Editorial December 18, 1978 Issue

To a better life: the practical map

Geoffrey J. Barratt

The way to a better life is not found by being more actively ambitious, cultivating a more sparkling personality, adopting a more aggressive self-promotion, or by giving ourselves a large injection of self-absorption. The best approach is the spiritual one. It goes to the center of the issue. Living better means, first of all, thinking better. Thinking less of matter and mortals, more of Life and of spiritual ideas. It involves seeing oneself and others as the ideas of Life, of God.

Life and living are not personal in a finite material sense, nor are they imperfect as they seem to be. Because life and living are really of God, they are ideal right now. Man already exists at this standpoint of Life and its perfection, and the realization of this is the basis for improving our human experience. Any go-it-alone attempt to do so would be self-defeating. It would show that we were starting from a mistaken basis. What's needed is a better sense of God as Life and of man as Life's vital outcome. Living a better life is not to be equated with living in a smarter suburb or driving a more eye-catching car. It means letting the one Life make up and govern every detail of our sense of being.

In divine reality, which Christian Science clearly reveals, perfection and spirituality are present facts everywhere. There is no individual within that reality who falls short of perfection. To realize this is to start laying the foundation for a happier sense of existence, because a more authentic one. More zestful living calls for waking up to, and reducing to nothingness, the ways and means of mortal thought. It is this small, false, inturned mentality that would resist improved consciousness and living.

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