Maybe the person you've been going with has broken up with you and you feel lonely and hurt. Maybe you've moved to a new city and you haven't found a group of young people you feel comfortable with.

Your experience and your world are one, and you make this world by your thoughts and acts. Problems often seem to arise out of external circumstances, but the fears, doubts, and angry reactions constituting the real problem are in your own thought. And it's right there—in consciousness—that the overcoming and the spiritual enrichment take place.

The solution always begins when you wake up to realize that you are not just an isolated, chance-governed person. You are spiritual, God-created, and empowered by divine Love. In Christian Science you find that God is your Life, your Mind, your very being and existence. As His image and likeness you already reflect all that is real and good. Your individual consciousness is an expression of God's perfection and completeness.

Any difficulty we may be having is a lie about this divine completeness. It's a belief that we are separated from God and lack health, friends, employment, education, or whatever. It's an illusion that good comes from outside and needs to be added to us.

The remedy is to reason from a spiritual standpoint—to acknowledge that as God's children we already reflect His completeness. Because divine Love is omnipresent, God's goodness is present right where we are, right within our very consciousness. Because God is All-in-all, evil has no place to be, no power to act, no substance or reality. There is no mind to believe in evil, because each one of us reflects the Mind that is One and All. We are "complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power." ^{Col. 2:10;}

As we realize that all the good we will ever have is already within us, never depending on an added something or someone, we gain increasing control over our daily living. We understand more clearly that there is no outside to God's allness and our reflection of Him. There is, in reality, nothing "out there" to be either feared or longed for. There is only the "in here" of our God-created consciousness—the kingdom of heaven within.

What it all adds up to is this: God has given us His thoughts and the reflected ability to use them. Lack, an element of every problem, is a signal that we are not putting these God-derived capacities into practice. Lack challenges us to work out humanly what we already have and are in Truth. And in human affairs the real need is always to express to others what we want to experience.

Perhaps you long to be loved deeply and tenderly by someone. But stop and think! Isn't divine Love already where you are? Isn't God loving you right now, more tenderly, more protectively, more profoundly than any human being ever could? You live in the presence of Love. Your consciousness is an expression of divine Love. This Love is yours to express to all.

Is it possible to experience love without expressing it? Can another's love truly reach you unless the love in your consciousness responds to it? If you are thinking just in terms of yourself, of someone to care for you, protect you, help you, and love you—it's like looking through the wrong end of a telescope—the love you seek seems remote and out of reach. The love that satisfies our deepest yearnings is not a taking but a giving. It's not just an incoming affection but our own affectionate outreach. Instead of asking, "Why doesn't someone love me?" each of us needs to ask, "How can I express more love?"

To express means to bring into outward form, to show forth, to manifest. To express is also to define—not just by words but by action. The love you express helps others understand more clearly what divine Love is. And because you are a unique, original expression of God, you express His qualities in your own individual way. This means that you can live your own special definition of Love. More than all others, Christ Jesus did this. Mrs. Eddy writes of him, "Out of the amplitude of his pure affection, he defined Love." ^{Science and Health, p. 54;}

Before we can define Love in our relationships with others, we need to define it for ourselves. Mrs. Eddy writes, "As Christian Scientists you seek to define God to your own consciousness by feeling and applying the nature and practical possibilities of divine Love." ^{Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 1}

"Applying ... the practical possibilities" calls for deeply feeling love and persisting in love, not just in the easy, obvious ways, but even when it's difficult and unpopular. It means finding joy in the loving itself—without watching to see if one is loved in return. Love for God, and for His idea, man, needs to become the guiding, motivating power of our every action.

Qualities associated with Love, such as patience, tenderness, gentleness, meekness, loving-kindness, are deeply satisfying to express. They help us to understand and manifest our true spiritual selfhood. The loving qualities we express adjust the human circumstances. We find ourselves knowing what to do, where to look, what to say. They bring us real contentment even before there's any change in the material picture.

"But what about the person I'm longing to find?" you ask. It's never really a question of a person (or a home, education, or money). We need to find our completeness as children of God and then live to love and help others. Love's qualities are irresistible. When we express them, they attract to us those who need what we have to give.

A young friend of mine wanted to be married. In her small town, matrimonial prospects seemed limited. She knew satisfying companionship wasn't just a question of socializing but of finding kindred values and ideals. She listed the spiritual qualities she would especially appreciate in a husband. There were seventy-five. Taking one of these each day, she worked earnestly to express the very qualities she wanted in a prospective companion. At first there was no change in the outward circumstances, but she gained an inner sense of contentment and completeness.

Later that year, by a special appropriation of the state legislature, a new law clerk was appointed to the court near her office. This young man shared her values and ideals and expressed many of the same qualities she herself had consciously been expressing. Their companionship eventually led to a happy marriage.

God's children, reflecting Him, are equally endowed, equally blessed. The fears, frustrations, worries, hatreds, resentments, which cause unhappiness, are mental, and therefore within our control. There's no magic from without, no luck, no drug, no special place or person, that can wipe out these negative attitudes and confer happiness and a life of significance upon us. Rooting out these illusions and replacing them with spiritual facts is our own job, and our yearnings and struggles are actually signs telling us that we need to get on with it.

A Christian Science hymn says:

Because you are His reflection, you can say, "My true consciousness is an expression of Love, of strength, of power, of intelligence," and then go on to demonstrate this great fact in your own experience. The good you seek is already yours for the expressing.