Recently, I Spoke with a psychologist whose expertise is in the field of multiple personalities. After thirty years of practice, he is yearning for more spirituality in working with patients. He has found that a purely secular medical approach does not consider the whole man. Further, his wife has shifted to more holistic options in her field of nursing. She is active in a trend that involves a patient's church community or parish in his or her recovery.

It is generally agreed that healing took a secular turn at the time of Descartes. According to Herbert Benson, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, "Descartes was the first to suggest that the body did not need the mind to function, heightening respect for the machinelike qualities of the body that have become the dominant focus of contemporary Western medicine." ^{Herbert Benson and Marg Stark, Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief (New York: Fireside, 1996), p. 67 .} Since that time and until recently, the healing property of spirituality has been diminished in the eyes of most medical practitioners.

Perhaps those voicing concerns similar to the psychologist and nurse with whom I visited are perceiving the emptiness that results from viewing man as simply a machine, and from approaching healing based on a purely mechanical standpoint. Medical practitioners are discovering, little by little, that a patient's health cannot be divorced from his or her thought, and that spirituality is important to healing.

Then the question: What are the requirements for spiritual healing, or healing through prayer? The metaphysical method of healing successfully practiced and taught by Mary Baker Eddy, and those who have followed her in the practice of Christian Science, begins with the understanding that God, divine Spirit, is a sufficient antidote for all sickness. A first requirement, then, is to direct one's thought toward God, Spirit, and to realize that man is the image and likeness of Spirit, and is therefore spiritual. This spiritual truth shows why a strictly material and mechanical concept of life doesn't provide a permanent cure for aches and ailments. When we perceive, even to a small degree, the lack of intelligence and power in matter, and the misconception that physical laws define and govern our being, our perspective changes significantly.

This opens the door to recognizing another requirement: accepting that man is governed solely by God, and is subject to His law, to the infinite law of Love. God, and God alone, is sufficient to heal every ill. In her Miscellaneous Writings, Mary Baker Eddy observes, "The question at issue with mankind is: Shall we have a spiritual Christianity and a spiritul healing, or a materialistic religion and a materia medica?" (p. 246)

I love to think of spiritual healing as a re-education opportunity. Many of us have spent a good part of our lives perceiving ourselves as struggling human beings, doing some things right and some regretfully wrong. As one's basis of thought changes from matter to Spirit, we begin to see and feel the inseparability of God and man. We understand our oneness with God, good, and the ability of this truth to conquer all manner of sickness and disability, as Jesus demonstrated, and to bring health and happiness.

Does all this attention to God and His power to heal mean that one is absolved of responsibility for ungodly thoughts and actions? Hardly. But in our humility and newfound relation to God, we will naturally perceive ourselves and others as children of God, possessing innate purity, together with a willingness to drop whatever is impure. Jesus repeatedly took a stand for man's God-given purity, his capacity for good.

In the case of a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years and had no one to help him, perhaps because of a disagreeable temperament, Jesus healed the man and set out the moral demand "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more ...." (John 5:14). This is an example each of us can follow in examining ourselves and in helping others to be free from sickness as well as negative character traits.

Early in her study of Christian Science, my friend Susan had an experience that illustrates some of these points. While on vacation with family members, she began running up a flight of stairs from the beach to their hotel. Part way up, she tripped and fell, badly wounding her shin and a toe. She promptly affirmed God's allness and His constant care.

Susan was immediately able to get up, but as she and her mother walked back to the hotel, she dropped her focus on God's allness as they talked about her grandmother who had broken her hip some years earlier. The break left her relative fearful and curtailed her physical activity. Following the conversation, Susan found herself fearful about her own condition.

Once she got to her room, Susan noticed that a large, painful lump had formed on her leg. Since she regularly relies on spiritual healing, she turned to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, also by Mary Baker Eddy, where she found a clear directive on how to approach this problem prayerfully. It says: "When an accident happens, you think or exclaim, 'I am hurt!' Your thought is more powerful than your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury real.

"Now reverse the process. Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to be" (p. 397).

Susan realized that she had not fulfilled the requirement of letting God and His allness fill her thought. Instead, she had become impressed by the force of the fall and its implications. But she then acknowledged that she could instantly "reverse the process." She also was aware of a need to understand why she wasn't hurt. So Susan quietly affirmed that God's allness, in truth, left no room for an accident or injury to harm His man.

Further, Susan was reminded of this statement in Science and Health: "Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself" (p. 385). She recognized that she could expect a full, harmonious, happy vacation right that moment, without fear about what might happen to her leg. Further on, the book says, "If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed." Divine Mind, God, wouldn't decide that a leg could be painful or swollen. As God, good, is the only true Mind, there isn't an opposing mind to cause an unsightly or fearful condition. Susan knew her protection and her perfection were being shown to her by God, Mind. She simply got up and joined her family for dinner, free of pain. Shortly thereafter, she couldn't even remember which leg had been injured. And not one family member commented on the fall.

Between the two choices, "spiritual Christianity and a spiritual healing, or a materialistic religion and a materia medica," one definitely brings both permanent healing and spiritual growth. And the requirements for such healing are as close as God Himself.