Daily Healings

September 23, 2004

Give us this day our daily bread;
^Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections;^

Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy

"The member who came up with our topic isn't here, but his idea was we all have so many Christian Science healings every day we need to keep track of them and give gratitude."

"What came to me is that illness is like a shadow moving across my identity. A practitioner told me she recovered from severe hip pain through an out-of-body experience where she looked down on her body from above a saw she had no hips. Instead there was a swirl of energy. After that she got right up and was well."

"I suppose each of us would have our own imagery in such a circumstance — I would tend more to a breakthrough in thought. But I can't say really how it might present itself."

"I'm fairly new to Christian Science and don't see why anyone involved in it would be sick or have problems. The explanations are clear and the people I've met at the church I go to in Miami are upbeat and nice. They don't sit around outdoing each other with medical problems and supposed solutions."

"Christian Scientists do get sick and have problems which we have to work our way out of."

"And that work consists of discovering what set of material beliefs we're allowing to hold sway in us. These beliefs then need a spiritual rebuke — either summarily or through treatment."

"A practitioner I go to says most so called Christian Science healings would have happened anyway, a few are faith healings and only very few are true healings in Science."

"What's a real Christian Science healing then?"

"You know Mrs. Eddy was struggling with just this question when she passed on. Members of her household found an unfinished paper entitled 'Principle and Practice' in a drawer beside her bed. It gives her last thoughts on this vexing problem. A real healing in Science — to put it in my own words — would follow finding and living the spiritual counter-fact of what the material senses are saying. When those senses yield to the counter-fact, you have a healing."

"Christian Science seems so deep and complicated I wonder if an uneducated person would get it."

"Maybe not as presented by our textbook but Christian Science is a fundamental fact of being, not a bunch of words or a sect. Anyone should be able to grasp its underlying principle. Actually intellectualism is probably a greater impediment to understanding and healing than any lack of schooling."

"Jesus was a carpenter."

"Exactly! The only complicated thing about Christian Science, as far as I can see, is what some people bring to it through their own complicated belief systems."

"Here's a good quote from Science and Health: 'Mind is not necessarily dependent upon educational processes. It possesses of itself all beauty and poetry, and the power of expressing them. Spirit, God, is heard when the senses are silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The influence or action of Soul confers a freedom, which explains the phenomena of improvisation and the fervor of untutored lips.'"(pg. 89:18)

"PBS just had a two-part series on Freud vs. C.S. Lewis — in other words atheism vs. a belief in God. It was disheartening to hear all the intellectual ramblings about God's part in evil. I kept waiting for some scientific glimmer, or at least some reference to what's being discovered in quantum mechanics about the nature of being. All was darkness and illogic. In the end I'd have to agree with Freud that there's no God of the sort these eminent theologians were dreaming up."

"Let's have some healings."

"I'll start. My daughter told me yesterday she fell in the street and skinned her knees and arms. Several people came to help her and a man suddenly appeared with gauze and Neosporin, gave them to her and disappeared. She was so grateful but couldn't find him later to thank him. She referred to him as an angel. Last night at church we sang Hymn 174 which starts, 'Like as a mother, God comforteth His children,' (The Christian Science Hymnal) and I felt a deep sense of gratitude for God's constant motherly care for us all."

"At my dance studio today I signed up for an improv class but got really self-conscious when I saw the place filled with Broadway professionals. I found if I focused on the music and flowed with it the self-consciousness left me. Pretty soon I was totally into the dance and moved freely and with elan. Several people commented on my skill and abandon."

"I've got several romantic obsessions going right now."

"Several?"

"Yes — four. My usual pattern is to have just one, which rapidly becomes overwhelming and debilitating. This time I'm trying to get at what's happening below the surface. They're all based on projections of either my own shadow or Self energies and I'm working to reel these in to be lived consciously. As Mrs. Eddy says, 'the warfare with one's self is grand; it gives one plenty of employment'."(Miscellaneous Writings, pg. 118:25)

"I've got a new job and a physical was required. The examining doctor discovered high blood pressure and said I should have it checked again in a few days. I talked to my Christian Science teacher and we worked with the idea that blood has no power over me. As I went for the second test I was going to skip my usual coffee, but decided that would reinforce the notion that something was out of order. So I had the coffee and toast, went for the test and everything was normal."

