In December 2008 I began experiencing a loss of equilibrium. At first this only occurred while I was going to sleep at night and when waking up in the morning. But then I started to occasionally experience it during the day when I was outside my apartment.

I called a Christian Science practitioner to support me in prayer to heal this problem.

One afternoon I needed to go out to run some errands, but I was afraid I might fall while outside. As I stood in my kitchen, I reached out to God and asked what I needed to know to be healed. The thought came, "You cannot physically fall unless your thought falls first." I was comforted by this thought. I understood that there was only one Mind, God. God is good, the source of all consciousness. God was the source of my thought and my being. As I took that stance for Truth, I was instantaneously healed of the fear. I immediately left my apartment to run the errands.

A few times when I was out that day, I experienced a sense of dizziness and wondered if I might lose my equilibrium. But I realized that I had a choice. This was really only a suggestion, and I did not have to accept that I could experience any form of inharmony that could allow my thought to fall from the truth that I was the expression of Mind, which is always harmonious. I became more alert and refuted that this was a part of me. With that, all feeling of dizziness left, and I never experienced the loss of equilibrium again outside my home.

The difficulty seemed to persist, however, when going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning. I prayed with this helpful statement by Mary Baker Eddy: "... if you fall asleep, actually conscious of the truth of Christian Science,—namely, that man's harmony is no more to be invaded than the rhythm of the universe,—you cannot awake in fear or suffering of any sort" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 61). How could I go to sleep conscious of the truth that my harmony was intact, rather than feeling fear and a sense of loss of equilibrium? I realized that before going to sleep at night I was often thinking about the events of my day. Instead of rehearsing, planning, and sometimes worrying about all my activities, I saw that I needed to be praying.

So I began to pray with the Daily Prayer (see Mary Baker Eddy, Manual of The Mother Church, p. 41), the Lord's Prayer, and "the scientific statement of being" from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (see p.468) as I went to sleep. These prayers turned my thought away from self to God. With God there is only harmony, and in this truth I was safe. I would return to prayer whenever I caught my thought wandering. I knew this was the answer.

As I continued to pray, to persist in the truth, I mentally stood up in this way: "No, this is not who I am. The physical senses do not tell me who I am or what I must experience. Why? Because I know from studying Christian Science that God is Spirit, and, therefore, I am only the expression of Spirit. This means I am spiritual, and I have spiritual sense. The five physical senses have no part in Spirit, because they are of matter, which by definition is the absence of Spirit. Any suggestion coming to me that is not harmonious, is not of God and does not have power." Accepting what matter and the physical senses claim was accepting the concept of Adam and fallen man. But thinking according to Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love with my spiritual sense was not letting my thought fall.

I kept taking this stand, until one day the dizziness just stopped happening all at once. It was like turning on a light switch. I knew I was healed.

That same week of my healing, the readings at the Wednesday evening testimony meeting I attended at my church were about King Nebuchadnezzar and the fiery furnace. I'd read the story many times, but that night I noticed something I had never realized before.

A royal decree required that the people "fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up: And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace" (Dan. 3:5, 6). The king required his people to literally fall down. But I saw that they would first have to allow their thought to fall and consent to worshipping an idol, or a false god. That was exactly the concept I had been praying with. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship the idol. They were subsequently thrown into the fiery furnace—but they were unharmed, because they had taken a stand to worship only God, Spirit.

A week or so later, the symptoms tried to come back once or twice. But I quickly refused to accept them. I held to the fact that I was God's child—whole, upright, unfallen. I saw that my consciousness, my thought, came from reflecting God, the one Mind. I did not have to accept any other verdict or claim about myself. I knew I would be protected just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And I was.

The difficulty was completely healed by February 2009, and has not recurred.

STEPHANIE MASON
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, US