When I was a child, I would be awake for hours at night trying to fall asleep. The problem, as I see it now, was my insistence on understanding what it meant to fall asleep so I could make it happen. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to understand something, but this type of curiosity was counterproductive to my need to simply yield to sleep.

I have been thinking about this lately in relation to spiritual healing in Christian Science and the fact that the practice of Christian Science is about yielding to the divine Mind, God. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy we read, “The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind” (p. 162).

My expectancy as a child that I could know enough about sleep to think my way there was not a good base from which to yield. Likewise, I have found certain perspectives less conducive than others to the effective practice of spiritual healing. For example, a fascination with the problem I am praying about tends to make the problem seem more substantial or real to me. In my experience, a more useful perspective is the recognition that God is bigger than the problem. In fact, God is infinitely greater than the problem and is the only power. Then yielding to what God, Mind, knows about me as His eternal and harmonious idea becomes easier. When this yielding occurs, healing happens.