Several years ago I was confronted with attacks of dizziness, nausea, and weakness. These attacks happened several times over a period of a year and a half. Sometimes I felt I was losing balance. I wondered at times if the attacks were caused by something I ate or a chemical imbalance.

My immediate response was to pray, as that is how I am used to dealing with illness. And each time, I found temporary release, although I wasn't fully healed.

After a while, I saw a pattern that was more mental in nature. I began to notice that the attacks often happened when I was with certain individuals who were very much opposed to the things that I stand for. At the time, I was working around people who were in direct opposition to my religious beliefs. I came to feel this was the basic cause of the physical sickness as well as the mental disorientation.

My physical condition grew worse, until I was reminded that Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, advised members of The Mother Church to defend themselves daily against "aggressive mental suggestion" (Church Manual, p. 42). Wishing to be obedient to this Christian command, which I felt was related to the First Commandment to have no gods but the one God, I looked up the definition of the word suggestion, and I found it defined as "implied possibility."

I began to think about defending myself against the "implied possibility" that there was a mind apart from God that could have a negative influence over me. Believing there was any other power apart from the one good and infinite God would break the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3). God doesn't create hatred or fear. As divine Love itself, God could not hate me, or cause anyone to want to do harm to me or anyone else.

This became my stand, and I began to question what I accepted into my thinking. Was I accepting the First Commandment and loving one God supremely, as Jesus taught? Or was I accepting the "implied possibility" that there was another power opposed to God and His creation? I stopped praying about the physical symptoms themselves, and began to pray about the basic mental nature of the problem—the suggestion that there was a power or a person that hated me and could in some way harm me.

Endeavoring to be persistent in prayer and obedient to God, I became firmer in my stand, and the attacks of illness grew less and less frequent. Again, the real breakthrough for me was realizing the mental nature of the condition and seeing that it wasn't a divine reality. I was finding that with God I could not be harmed.

The final test came one morning when I was in the same room with several people whose agenda did not agree with mine or others' in the room. The atmosphere was tense. This was a surprise to me, and I began to feel fear, along with those symptoms of illness.

At that point, I turned wholeheartedly to God. I acknowledged the omnipresence and omnipotence of His love for all His children. The Bible tells us,

"Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh" (Prov. 3:25). The thought that came to me was, "There is one infinite God, infinite Love; and His creation is found in His allness." In that creation there was no evil, no hate, no sin, sickness, or death. The infinite One had no opposition—there was just the one good God expressing Himself as All. Jesus showed mankind this fact 2,000 years ago, and the Christ, which Jesus so fully embodied, continues to reveal itself to us today as God's power and love.

The attack lifted off me. With absolute freedom, I was able to do my work without fear or sickness. I was completely healed, and those symptoms never returned. All I was left with was a deeper gratitude for God and for the spiritual poise and dominion God has given us through the understanding of Christian Science.

We do not need to be afraid of what others are thinking. We don't need to feel that somehow they could harm us. We have the dominion to think and act rightly (see Mary Baker Eddy, Pulpit and Press, p. 3).

Everyone can experience the power God gives and not be subject to feelings of powerlessness or helplessness. They are only suggestions, "implied possibilities," and not realities.

We do have power through God over any physical problem. But there is often an underlying suggestion that we have to overcome through prayer. In this experience, the physical underlying factor was mental—and for me it proved very easy to correct the whole situation through the prayer that eliminates fear.

Solomon prayed for "an understanding heart." Similarly, true prayer is not for things or even for physical well-being, but rather to align ourselves with God—with Truth, with Love. Then we find ourselves whole and free.

I've found that if you look at the mental nature of any disease, you generally find an underlying fear of some sort—fear of the disease itself, of what other people are thinking, or of there being a power opposed to God. Even the medical profession is coming to realize more and more the need to look beyond the physical and to consider healing what is mentally "broken." Physical abnormalities are never separate from this underlying fear.

If we want to feel and know God's love in our lives, we have to understand Christ Jesus' teachings. The basic reason that Jesus came into this world was to teach God's love for us and to prove His power over all forms of evil and hatred. With God, we have power over any disease and over any hatred. And with this understanding we will find ourselves "pure and upright, whole and free" (Violet Hay, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 12). |css

Adapted from a broadcast on Sentinel Radio.