Success was a particularly tricky topic, perhaps because it is one of the mainstays of American culture and constantly beckons us to evaluate situations with the senses.

We did see right away that each of us has his own definition of success which is more a subjective feeling than something we could explain. But we also saw how easily our feelings could be disrupted by the opinions of others (including the media). For instance our topic arose last week after a member's family and friends harassed him about his need for more accomplishment.

This was the perfect lead-in to a discussion of the work of the Swiss psychologist, Alice Miller, whose book "Drama of the Gifted Child" radicalized psychology twenty years ago. She helped people see that many of their own cherished drives were nothing more than derivatives of long suppressed parental desires, based on the parents' narcissistic wounds, and wreaking havoc in the adult child's life from an unconscious position of power. When one achieves success and yet feels empty, there may be a parental imago barking orders and taking the glory. The individual going through the steps is a zombie who himself goes on a search for those he can suck the lifeblood from in order to have some semblance of a life. These vampires are particularly attracted to the helping professions.

To recover from this state by psychological means alone is a problem; one wonders if it could happen. A member, listening to these terrible revelations, pointed to a possible way to approach it in Science. Since the mortal symbolic level mimics the divine, the parent we need to satisfy is God alone. Stating it this way is semi-metaphysics, he admitted, and refashioned his prescription as our needing to live the one Parent as the only I and all.

From here we were able to discern something of the Science of success. God sees each of us — indeed is each of us — as infinite eternal idea, thus totally successful. God is unaware of whether we consider ourselves a success or not. God's view of us is our only standard from which to bring forth the human activity called success.

One member startled us with the observation that whatever the human appearances — good or bad — they always indicated total success. Faces quickly screwed up: "That's Pollyanna!" responded another. But he persisted and showed us that as Christian Scientists we should never judge the material evidences, but always look only to what is really going on. Furthermore, he showed that the so called human picture is a person's demonstration of whatever beliefs he's laboring under. It's just a natural outcome of these beliefs which would need to be dismantled to some extent to bring out some other result.

He illustrated with an example. First, he said he greatly doubted that human beliefs could be dismantled with anything short of Christian Science. Fighting beliefs with other beliefs would land everyone in a ditch. Say someone wants a lover. Fine, but what about all the pain from those former affairs gone sour; what about the fear of engulfment; oh, and yes — the awful childhood. Can't one just hear the Science shouting for recognition? Any love affair gone awry — including the family romance of childhood — can be evaluated and lived as Love alone. That's how God sees it — should we stake out some competing claim? As for losing one's self, we speculated this was a human concept or language for letting go of mortal separateness from Divinity: i.e., the lovers living each other infinitely, reciprocally. Perhaps we stumbled on a description of sex from the divine standpoint. Returning to the human picture, it would have to unfold harmoniously once lived from its true basis in God.

There was some discussion of fear of success. It seemed to be based on concern over excess responsibility and perhaps taboos against rising above one's ancestors and peers. The countervailing Science is pretty clear. We would need to be sure our direction is from God; that we are seeing all as divine and equal; that any activity we engage in is the human symbolic and secondary counterpart of the divine idea embracing all.

A couple of members discussed work they'd been part of with friends in the area of successful employment. It was essential in both cases to trounce personal sense and get the situations established on a divine base. All interactions were perfection unfolding.

A member told us of a discussion about bare-backing — sex without condoms — with a non-Christian Scientist friend, who is quite mythically oriented. They agreed this potentially dangerous practice needs more than finger wagging prohibition. The fact that it continues to draw men to it in spite of the dangers indicated to them a strong archetypal component. Our member wanted to take this component into Science, and not leave it merely a dangling archetype. All he could see for now was the oneness of God-man-universe. He felt our readings from John went a long way towards regularizing the depths of Divinity seeming to call from within it.

Nearing the end of the meeting, a member talked about a recently concluded read-through of Science and Health, this time finding its many invitations to peace and even passivity. Before, he had always been invigorated by its calls to arms. He wanted us to talk about this area — so we took Serenity as our topic.