Article September 15, 1923 Issue

Dream Shadows

MABEL WAY

So-called mortal mind must be recognized as unreal and so disappear into its native nothingness; for to God and the real man no such condition as dream shadows is known. "Dream shadows" is but another name for mortal experiences. When the writer was a young girl, while out driving one winter's evening with her father, an accident occurred which seemed to thrust upon her a sense of fright and responsibility that in later years still tried at night to force itself upon the thought, until it became necessary to declare scientifically and directly against the experience, in order to obliterate it completely. Recently, she tried to arouse a very worthy Civil War veteran out of his sleep of dreaming the mental pictures over and over of those old war experiences which, while apparently noble in themselves, needed to be set aside as to painful detail, in order that the former participant in them might enjoy the freshness and fairness of divine unfoldment. Unless this be done, one becomes as Lot's wife, and loses, for the time being, the full forward vision. How necessary that these cobwebs be brushed away,—the dust of ages cleared from the mental window pane, as it were,—that the effulgence of divine intelligence may be consciously perceived by each individual!

One way to help with this is to refrain from joining in conversation along the lines of mortal thought, or from giving one's time to listening to the repeating and rehearsing of useless talk, as Paul warned against the listening to "fables and endless genealogies," rather than to "godly edifying which is in faith." And when others refuse mentally and outwardly to give their valuable time to these needless, valueless rehearsals, then what about one's self? Are we going to relapse into the "dreamy absentness" from Truth and Love, against which Mrs. Eddy warns us on page 206 of "Miscellaneous Writings"? If we silently indulge in these day dreams, are we not to that extent prodigal sons, wandering from the Father's storehouse of plenty, to feed upon the husks of empty nothingness?

How grateful we should be for the love-lights shining from the diligent, faithful revelators of the Words of God! As we follow the example of Christ Jesus and of our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, we, too, shall enjoy the bliss of seeing the day dreams, as well as the night dreams, vanish both from our own mentality and from that of others. The fears which lurk in the darkness of shadow-land cannot exist in the sunlight of understanding, and disappear as the spiritual ideas of divine Mind appear. Then shall we more intelligently declare against autosuggestion, mental malpractice, hypnotism, prenatal influence, and all the other counterfeit claims to power that are set up in darkness and ignorance and superstition to be dissipated only by a clearer apprehension of the Christ, Truth. Christ Jesus declared, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." And Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 227): "Citizens of the world, accept the 'glorious liberty of the children of God,' and be free! This is your divine right. The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being."

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