitely, eternally now," until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory" (Science and Health, pg. 323:11-12).
Mrs. Eddy often uses Soul for body and, in fact, has given us the lesson entitled "Soul And Body". It is the senses of Soul and not those that claim to be of matter that must guide our apprehensions of, and actual being of Being.
Some discussion revolved around loss of hearing and sight as attempts to shut out unpleasant news or beliefs. This would constitute a try at a material solution for a problem, and has the horrible side effect of deafness or blindness. The Scientific solution would be to translate what is being said or seen into the underlying Reality. The Soul evaluation of a situation would heal, not only the situation, but the sense — sight or hearing — too.
Late in this meeting, a very interesting point emerged: in working out a healing, we need to consider out motive. Why do we seek healing? Just because we want it, or because other are watching us? Or do we want and accept it in order to be of further and greater service to God? Of course we need to be careful on this one, that we don't get it too personal.
In brief, both the healing and the necessary motive are encompassed in the fact of man being the full reflection of God.
From sense to Soul my pathway lies before me,
From mist and shadow into Truth's clear day;
The dawn of all things real is breaking o'er me,
My heart is singing: I have found the way.
O Science, God-sent message
To tired humanity,
Thou art Love's revelation
Of Truth that makes us free.
Thy kingdom, God, within us
Shows forth Love's sweet control.
God's idea, man, rejoices;
He knows the reign of Soul.
We thank Thee, Father-Mother,
For blessings, light and grace
Which bid mankind to waken
And see Thee face to face.
We thank Thee, when in anguish
We turn from sense to Soul,
That we may hear Thee calling:
Rejoice, for thou art whole.
Transcending the evidence of the material senses, Science declares God to be the Soul of all being, the only Mind and intelligence in the universe.
Man is the reflection of Soul. He is the direct opposite of material sensation, and there is but one Ego.
If we rise no higher than blind faith, the Science of healing is not attained, and Soul-existence, in the place of sense-existence, is not comprehended.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. The reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme.