The aggressor's voice

Two weeks ago yesterday, I got a headache and started to feel ill in a short period of time. I squeezed in a bit of prayer for relief, amidst all my other praying, but the suffering intensified. After a while, I stopped what I was doing, felt a bit flustered by the on-going pain, and retorted, “What is going on here?”

As if a person was standing in front of me and practically yelling in my face, I heard the clear cut words, “You are going to get sick!!!”

I was startled because the declaration of evil was so explicit and bold.

I slumped back in my chair to understand what was happening.

The first lesson I learned was how the experience graphically illustrated a main point in Christian Science that all illness starts as suggestion. It does not start as a physical condition in the body. It starts as suggestion and strives to get the ear of the target with the intent of convincing the target that the suggestion is a necessity.

I decided that the aggressor was not succeeding by being subtle with me this time, so ramped up its tactics to see if I could be intimidated into submission through forceful verbal articulation.

Too often, people listen to evil suggestions without censoring them; accept them into human consciousness as legitimate, and then see the suggestion manifest in the body. They don’t notice what is happening until a physical symptom appears. And then, because they never understood the mental nature of disease, believe the problem is physical. And it never was. It was suggestion that started the illness, not a germ, virus, or poison. And that was exactly what was happening to me. Evil was not successful with a subtle, “You are going to get sick,” so it tried to influence me with a super-loud-in-your-face attempt to convince me.

Even though I felt physical pain, I did not try to heal the pain any longer. I knew the trouble was not physical. It was an outside mental influence trying to mesmerize my thinking into accepting several days of sickness as necessary. The outside voice needed to be refuted, rejected, denied and silenced. And that’s the direction I focused my prayers.

There were other suggestions to refute like the fear that other people around me were sick and I was feeling the effect of contagion. Also the strong suggestion that I was in the season to get ill like millions of others around the country. But after hearing this voice, “You are going to get sick!” speak so positively in my thought, I knew any sickness was not physically produced. It was pure suggestion.

Obviously I had believed the suggestion to some degree because I was feeling the beginning stages of what appeared to be several days of suffering in the offing. But I decided evil also was losing hope of convincing me because it was working so hard to overwhelm my attention. And I wasn’t going to be convinced!

“Resist the devil and he shall flee from you,” Paul instructed.

I affirmed my wellness as a child of God. I declared my health to be spiritual, permanent, built into my being and never lost. I knew disease was unreal, unnecessary, and unimpressive. I knew evil had no influence over my thinking, body or experience. I knew I was God’s health manifest. I knew my spirituality was immunity from materiality and all suffering. I could not get sick anymore than wet could be dry.

After a few hours of quiet, steadfast, assiduous prayer, along with other projects I was involved with, I suddenly felt a major change in my mental environment. Even though there was still some pain, all the turbulence, turmoil and grief evil had been trying to stir up in my mental home, vanished. Calm permeated my thought. The storm was over. A rainbow of hope and promise lit my mental sky. I felt the aggressor had given up its arguments and vacated the premises. I knew the physical healing was very near.

I laid down for a good night’s sleep, fell asleep quickly and woke in the morning at 100%. There has not been a hint of illness since that time. And I am very grateful.

The degrees of divine Mind

It’s cold in my part of the country right now. Nine degrees at the moment! It’s a lot colder in other parts of the country, I understand. One woman emailed a minute ago and said it was 16 below where she lives. Brrrrrr….

Last night, we had a neighbor teen visit with my son for a bit. He rode to our house and back in a light jacket on his four-wheeler. And he played outside with his dog before wheeling off. The cold didn’t bother him a bit.

Weather is all relative, I commented.

My wife told the family how Indians who lived in the cold in a book she had read, slept at night with very little covers, and very few clothes, and didn’t mind the winter lows. They were accustomed to the frigid temperatures, and didn’t pay much attention. When Anglo-Saxons traveled with them in the pioneering days, they put layers of blankets on at night to keep from shivering. The Indians thought, “How odd. Why all the coverings?” They didn’t need the blankets. They hadn’t been physically softened by educated beliefs the Anglos had developed over the centuries.

So, when I look out the window and see snow swirling around, temperatures in the single digits, and clouds in the sky, I try to keep my perspective. It’s not the temperature in mortal mind that determines how healthy and happy my day is, but the temperature in divine Mind. And the degrees in divine Mind, are rated spiritually.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “According to divine Science, man is in a degree as perfect as the Mind that forms him.”

When our expectations of health and harmony are rated by the degrees of divine Science, and not by the degrees of physics, we protect ourselves from disease beliefs that tend to come along with adverse weather conditions.

In divine Science, there is no adverse weather, only the omnipresence of Love. Degrees are not rated in terms of high or low, hot or cold, but according to knowledge, insight and wisdom. The degrees of divine Mind are the ideas of God constantly unfolding for our attention and engagement.

It’s a lot easier for me to feel secure and calm when my thought is focused on the degrees of divine Mind, then on the physics of mortal mind.

Enjoy entertaining the ideas of God today! They will warm your heart, comfort your mind and preserve your health.

Say No to colds

A friend was telling me how he heard a testimony where a teacher, who was a practicing Christian Scientist, was talking with a co-worker in school who was complaining about getting a cold. The teacher immediately told her friend that she wasn’t getting a cold and didn’t need to expect to suffer.

The next day, the friend reported that she had no cold and was delighted with the freedom. She asked, “What did you do?”

After thinking about the immediacy of the healing with a quick clear definitive reply of truth, the man telling me this story said that later in the week he was having lunch with his sister who started complaining about getting a cold, and described the on-coming symptoms in detail.

Without ado, my friend said, “No you’re not!” The sister did not agree, and argued that, “Yes she was getting a cold!” And continued to explain all the reasons why she would get a cold and suffer miserably. My friend held his spiritual position in thought that God’s child doesn’t get a cold, and let the discussion drop.

The next day, the two meet, and my friend asks his sister, “What happened to your cold? You look well to me.”

Caught off guard, and by surprise, she replied, “You’re right. I don’t have a cold. The symptoms are all gone.” She was not a Christian Scientist and didn’t understand what had healed her, but nonetheless, the truth still met her need and brought a cure.

Truth heals.