Heated words between workers in a cafeteria. International disagreements. Family squabbles. The essence of all disputes, when seen through Christian metaphysics, is the conflict between divine Soul, God, and mortal sense. And to have a firming grasp of this is to better cope with both conflict and tension.

To the human sense of existence, the tug of war may seem to be between person and person, nation and nation. We make a healing analysis when we impersonalize the situation, dropping from it our mortal sense of the people involved. Then replacing the appearance of fragmentation with the realization of the wholeness of divine Truth. The universe of Love is coherent. It holds together. It is not split into warring factions. The world that seems so is the world of mortal mind, illusionary consciousness resisting and denying Truth. Realizing such points helps relax tension because this realizing is divinely lawful, backed up by the omnipotence of Truth.

There is no tension in the omnipresence of God. He extends Himself throughout His cosmos spontaneously. Isaiah describes God, the origin of all being, as, "he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein." ^{Isaiah 42:5;} What a tremendous tension easing sense of God, man, the universe!

Stress can come from the struggle of wills that is sometimes built into competitiveness. The mortal will is not a reality but erupts from the Adamic dream that each of us has an independent ego—an "I" that has broken away from God—and that each ego is in a race, a test of strength, with other egos. These Adamic "I's" bump and jostle, seeking a place in the sun. But the real man is the outcome of the divine will, not an exerciser of mortal will. God's irresistible design is for universal good, and man has no independent, personal will combating divine Love's purpose, as Christ Jesus' life amply shows.

What of the strain that can sometimes come from having to make an ethical or moral decision in a complex situation? Not all issues on the human scene are, morally speaking, sharp-edged blocks that are either black or white as in a crossword puzzle. Knowing what steps are right and sound can at times be heavily challenging, even agonizing. The fact is, man is not a mortal tensely trying to hang on to divine Truth and pulled about by confusing, contradictory pressures. Man, the true being of all of us, is the idea of Truth, and we can prove this to be so.

There may often seem to be tension between what we have seen to be right for us, and resistance to spiritual imperatives. In essence, the tension is between reality on the one hand, and a material assumption about man on the other. And we relax the tension—that is, make the proper decision—as we put our sense of reality fully on the side of divine Principle.

Whenever there's tension in the air, mortal mind is always the culprit, always that which tightens the screws. It is mortal mind— the consciousness of evil—that generates aggressiveness, confusion, divisiveness, pain. These words of Mary Baker Eddy have broad implications: "Your body would suffer no more from tension or wounds than the trunk of a tree which you gash or the electric wire which you stretch, were it not for mortal mind." ^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.393;} Mortal mind would seem to be the great tension-inducer, the great confuser. But its claims self-destruct when we face them with the truth that there is no strain, no tugging, no conflicting forces pulling in opposite directions in the wholeness of Love's universal being.

Our longing to meet the demands of Truth, either individually or collectively, may on occasion set up tension between us and those not treading the same ground. Standing for the realities of being can put us into conflict with popular views and personal opinions. But that very tension can sometimes be a deeply heartening indicator that we're on the right track. "Conflict and persecution," Mrs. Eddy assures us, "are the truest signs that can be given of the greatness of a cause or of an individual, provided this warfare is honest and a world-imposed struggle." ^{Message to the Mother Church for 1900, p.10;}

When negotiations, situations, emotions—even the physical body—seem taut and tight, what can we do to slacken the ropes? The tensions of mortal existence can only finally be relaxed and nullified from the standpoint that the universe of Truth and Love is the only real one. Again, Mrs. Eddy's words clarify the situation: "Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict between sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with this sense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmasters it, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that 'one on God's side is a majority.'" ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p.102.}

Our demonstration of the absolute truth of being is the answer to mortal thought's imposition of stresses and tensions. Demonstration is the link, the line, between absolute Truth and the human condition. The tension we might welcome is the precise tuning of this line, a proper balance—a "tension" infinitely more to be desired than the fine tuning of a violin string.

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT