Article October 15, 1984 Issue

Giving up your earth-weights

KATHRYN H. BRESLAUER

At one time my husband and I cleared out several rooms in our house so new carpet could be installed. Later, after we had transported furniture, knickknacks, and mounds of books back into place, the word "SIMPLIFY!" came to my thought loud and clear. It reminded me of the clutter of mortal thinking that I had recently allowed to weigh me down. I immediately began a renewed and invigorated effort to root out whatever I found that claimed my nature to be mortal.

"Material life is the antipode of spiritual life; it mocks the bliss of spiritual being; it is bereft of permanence and peace,"^{Mis., pp. 351–352.} Mrs. Eddy points out in Miscellaneous Writings. Most of us desire peace and the well-being it bestows on our life. We can begin to give up the mortal belief that life is material and remove the accompanying stress and strain by turning to God for the facts of being. And what is He telling us? That He alone, as the first chapter of Genesis makes clear, has created everything and it is very good. The whole of God's creation expresses goodness. Man, Deity's expression of Himself, is conscious of all good because man is inseparable from God, good.

Perhaps we're reluctant to give up the earth-weights of mortal nature because we feel we could lose something valuable or worthwhile. Christian Science does not advocate loss of anything good as a means of entering the kingdom of heaven. Rather we are encouraged to love and express a higher, more spiritual concept of God, ourselves, and the world. All we can possibly lose is a false sense of what is good and worthwhile. Miscellaneous Writings tells us, "O learn to lose with God! and you find Life eternal: you gain all."^{Ibid., p. 341.}