Article January 16, 2012 Issue

Trusting our spiritual instrument panel

Roger Whiteway

When praying for healing in Christian Science, I often reach a point where the physical senses argue that this healing is just not going to happen. Mentally, I feel as though I must step off a cliff into a metaphysical void. Yet contrary to what those physical senses tell me, making that step, yielding to the Science of the Christ, Truth, is what has brought healing. 

Sometimes this moment comes just before the healing, and often well before the physical evidence changes. It’s a bit like the time when I was learning to fly private planes before entering Navy flight school, and I was introduced to instrument flying. This required relying on instruments instead of visual reference points such as the horizon. Later in Navy flight school we had to qualify in instrument flying. 

In those early classes we were first taught the flight physiology, learning about how the senses register and report spatial movement. For instance, we were taught that with no visual reference point (like at night), accelerating down a catapult during launch from an aircraft carrier, the senses would tell us that we were climbing, when in fact we were level. In short, we had to learn to trust our flight instruments and disregard the way we were feeling. Similarly, when in a sustained turn in an aircraft, without visual reference, our senses would report that after a while we were straight and level, when in fact we were continuing in that turn.

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