Article February 23, 1998 Issue

How to get rid of bad traits and discover who you really are

Self-improvement begins with getting to know God.

By Laura Matthews

Have You Ever considered what informs you about a personality? My eyes tell me someone is rude in traffic; my ears say a child is too noisy. If I regularly discounted the testimony of the senses as being able truly to define a person, I wonder if I would ever get annoyed.

Information about ourselves or someone else gained from the physical senses is flawed because the senses are unable to perceive spiritual truth. In order to know the real man, we need to discover his spiritual identity—that is, what is true of his creator, God, Spirit. Science and Health explains: "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle" (p.275). When we start with God and insist on seeing ourselves and others as His image, our conclusions follow directly from our spiritual sense of God's perfection, God's grace, God's love. We see His creation as like Him—perfect, gracious, loving. We make a distinct separation in our thinking between the material personality parading before us and that individual's true, spiritual identity.

Unchanging because it doesn't need to change, this perfect reflection of God is man's only real individuality. This is the truth we should hold to—and live up to, to the best of our ability. We're made better, and our lives become better examples for others as we learn about the nature of God and our true nature as His likeness. God's man can never cause feelings of resentment or anger, since he lives and moves entirely within the realm of Spirit, God, where harmony reigns. There is no friction in the realm of Spirit—no possibility of one idea hurting another.

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