For the past few years, I've spent a lot of time soul-searching and praying about how to be a better healer. And an honest willingness to purify my own thought helped me uncover and correct something that had been affecting me for decades.

One morning as I prayed, I really felt ready to open my heart to God. I felt like nothing would get in the way of this deep desire to purify myself and my view of man so that I could follow in Jesus' footsteps and heal as he did. And something amazing happened. I guess it was finally time to think about an issue I'd pushed to the back of my mind.

It was something that I wasn't proud of, and it was hard to muster the courage or initiative to pray about it. Besides, it had become a habit and was tempting to just indulge.

For over 30 years, I'd believed that I had a "dirty" mind, overly preoccupied with sex. I gradually learned how to control my actions, but I didn't think that I could control my thoughts. I felt as if there were a jukebox in my mind that could flip on and flood my thought with sexual fantasies, whenever and wherever it pleased. It seemed logical that we all have weaknesses, so I made a decision that this near-obsession with sex was my weakness.

Once I started defining myself in this way early on, it cast a shadow over every romantic relationship I ever had. As a single woman, I was more impulsive than normal and rushed into intimate situations that would surprise both myself and the person I was with. This behavior was inconsistent with my efforts to grow spiritually.

And some of this thinking carried right over into married life. Although I was faithful to my husband, I held on stubbornly to this definition of myself as impulsive and selfish when it came to sex. And when these issues came up, I just lived with the mental turmoil because I felt like I deserved it.

What a lie!—a detour from good, solid, spiritual reasoning. It was time for my moment of truth.

As I prayed about this, I suddenly found my thought navigating the past with amazing precision.

But this time I wasn't afraid to examine my memories, because it felt like God was helping me spring a mental trap. In one memory, I saw some friends and myself in kindergarten, flipping through a stash of hard-core pornographic magazines that we'd found under a sink in a public rest room. We giggled at the pictures, and then we hurried up and left before someone could find us. But the seed of mental suggestion had been planted in my innocent thought—the idea that men and women were mischievous sexual creatures who would do anything for pleasure. I began to think that those images were my own fantasies. This was followed by sexual activity at an unusually early age. And since I knew that this was not typical, I was even more secretive and unsure about how I could ever get a sense of peace about this.

Now, mentally watching this scene again, I had a new and startling insight: Those dark thoughts were not mine. They had been presented to me, and I mistook them for my own.

What an eye-opener! We don't have to claim thoughts as our own unless they are pure, God-centered, and based on love and mutual respect for others. What's more, we naturally reflect humility, honesty, and courage from God when we express love.

Of course, romance and intimacy have a place in relationships, and sexual relations can actually be an opportunity to demonstrate love, commitment, and unselfishness to a marriage partner. If we discover that things are out of balance, we don't need to fear a humiliating process of correction. It's more about uncovering false conclusions, or lies, about God's creation.

But despite these insights, here's what I caught myself thinking: "If I have a dirty mind, then that means it's ingrained in who I am; it's incurable. Case closed."

Well, I knew better than that! From my practice of Christian Science, I'd gained confidence that there are no incurable, irresolvable cases. I'd seen so much healing, and yet here I was, reasoning out from a false premise—the idea that I was trapped with this miserable view of who I was.

Remembering the instance of finding those magazines as a child helped me uncover some mental baggage, so it seemed as if there was a pretty clear-cut beginning to the story. But I now saw I didn't have to assign a specific cause, either. God is the one and only cause. Whether I remembered how the obsessing started or not, I didn't have to listen to the lying "serpent," the symbol of evil given in the second chapter of Genesis.

In Genesis 1, man is presented as being made perfect in God's "image." But the second chapter serves as a striking contrast to the account of spiritual perfection. The serpent's assertions were lies that didn't originate with God or with man. In this way, evil thoughts are just mental suggestions, knocking for admission and credibility. We may feel responsible for them because we find ourselves thinking about them. Maybe we even act on them, and there's a healthy demand to repent—changing our thinking and actions. But the fact is that evil isn't part of God's original, perfectly spiritual creation. It's a boldfaced lie.

My prayers continued this way: The fact that you may have believed a lie does not make you an unredeemable, bad person. No matter how long a deception has gone on, it stops the minute you uncover and destroy it by correcting your thoughts and actions. There are no irreversible mistakes.

We are God's pure and upright children, as innocent as He made us. The world needs us to understand this fact and act accordingly. And we are free to serve God and love ourselves and our neighbor. As Jesus promised, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).

Facing up to something we've been avoiding can sound like a painful experience. But I'm happy to say that the end result is worth the effort. In my case, the truth helped me see myself as God's upright child, capable of examining each thought that occurs to me with spiritual authority. Now, I know that only pure, balanced thoughts belong in my consciousness, and I am resolved to keep it that way. My relationship with my husband is more honest and unselfish than ever, and this actually makes our relationship feel more intimate, too.

In my current work as a Christian Science practitioner, I try to be alert and quick to reject the mental suggestions that would cripple anyone's sense of health, worth, or justice. I pray with others to help them discover their sense of purity, self-forgiveness, forgiveness of others, and innocence, since it would be unjust for anyone to endlessly ruminate or be stuck with instincts that often lead to actions that demoralize relationships and families. In my daily prayers, I affirm that we obediently shine the light of Truth on these lies, and our original innocence is revealed. And we shouldn't hesitate to shine that same light of Truth on ourselves.

As I've shared my experience with people, it has gotten easier and easier to talk about because I see the impersonal nature of evil. One of the biggest blessings has been in helping others deal with similar situations through Christian Science. I love this quote from Science and Health: "It is man's moral right to annul an unjust sentence, a sentence never inflicted by divine authority" (p. 381).

It has been such a relief to be free. We are God's precious children, and because of this, we are essential to God's full expression. I'm so grateful to know that we are forever loved. And nothing can hide this reality from any of us. CSS

In order to respect confidentiality, the author's name has been withheld. This article was originally published on spirituality.com.