Article January 28, 2019 Issue

Wake up—to healing!

Kathie Walter

Have you ever found yourself praying while in the midst of a bad dream? I once had a bizarre dream that there was a fishhook embedded in my skin. Throughout the dream, I tried to find someone to help me, and I prayed to God for guidance in finding a solution. But none came. Then, I woke up! I was happily surprised to discover that there was no fishhook in me. In an instant, I was freed from the deception of the dream. I saw that I had never been hurt or worried in this way, and had never needed to fix a problem like the one in the dream.

This experience reminded me of something I’d learned in Christian Science: that any unhappy or troubling situations we experience can be seen as dreamlike. That’s because the wide-awake reality of our being is spiritual.

The Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, explains it this way: “Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the dream we have in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of mind” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 188). Later, she adds to this description of mortality: “A mortal may be weary or pained, enjoy or suffer, according to the dream he entertains in sleep. When that dream vanishes, the mortal finds himself experiencing none of these dream-sensations.” And she continues, “Take away the mortal mind, and matter has no more sense as a man than it has as a tree. But the spiritual, real man is immortal” (p. 250).