An alert, slightly concerned voice came over the elevator intercom. It was a nice voice, asking if there was anything it could do for me. I suggested it might make the elevator work. Then it explained that everything that could be done was being done.

The elevator was stuck somewhere between floors. But since I was alone, it seemed like a good opportunity to pray about a couple of things that needed healing. I sat down to make use of the time. Interestingly, I found I first had to put the "crowd" off the elevator. It was the same crowd I'd got on with—a crowd of human opinion and speculation that had been filling up my thought. Even an empty elevator can be a crowded place!

Soon spiritual inspiration and perspective returned, I was able to pray, and then the elevator was fixed as well. But as I was thinking about the experience later, a lesson came through strongly. How plain it is that the spirit or consciousness which heals is not a crowd mentality!

Spiritual consciousness sees things differently from the general trends of human thought. It surely isn't relying on what the crowd thinks, on what the latest polls are saying, or on the fashionable convictions being expressed on talk shows.

Christ Jesus told people to get off the street corner, as it were, and into the closet when they prayed. In other words, the opinions of men—pro or con—were to be shut out so that God's messages could be heard.

The woman in the Bible who had the longstanding physical problem—an issue of blood, or hemorrhaging, for twelve years—was in the midst of a crowd of people. They were all pressing around Jesus. But this multitude, and the various thoughts and opinions of people in general, held little interest for her at that point. She was caring about one thing. She was seeking one thing: the Christ. Her thought was obviously going out to the Christ with all her heart and soul. And the woman was healed at that moment, after twelve years of going through many things with many physicians. ^{See Luke 8:43–48 .}

In a sense the woman was alone with the Christ. She was in a crowd, but not really. Nothing was mattering to her except the moment and that closeness to the Master and the expectancy of healing in her heart.

Today we too need to be alone with Christ, Truth, in this way, if we are looking for healing and if we are striving to practice and reinstate Christian healing. It doesn't take isolation or some sort of "retreat." But it does require that all our heart and our effort are focused in seeking spiritual truth.

At any time in human history when someone reaches out for the Christ, there may well seem to be a crowd in the way—a crowd of mortal opinions. There are always things preoccupying human thought—things demanding attention, priority, obedience. And there is of course the most basic preoccupation of all—the mistaken trust in the impression of life as material.

But even when we seem to be right in the middle of worldly opinion, the remarkable thing is we can still find ourselves at peace and alone with the Christ. Contrary to what one might expect, all of us have a constant, profound capacity to respond to Truth. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. The size of the "crowd" is of no consequence. After all, the Christ is not really one among many voices competing for attention. It is God's message of truth to mankind, and so it is more compelling than all others.

When we turn wholeheartedly in the direction of Spirit, God, we begin to discover that the spiritual truth which guides, corrects, and heals has always been there for us. The confusion, resistance, impossibility, that might have seemed so vivid—so much ours—begin to become apparent as only a mistaken view. This view therefore begins to fade from thought and we see the reality.

There is no real opposing power to that of the infinite God. When we are willing to trust and go forward to live with the Christ light, we inevitably learn this fact step by step. The sense of something that could contradict the good which is God disappears. We find that it exists only "outside" in the darkness, as it were, before we step into light.

If God is All and is omnipresent, as He must be to be God, we have to conclude logically that man is in fact not separated from God. But what are all the contradictory opinions concerning man's health and life which seem so aggressively pressing and prevalent? They are the outcome of mistakenly believing in something other than infinite, divine Spirit, or Mind, God. Mary Baker Eddy writes in an article called "Suffering from Others' Thoughts": "Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and suffering from mentality in opposition to Truth, are significant of that state of mind which the actual understanding of Christian Science first eliminates and then destroys." ^{Unity of Good, p. 56.}

Isn't the need not so much to struggle against a feared mental opposition as to disbelieve it? Instead of grappling with it as the consensus, the majority, another massive power or influence in addition to God, we are to disbelieve it. We are to put out this mental crowd in order to understand the truth of the great spiritual discovery that man is with God and God is All.

The result of this obedience is to find a conviction and joy and understanding we may not have thought we had. And it is of course not to be isolated but to find our unity with all the goodness of God's creation, and with all His children.

Allison W. Phinney, Jr.