Are you looking at the cheese or the holes?

I had to laugh when I read the following quote from the “Thoughts on the business of life,” page at the end of a recent Forbes magazine. The page included several quotes poking fun at absurdities, silliness and nonsensical ways of humanity.

Bertolt Brecht is quoted as saying,

“What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?”

I thought about the relationship between Spirit and matter, and I asked, “What happens to matter when spirit is gone?” Matter is like the holes in Swiss cheese, and Spirit is like the substance.

Isn’t this so true?

I mean really, if there was no Spirit, what would there be? With no Spirit, there is no thought, no consciousness, no love, no joy, no feeling…no anything. There is nothing without Spirit. And that’s what matter essentially is, nothing. Spirit is everything.

Some would argue that matter carries spirit and is necessary for Spirit to be expressed. But this is backward reasoning. If matter was primary, than matter would be something without Spirit. But it is not. Matter is mindless dirt. Spirit gives life, not empty atoms. Jesus proved this on the cross. His physical body died, but his Spirit, or God, lived on, sustaining him in Mind. Jesus lifted the body out of the tomb in three days proving Spirit superior, and not dependent upon matter for existence.

In the material sense of things, it appears that Spirit is dependent upon physicality for expression and identity, but this is only a limited concept of spiritual reality. As human thought is spiritualized, the objects and things of matter become less and less to the human sense, and the ideas of God become more and more. Heaven is a complete realization of spiritual reality in which all things are seen as purely spiritual, and there is no sense of matter anymore.

Spirit is substance. Matter is not.

Spirit is “the cheese.” Matter is “the holes.”

Are you looking at the cheese or the holes?

Looking through a straw

The statement that “Spirit is real and matter is unreal” is a concept that sometimes causes consternation amongst seekers striving to understand Christian Science.

I find it easy to accept the unreality of matter. For me, if something is truly real, it lasts forever. If it can be destroyed it can’t be real because there’s a point when it does not exist. It has no reality. So, truly, how could it ever be real? You can’t count on it in the long run. And eternal life is about the “long run.”

I’ve often defined matter—or a material sense of the universe—as a very limited view of the spiritual universe God created. And today, I heard an enlightening example of how to better illuminate this concept.

A friend who was grappling with the unreality of matter explained it this way. He decided that matter, or a material sense of things, was a limited view of Spirit, like looking through a straw allows one only a very limited view of his surroundings.

For instance, if you looked through a straw at a dance troupe performing, you might see only swirling hems and heels kicking, and basically disorder and perhaps chaos. The view would be so small, that you would have no grasp of the larger production being danced out. And you might conclude that what you were looking at was nonsensical and disorganized. But pull the straw away from your eye, and, wallah! the scene is beautiful, sensible and masterfully choreographed.

Likewise, as we look through the lens of Spirit, we see a masterfully crafted spiritual universe where divine Principle is in control. But when we look through the cloudy and narrow lens of material sense, we often see chaos, disorder and disease, adopt it as real, and resign ourselves to it.

I am so grateful that Christian Science prevents the latter from happening.

Christian Science opens our eyes to spiritual reality. It teaches the allness of Mind and the nothingness of matter. It takes the straw of limited mortal reasoning away from our mental eyes, and reveals the infinite scene of Mind where there are no limits or boundaries, or diesease—and the picture is grand.

Spirit is real. Matter is not real. With increased spiritual growth over time, more and more people will understand this to be true. Physics is already drawing nearer to the conclusion that there is no matter.

The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. Eternal things (verities) are God’s thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the real or the spiritual and eternal. Mary Baker Eddy

Magical existence

From Marianne Williamson’s book “Everyday Grace.”

I have always had a sense that something is missing in this world – that at the very least there is something important we're not discussing.

I believe that hunger for a "lost dimension" of experience is a natural
yearning in all of us, and it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. It is evidenced among other places in the millions of children and adults who obsessively read the Harry Potter books. It is said that fiction is where someone gets to tell the truth. We are a bunch of silly Muggles, and we really do miss out on the magic of existence. There's a collective knowing that a dimension of reality exists beyond the material plane, and that sense of knowing is causing a mystical resurgence on the planet today. It's not just children who are looking for a missing piece. It is a very mature outlook to question the nature of our reality.

We are like birds who have forgotten we have wings, kings and queens
who have forgotten our royal heritage. We feel enslaved by conditions that should have no power to bind us, and powerless before forces over which we have been given dominion. No wonder our children are drawn to reading about a world in which people live a more magical existence than the one we offer them here.