Place
September 10, 1998
Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
We had an abbreviated session this week, since most of us got lost trying to find our new place, where we'll meet for two years as the Lesbian and Gay Center is remodeled. Thankfully, Place was our topic and we thus had vivid evidence that mortals seeking something can have its downside.
The Christian Science of the situation was also clear — " being in our right place" is very much akin to being in our right mind, the Mind that is God, unfolding all being and doing, from Its own perfection, undaunted by dualistic struggles.
A couple of olden bromides quickly arose to the surface:
- There is no spot where God is not.
- The place you are seeking is also seeking you.
A touchy point emerged about our members commenting in a "corrective way" on each other's demonstrations. We all greatly value the "give and take" of metaphysical discussion which can become passionate and heated, but when someone shares a healing and the work surrounding it we're finding it best not to tread on this area, but leave to the inner experience of each one how he or she evaluates it and what truth to draw therefrom. We worked on this point a few weeks back when we tried to discern the bottom-line of various religions so we could live them there and not on the troubled surface. It takes discipline — but there are immense rewards for this type of discipleship.
We worked a bit with the two words Christ Jesus, which seem to summarize the truths of Christian Science. Christ is God's being of man, while Jesus is the human embodiment thereof — "where the rubber meets the road" as we perhaps inelegantly said to one of our web friends. By living myself and all else as God's presence I actualize the Christ Jesus experience here and now.
Healings:
One member expressed gratitude for Christian Science help received from other members when a bad cold looked like it was turning into bronchitis. It didn't, and our member is well on the way to full recovery.
Another recalled the work he did in 1968 when his Army Reserve unit was called to active duty in Vietnam. He opened his thought to infinite Good to place him where he could be of the most service. He said something like "Wherever my prayerful work can be most effective, I leave it up to You, Father-Mother." He shortly thereafter found that he did not have to go, since he had only 3 months left on his Army commitment.
Another member has been totally healed of macular degeneration through his own work in Christian Science. The original diagnosis of what is considered an irreversible condition as well as the eventual pronouncement of his complete healing were from medical doctors.
One member mentioned the healing of hemorrhoids as resulting from a spiritual interpretation of the truth that everything is in its right place. While he visualized the physical counterpart of this statement, nothing moved! When he broke through to the spiritual fact that his right place was as the reflection of perfection, the healing was very quick.
Another member went to his place of business one day this week without appointments, but set things up and just practiced the presence of Divinity — seeing everyone as perfect, Good alone as unfolding, etc. Within a short time. people were stopping by and arranging for work to be done.
One member was having trouble with lawyers around real estate. Others helped him see the need to treat professionals working for us as divine ideas, incapable of error. Try it with dentists or even Christian Science practitioners.
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
Nothing is real and eternal,—nothing is Spirit,—but God and His idea. Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense.
Did God, Truth, create error? No! "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence?
Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of "the mind of the Lord," as the Scripture says.
Until the lesson is learned that God is the only Mind governing man, mortal belief will be afraid as it was in the beginning, and will hide from the demand, "Where art thou?" This awful demand, "Adam, where art thou?" is met by the admission from the head, heart, stomach, blood, nerves, etc.: "Lo, here I am, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion, a blending of false claims, false pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and death."
Where the spirit of God is, and there is no place where God is not, evil becomes nothing,—the opposite of the something of Spirit.
The scientific divine creation declares immortal Mind and the universe created by God.
Infinite Mind creates and governs all, from the mental molecule to infinity. This divine Principle of all expresses Science and art throughout His creation, and the immortality of man and the universe. Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls ideas material. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall to the level of a human or material belief, called mortal man. But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind is All and reproduces all—as Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the product. The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all.