Be spiritually informed

Thought for the day…



What we see and hear does not affect what we think. What we think forms our response to what we see and hear.


For instance, a heavily invested stock trader might watch the Dow Jones average drop precipitously and start to fear for his future. He may even exclaim, “The drop in the Dow is killing me!” But the fact is that the drop in the Dow is not affecting him at all. It’s his fear of it that affects him, for an individual who owns no stocks and could care less about the Dow, might watch the same average fall and feel no emotional impact at all. The Dow would not “kill him,” even though it’s the same number the stock trader watches.


What each individual sees does not affect what they think. What they think forms their response to what they see.


Let’s use another example.


An avid hiker sees a trail winding up a mountainside to a beautiful summit at the top, and exclaims, “Oh what a joy. I can’t wait to climb that path and look out on the world from the top of the mountain.” Another individual, who feels earthbound, matter-heavy, and not light of foot might whine, “Oh no, that is a horrible path to take. A hike is too much work, too hard and too tiresome to walk.” Each person is looking at exactly the same path, but drawing opposite conclusions. What they see is not affecting what they think. What they think predisposes them to shape the conclusions they form about what they see.


Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and sees its own thought.”


This concept is important to understand when it comes to healing physical ailments through prayer. If one believes that what they see forms what they think, then they are in metaphysical trouble. It leads to a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness when faced with disease because they are liable to believe the disease is in control of their thinking, rather than their thinking in control of the body.


To reason rightly, we need a spiritually informed point of view. As Eddy also wrote, “For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence.”


Spiritually understood, our thinking is not affected by external circumstances. We reason and think independently of what is going on around us physically. But to exercise this dominion and independence, we need to be aware that we have it and not allow ourselves to be unwittingly influenced by conclusions that are not in our best interest to accept.


What we see and hear does not affect what we think. What we think affects how we respond to what we see and hear.


Be informed spiritually, and right conclusions will follow.

Can you think for yourself?

One lesson learned in the practice of Christian Science is that you have to often ignore what the physical senses tell you in order to reason correctly. If the senses say the body is sick, to heal the body, you cannot keep agreeing with the senses, or the body stays ill. The belief has to be corrected with spiritual truth. And to do that, one has to stop taking in the sense testimony and start reasoning correctly, from a spiritual point of view.

How successful are you at denying the evidence of the senses in order to reason correctly?

Here's a fun test of reason over sense-testimony that a reader sent to me recently.

Give it a try and see how you do.

COLOR WORD TEST

The exercise came as follows...

Can you follow directions?

Bet you can't get 100 on the first try.

This is pretty neat! See how you do with the colors. Have fun!

It takes an average of 5 tries to get to 100%. Follow the directions. It's harder than it seems, as it should be!

Watch thought, not effect

Last Friday, while practicing my tennis strokes with a ball machine, I learned a valuable lesson about watching thoughts and knowing what the effect of those thoughts would be without checking outward evidence.

Let me explain.

During one stroke exercise, I disciplined myself to watch the ball to my racket while I followed through with the appropriate swing. Then, without looking, I would guess where my ball would land at the other end of the court, based upon how I hit the ball. I was amazed how accurate my guesses were. By closely watching my expectations and execution I could guess within 2-4 feet where my ball would land almost every time, without looking first.

This lesson had huge metaphysical implications. It taught me that if you are very aware of your thoughts and expectations, you’ll be very aware of any resulting effect, for every thought has a specific effect.

When praying for physical healing, have you ever checked your body to see if your prayer is working?

Why?

Per my lesson with tennis strokes, you can tell exactly how well your prayer is working by examining your thoughts and expectations. You don’t need to check the body. You can tell “where the ball will land” without looking, because every thought has a certain kind of effect. You can tell what you’ll find on the body by examining your thoughts about the body, because those thoughts determine what you’re going to find.

If we feel a need to check the body to see how we’re doing, chances are strong that we’re still believing we have a problem. Why else would we check unless we doubted our perfection? And the very belief that we have a problem is much of the problem in the first place.

With my tennis strokes, I have this terrible habit of looking across the court to see where my ball will land before I hit it. It causes me to miss hit frequently. Once I realized I didn’t need to look “out there,” but could stay focused on hitting the ball only, my miss hits started to vanish. My accuracy skyrocketed.

Likewise, this rule applies in prayer. If we spend all our time checking the body to see if we’re okay or not, we’re not doing our job of praying correctly in the first place. If we’d stay focused on knowing the Truth that heals us, instead of checking the body, we’d advance more rapidly. Once we get the right thoughts in firm view, the right effect will follow.

So, I learned from this little episdoe that we can quit looking across the court to see where our ball is going to land, and concentrate on hitting the ball correctly. If we hit the ball correctly, the ball will land in the right spot. If we hold to the pertinent spiritual truths, the body will correspond exactly to those spiritual truths. We don’t need to check to see what is happening. We’ll know what is happening by watching our thoughts and expectations.

A metaphysical tennis lesson for the day… :-)

Mind, not matter, is causation. A material body only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal man possesses this body, and he makes it harmonious or discordant according to the images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness. You should banish all thoughts of disease and sin and of other beliefs included in matter. Man, being immortal, has a perfect indestructible life. It is the mortal belief which makes the body discordant and diseased in proportion as ignorance, fear, or human will governs
mortals. Mary Baker Eddy

What needs to change?

The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

~Albert Einstein