After spending a few hours journaling at my favorite café—exploring ideas that kept coming to mind from the phrase “the true consciousness of Life as Love”—I was planning to go to a nearby Habitat for Humanity Restore to find treasures of another kind.

The phrase is from Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and before leaving the café, I decided to think more about the complete statement that it comes from, which conveys an intriguing lesson: “Mentally contradict every complaint from the body, and rise to the true consciousness of Life as Love,—as all that is pure, and bearing the fruits of Spirit” (p. 391). 

The various meanings and synonyms of the verb bear, including bring forth, carry, and hold (vocabulary.com), captivated me. Even more so the author’s use of the word body first and then consciousness—suggesting the natural demand to recognize Life, God, the substance of my life and everyone’s, as not a physical body but rather as consciousness itself. This recognition in turn requires purity of thought and action. The idea of rising above what appears humanly was so elevating and freeing, for the demand connotes our ability to rise out of the belief of existence in materiality.