Your inner and outer experience

The following passage written by Mary Baker Eddy has always intrigued me when contemplating the relationship between my spiritual individuality as a child of God and my outward everyday human experience.


She wrote,


“…the human self must be evangelized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly today, and to abandon so fast as practical the material, and to work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual.”


The words that grab my attention are “…work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual.”


At first glance, the human mind may jump to the conclusion that the “outward and actual,” refer to material and physical conditions mortals face everyday. But this can’t be what Eddy meant. The teachings of Christian Science explain the nothingness of matter and the totality of Spirit. So the “outward and actual” cannot be material. They are spiritual.


There are countless thought-systems at play in society today telling people how to improve their physical body, increase their monetary wealth, become famous, etc., and in other words, improve their outward and actual experience. But it’s all from a material point of view. This type of counsel is based on the erroneous belief that man is enriched materially, through drugs, money, recognition and their accoutrements.


But man is not a material being. He is a spiritual being. Mortal so-called life is temporal. It’s like a blink of the eye compared to eternity. And all the stuff associated with it passes away with a blink of Truth too. It is as nothing in the eternal scheme of things. It is not the outward and actual for man, the child of God.


“…work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual.” I love these words.


For me, it means that as I work out my spirituality, which is an "inside job," you might say, my outward experience is going to increasingly reflect what I am discovering spiritually.


For instance, the more spiritual peace I find within, the more peace I feel in my day, in my life, in my home, at work, in church, everywhere I go. But the peace is not emotional, a product of a physical environment, or a factor of material surroundings. It’s the objectification of what I know to be spiritually true.


And it goes to reason, the better my thinking the better my experience, the healthier my thinking the healthier my experience, the more spiritually minded I am the more heaven on earth I feel, see and live.

As one continues to spiritualize thought, "...and to abandon so fast as practical the material..." earth and heaven are seen to be one and the same. There is no more sense of evil, suffering, pain or sorrow.


This is good stuff!


The “outward and actual” is not found in matter or in any believed ideal material condition, situation or circumstance. It’s found in Spirit and we reflect it as spiritual beings.


So, if you want to improve the outward and actual experience of your life, begin by spiritualizing your state of thought. Keep thought in alignment with spiritual truth, and you’ll see evidence of that truth more and more, wherever you go, in whatever you do.


The harmonies of Spirit are the realities of your life. Looking through the lens of spiritual mindedness you find those realities to be tangible and concrete to a spiritual sense of things.


Strive for spiritual mindedness. It’s where the real action of life resides, and it determines the “outward and actual” of your being as a child from above. There is no better experience to embrace.