Spiritual perception

Decisions in many areas of daily life demand careful weighing. What do I do, high-school pupils may wonder, after graduation? Others want to know what direction to take if they should lose their job. The human mind's answers to these questions might be confusing or even contradictory. There may be a alternation between positive and negative impressions. At one moment we are full of joy, and shortly thereafter concerns and hesitations cloud our view. At times the prospect of being able to have a better future may seem very dim. In my own experience in a job-related situation, as I became aware of this wavering back and forth I put an end to the fruitless process of weighing pros and cons merely from the material viewpoint, and started to pray.

In prayer I realized very quickly that God, ever-active Mind, does not see us in situations that appear unclear, pressure-filled, or perhaps even threatening. Divine Mind already and forever sees us where we belong. Weighing a host of arguments may sometimes seem to make a great deal of sense, but is not to be equated with listening trustingly for divine guidance. As a rule, the human way of looking at things like new job opportunities does not lead very far, because it goes by opinions, notions, claims, which can turn out to be very unreliable. Thus our decisionmaking may turn into a guessing game with no guarantee of a right path for us.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, frequently faced challenges that had no parallel, no precedent in her experience. But her absolute trust in Mind's guidance always showed her the way to a victory over them. She writes in Science and Health, "Mind alone possesses all faculties, perception, and comprehension" (p. 488).

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