Have you ever wanted something so badly, or believed so strongly that things should go a certain way, that you have tried to force those results to happen, only to have things end up in a “train wreck”? Throughout the centuries, many have individually or collectively tried to willfully influence situations within work environments, churches, families, or politics, with damaging consequences. How important, then, to understand what’s behind the desire to manipulate and how to set up a prayerful defense against such tendencies.

What tries to tempt us into manipulating others is the “self family,” which includes a self-agenda and involves self-will, self-love, self-justification, and selfishness. These are always the workings of mesmerism, or animal magnetism, of which Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy says: “Mesmerism is mortal, material illusion. Animal magnetism is the voluntary or involuntary action of error in all its forms; it is the human antipode of divine Science” (p. 484). 

The desire to control will be replaced by peace, poise, and an expectancy of good that blesses not just us but others as well.