It can be delightful and sometimes even invigorating to stroll down memory lane. Forgotten joys, friendships, acts of kindness, meaningful events, throng thought. Like the pages of a treasured scrapbook, the remembered joys of yesteryear bring dividends of good.

But what can we do about dark memories—those recollections that haunt, frighten, or depress thought? Past heartbreaks, injustices, griefs, or other troubles can seem inconsolable. We may, in fact, feel powerless to deal with them, much less overcome them.

Mrs. Eddy knew many sorrows in youth and as an adult—early widowhood, her only child taken from her, long periods of invalidism, and later, divorce. But in discovering Christian Science, she found the way out of the despairing belief of mortality—the source of all heartbreak. In her own book about her life, Retrospection and Introspection, she writes: "The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged." Further on she continues: "God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and being. The real man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created through the flesh; for his father and mother are the one Spirit, and his brethren are all the children of one parent, the eternal good."

The tenderness and reality of Spirit rescue us from a material, mortal sense of ourselves—present or past. Yielding to the supremacy of Spirit helps us see more clearly who we really are. It enables us to forgive wrongs stemming from another's or from our own mistakes, and thus to overcome past anguish.

An argument for not facing painful memories may be the assumption that we would be ruminating, just rehashing bad times. Most of us know better than to dwell on misery or merely dredge up old wounds. How, then, can we tell if we're being led by divine Love to revisit our human history and "expunge the material record" or are just indulging self-pity or human will?

Self-pity has no role in resolving problems—in healing. Honest, selfless, understanding prayer does. If we're praying, and dark memories surface, we can trust we're being led by divine Love, not human self-love. We may feel afraid of stirring up old emotions. But trying to ignore problems with a resounding "I'm never going to think about that again" is willfulness that works mischief and is of no help. So is the opposite determination to "delve into the past no matter what." Only prayer can heal the past.

Receptivity—listening—is an important part of prayer. It is looking to God and trusting Him to lead us. Christ Jesus taught that we need to go into the "closet" when praying. If we take painful memories into the closet, we're taking materiality in with us—and we're not actually praying. Rather, we need to be receptive to spiritual reality—to take with us into the closet a willingness to be conscious only of the perfection of God and His image, man. We seek revelation—to hear the voice of Truth. We deny mortality and affirm our oneness with perfect good, our Father-Mother God. Such understanding prayer assures us of our immunity, as God's spiritual expression, from the restricting, defeating beliefs of mortal existence—past, present, or future. It casts out doubts. It liberates us from belittling our true identity as the child of God and reassures us of our God-inherited health, harmony, and bliss. To sum it up: prayer leads the way to healing.

I once was the victim of having my character slandered. I felt angry and betrayed. But I was also confident that there could be healing. I prayed, trusting divine Mind to lead me in thinking correctly about the situation and the individuals involved. But I couldn't seem to keep from going back often to such questions as: "How could this have happened?" "What did I do wrong?" Yet I continued to refuse to rehash the situation. Then I prayed with all my heart, listening for God's direction. Back went my thought to the offending incident. "No," I said out loud, "I will not ruminate." But then it was as though a voice were speaking to me, assuring me that remembering was needed this time. My well-intentioned human way had been rejected, and I listened.

Reviewing the situation led me to study Christ Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, focusing especially on his exhortation "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." I soon began to see that it was a mistake to try to repress or ignore this unhealed memory. In Retrospection and Introspection Mrs. Eddy explains: "It is scientific to abide in conscious harmony, in health-giving, deathless Truth and Love. To do this, mortals must first open their eyes to all the illusive forms, methods, and subtlety of error, in order that the illusion, error, may be destroyed; if this is not done, mortals will become the victims of error."

Feeling the deep-down goodness of God's control, I was freed of any desire to retaliate in this situation, and I felt healed.

Facing this memory, and others since then, has become a means of divine grace, as I am compelled to cling more steadfastly and wholeheartedly to my oneness with the only real power, God, and to know myself as He knows me: completely spiritual and therefore inviolable, intact, and innocent. I am forced to find my true being, my true life, as untouched by any taint of materiality. And I am impelled to see that to forgive means to forget scientifically by seeing the fundamental nothingness of evil. Taking the Apostle Paul's advice and "forgetting those things which are behind," we find that the hurt no longer holds a place in thought. It is healed.

We should not be surprised when, through prayer, we are made to come to grips with past incidents and the emotions they may have occasioned. Suppressed memories may come to light or perhaps come to "new light" if we've been trying to push them away. We need not fear. Whatever Love brings to light will be outshone by that Love as we abide in the light. The perfection of God and man will become more real to us. The darkness of hurtful memories will be overcome by the light of Truth, the human history will be revised, and we will feel our spiritual status as victors, not victims.

JOHN

Then spake Jesus ... unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

John 8:12