Article October 4, 1975 Issue

A Consistent Performance

MARGARET NOBLE PLEASANT

Divine Mind, God, demands that His idea, man, express power, and He supplies it. We can demonstrate this in sports, as well as in other phases of our experience, if we get a false sense of self out of the way, a self that thinks it is an entity with a mind of its own separate from the Divine Being. To demonstrate our God-given abilities we must consistently acknowledge and realize that we are God's spiritual expression, His representative and reflection.

So, if you are a participant in some sport and laboring under the belief that some days you can do well and some you can't, that your performance is bound to be inconsistent, governed by factors beyond your control, you are allowing yourself to be mentally defeated before you even begin! The remedy is to get the correct concept of yourself in Christian Science as a spiritually mental idea, not a physical mortal. In the Bible we read, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."^{Gen. 1:27;} And Mrs. Eddy writes: "Muscles are not self-acting. If mind does not move them, they are motionless. Hence the great fact that Mind alone enlarges and empowers man through its mandate,—by reason of its demand for and supply of power."^{Science and Health, p. 199;}

The author of the great Epistle to the Hebrews admonishes his readers as follows: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."^{Heb. 12:1;} Performing athletes are often harassed with suggestions: belief that they are physical mortals separated from God, Spirit, and dependent wholly on unpredictable nerves, muscles, and glands; belief in bad luck; fear of failure.

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