"I've talked before about all the changes this last year in my life and the depression that set in. Since we've referred to intellectualism I wanted to point out that I've had quite a drop in mental function. There have been significant memory lapses but at the same time I've had an opening of the heart. Now I can really feel things that before I'd probably dismiss with a flippant intellectual remark."

"Thanks for that. I've suffered from depression for years but it really became a problem after 9/11. I couldn't get any peace even though I tried many approaches — Buddhism, Hinduism, A Course In Miracles. In desperation I came back to Science and had a huge, all-enveloping revelation of God's goodness. It went way beyond the intellect. I was so blown away, I needed help from a practitioner to calm me down."

"I remember once leaving a session with a practitioner and having such a clear vision of reality that I saw everyone's purity and innocence. There was no possibility of evil. It lasted three days; then it was back to the world's view of reality."

"I've just started working with autistic children. My first day was rough; the children were out of control and the staff was abusive. Before I went in the second day I made sure I prayed with the Christian Science Lesson and prepared my thought. What a difference! The kids were wonderful. They acted normal. I noticed one had beautiful eyelashes; another had such a radiant little face. The staff were also calmer and more tolerant."

"I had a series of violent and bloody dreams this week. It's the solstice or zero degrees Libra, the world ascendant — so I paid attention. The feeling and images were like the movies Blue Velvet and American Psycho. Very disturbing. In the last dream there was a roundtable of women which I caught sight of as I ran around dodging bullets. When I awoke from each dream I was glad I'd seen those contents of my unconscious I needed to handle in Science. I also figured I was getting some slight feeling of what it must be like to live in Iraq today with all the dangers. I worked with the image of the roundtable of women as a symbol of the feminine aspect of Deity soothing and comforting me and all. Then I worked with Psalm 1 (see Readings) to get my bearings. The way, the law or Torah and the tree are all symbols of divinity which I must access and live out from."

"Twelve years ago at the Emergence Conference in Atlanta I remember I had a bad cold and lost my sense of smell. The cold eventually left but my sense of smell didn't come back. This situation went on and on."

"Could you taste your food?"

"Not really. Once there was a fire in my apartment building, people were running down the stairs and asked me if I couldn't smell the smoke. Of course I couldn't. I worked with a practitioner for a while without results and then just settled into not having a sense of smell. Then three weeks ago I noticed I could smell things again."

"Wow! How wonderful — it's like recovering your sight or hearing. Smell is the first sense a baby has."

"Last Sunday there was a guy coughing at my gym. I tried to avoid touching the machines he touched but eventually had to use one of them. I thought, 'Now don't put your hands around your face and wash them as soon as possible.' Only then did I remember Christian Science and worked a bit to see the oneness in substance of all people and things. Later I noticed he was using a machine I'd used and thought, 'Aha — maybe he'll catch my health.'"

"The meeting needs to end soon. Any last minute comments?"

"I was thinking today based on the political ads, we have a choice between a flip-flopper and someone living in fantasy land. Can anyone suggest a good write-in candidate?"

"The ad situation is appalling. We're dealing with the future of humankind and getting a constant barrage of half-truths and outright lies. Scientists need to do some deep work. Look at this from Science and Health: 'In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a greater development of power, it is wise earnestly to consider whether it is the human mind or the divine Mind which is influencing one. What the prophets of Jehovah did, the worshippers of Baal failed to do; yet artifice and delusion claimed that they could equal the work of wisdom.'"(pg. 82:31)

"We need a topic for next time."

"How about something like getting beyond mesmerism or conventional thinking?"

"Outside the Box!"

"Yeah — good."

"OK everyone, Outside the Box?"

"Yes."

"Fine."

"Good."

The Bible

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy

A correct view of Christian Science and of its adaptation to healing includes vastly more than is at first seen. Works on metaphysics leave the grand point untouched. They never crown the power of Mind as the Messiah, nor do they carry the day against physical enemies,—even to the extinction of all belief in matter, evil, disease, and death,—nor insist upon the fact that God is all, therefore that matter is nothing beyond an image in mortal mind.

Whoever affirms that there is more than one Principle and method of demonstrating Christian Science greatly errs, ignorantly or intentionally, and separates himself from the true conception of Christian Science healing and from its possible demonstration.

Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear,—this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony.

Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God.

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