Hospital visits increasing

A reader just alerted me to an article put out by MSNBC.com, reporting that “Hospital and doctor visits in the United States have surged by 20 percent in the past five years…” I read the piece with dismay for it seems people are suffering more and more, rather than less.

With the huge increase in money spent on healthcare, in the USA anyway, it seems people have more and more ailments to contend with. Some argue that it’s the aging baby boom population behind the increase in hospital visits. Maybe so, but the trend is still disheartening.

I remember an 88 year old woman, whom I befriended 20 years ago in my practice, who hadn’t been to a doctor in 50 years—ever since she had discovered Christian Science when she was 38. She has since passed on, but her experience was proof to me that it’s possible to stay healthy without endless medicines, prescriptions and hospital visits, even at a ripe old age. She had spiritual medicine, and it worked.

Everyone has the healing power of Spirit available to them. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, the textbook of Christian Science, explains how to find this healing power and put it into practice. Christian Science brings better long term results than any drug, and it has no negative side effects.

I pray that more people find Christian Science and put it to use. Its application will eliminate many of those visits to emergency rooms—and it’s a lot less devastating on one’s pocketbook.

What thou see'est, thou be'est

Three weeks ago, we had a bout of forgetfulness in our household.

The first major slip-up came in our mistaking the time for one of our son’s year-end concerts. The family had been planning to attend this event for months, and greatly looked forward to it.

For some unreasonable reason, we all thought the event started at 8 p.m. I dropped Tyler off at 6:50 for his warm-up, drove off to run a few errands and came back at 7:45 only to catch the last applause of the evening. My wife and friend had just arrived minutes earlier. It had started at 7 p.m. We were all greatly disappointed. At least Tyler made it on time to participate!

It was a major error in understanding all the way around, and my wife and I were distressed about how we could make such a big mistake.

Two days later, a similar episode happened again. Then late Sunday night a couple of days after that, I realized my wife and I had just missed an Improv comedy event I had bought special tickets for.

I couldn’t believe it!

The Improv lapse was totally my fault and I took full blame, but I was stunned how the time had totally slipped my mind. I rarely forget!! If anyone in the family remembers, it’s me. And I completely failed in this case.

With three serious lapses in 5 days, I couldn’t help but see a larger spiritual lesson to be learned. This bout of forgetfulness was abnormal and unacceptable. I decided some major prayer action was needed to prevent further forgetfulness in the future.

As I listened to God for answers, I concluded that my lapse in memory was the effect of being overly impressed by everyone else’s lapse in memory the previous few days.

The timing for the other events, I had relied upon others to keep me informed and felt letdown when the information was obviously wrong. Nonetheless, I had not sufficiently seen the unreality of the error, had become too impressed by it, and then lived it out myself Sunday night.

I vaguely remembered a proverb that I think goes, “What thou see’est, thou be’est.” Maybe I made this quote up, but I believe someone famous, like Shakespeare, said as such. If not, it worked for me anyway….

I’ve seen this phenomenon of people judging others as being in error and then manifesting the same error in their own lives played out in the experience of many people in the past, including myself. The very problem we blame others for, we manifest ourselves.

And that’s what happened to me that week. I saw others as forgetful, and before I knew it, I was living out forgetfulness too. This was not cool!

In humility, I reprimanded my error of condemning (not too harshly!) the rest of my family for being forgetful earlier on, and vowed to know the spiritual truth about everyone’s perfect spiritual memory.

I affirmed that there is one Mind, and that the one Mind never forgets. That each member of my family expressed the one divine intelligence completely and entirely, which meant they did not have the capacity to forget. And I didn’t either! Divine Mind remembers every detail, and there is no lapse in recollection.

I found my peace with this truth, and put all the poor memories behind me.

I’m happy to report that there has been no more forgetfulness on anyone’s part. Hooray!

The lesson was major, though. This rule of not judging others erroneously was brought home with a hard landing. I had judged the others as being forgetful, and then, unwittingly, I manifested the same error.

We learn in Christian Science, that what we hold in our thinking to be true about our neighbor, we’re liable to believe about ourselves. So it’s very important to not hold error in our thought about others if we wish to stay free of it!

The apostle Paul wrote,

“You are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.” Romans 2:1

Lesson learned. If you judge another, be sure it’s a healthy spiritually correct judgment! See what God put there to begin with, and you’ll be standing on safe mental ground.

Upset with high gas prices?

Gas prices have gone sky-high compared to what we’ve paid in the past, in the USA, anyway.

To counteract any rising emotions that might come along with doling out ever –increasing wads of cash to the oil companies, check out, “Fill’er up with love,” which is a blog I wrote, and was posted on www.tmcyouth.com yesterday.