Spirituality—what it is and isn't
Judy Wolff, C.S.B.
Many teachings and methods of healing claim to be spiritual, but often involve techniques that are materially–based. Yet, pure spirituality has a place in the world of healing and is a method for learning to know God and our relationship to Him.
In this important chat, Christian Science practitioner and teacher, Judy Wolff, examines the real meaning of spirituality and its role in healing. Using the principles of Christian Science, she brings spirituality back into focus by relating it to its source, God. Spirit defines Himself in spiritual ways, she says, and can never be characterized by the five physical senses. Christian Science, she explains, tells how the laws of Spirit operate and illumine the spiritual healing power available to all.
Judy takes a wide range of questions including, how to view our bodies in a spiritual context, persistence in prayer, confidence in healing, overcoming hopelessness, and what happens to us after death. Using a number of vivid analogies, she reveals the unique and unchanging spiritual identities we have as God's children.
spirituality.com host: Hello everyone! Welcome to another spirituality.com live question and answer audio event. Today’s topic is “What spiritually is—and what it isn’t.” Our guest is Judy Wolff, a teacher and practitioner of Christian Science, in the Washington, DC area. Judy is also a Trustee of The Christian Science Publishing Society which sponsors this program. Prior to entering the full-time practice of Christian Science, Judy was a retail executive for Bloomingdale’s in New York, Garfinckle’s in Washington, DC, and Waterford Wedgeford in Frankfurt, Germany. We’re so glad to have her here with us in the studio today. Judy, do you have some thoughts to get us started?
Judy Wolff: I certainly do, thanks. The last 15 to 20 years we’ve really seen a surging interest in spirituality and spiritual practices. As everyone knows, there are numerous books and academic courses and TV programs that tout current and ancient forms of spirituality. Many, many people are earnestly seeking new ideas to improve and uplift human life, and that’s really wonderful, isn’t it?
spirituality.com host: It sure is.
Judy Wolff: We’re really supportive of that. And spirituality has sort of become the catchall phrase for this popular trend in thought. Like anything though that becomes broadly popular, and maybe even mainstream, spirituality is at risk of being diluted and polluted until it no longer is recognized for what it really is. In fact, I kind of wonder if the term spirituality has been so overused and been defined to be so all-inclusive, that in many cases, it’s lost its true, original meaning.
spirituality.com host: I think that’s possible.
Judy Wolff: With that in mind, I was thinking that if it lost its meaning, it probably also lost that original power and practicality that vanished with the real meaning. And for me, that’s where Christian Science comes in and really raises the bar, returning spirituality to its source, which is Spirit. And I’m talking Spirit with a capital “S” here, which is a synonym or another name for God. That’s the one, true Spirit. Being spiritual means to be Godlike, and to experience life from God’s perspective— not from the viewpoint of mortal man. It’s interesting, I looked it up in Webster’s New International Dictionary and it defines the verb to spiritualize as “to purify from the corrupting influences of the world.”
spirituality.com host: Wow.
Judy Wolff: And its antonym, or the opposite, and this is also very interesting, is “to coarsen, materialize, or to sensualize.”
spirituality.com host: Boy, that’s really right on target.
Judy Wolff: And I was kind of thinking this latter negative, the opposite of spirituality, is what sometimes seems to happen to spirituality itself. Material practices such as aromatherapy, acupuncture, magnetic treatment, yoga, and many more, have now been labeled spiritual when they really are not—however much temporary help they really may seem to provide.
Basically a good rule of thumb on spirituality is: if you experience something with the five physical senses, it’s not truly spiritual or Godlike, regardless of what may seem to be a very obvious claim to the opposite. True spiritual practices are those which express Spirit on Spirit’s terms. Spirit, God, expresses Himself or Herself in spiritual qualities—qualities we all understand such as love and honesty, innocence, meekness, and joy.
You can’t buy a pound of love, and you can’t get a gallon of honesty. Yet, these qualities really are real, and we experience and know them. But they are not corporeal. Spirit, God, is incorporeal and something that is incorporeal is not, never has been, and never will be, in matter or a mortal body.
Spirituality, again defined by Webster’s is: “the quality or state of being spiritual.” And another definition is: “spiritual mindedness.” It helps us to see God, who is divine Love, as a knowable, healing presence in our lives right here, right now. Spiritual practices, such as spiritual healing, utilize the understanding and the power of the laws of Spirit. There are actually laws of Spirit that awaken man from material practices to the reality of God.
I have found in my own experience the two best guidebooks—and there’s a million of them out there, many of them good—but the two best guidebooks I have found on the subject of spirituality really are the Bible, especially the New Testament, and a book called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. This latter volume, as the name suggests, provides the key to understanding the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures, as opposed to a literal or materialistic interpretation. And why is that important? Because the deep spiritual meaning of the Bible is what really inspires and heals.
So from my perspective, it is essential to know what spirituality is, and what it isn’t. Studying Science and Health, in coordination with the Bible, has enabled me to discern God as Spirit, and to glimpse the real status of being without the limits of matter. And as a result, I have seen amazing healing.
Science and Health has been instrumental in leading many people from the deception of material rituals, which really substitute for the real thing—Spirit, God, itself. God defines Himself in spiritual ways for the spiritually minded, and to me, that’s putting Spirit back into spirituality.
spirituality.com host: That’s a good way of putting it. I’d just like to let our listeners know that if you’re unfamiliar with our site, after our chat, you can explore Science and Healthon this website—on spirituality.com. The full text is available there, along with the Bible. So it would be a nice way to check things out. And now, would you like to start answering some questions?
Judy Wolff: I’d love to.
spirituality.com host: All right. Bobby from Indiana says: “Spirituality seems too demanding. Will we ever be able to experience complete spirituality here and now?”
Judy Wolff: Great question. I can see where Bobby’s coming from because it asks a little bit more of us than some of the other practices. But you get so much more out of it. Someone who becomes a great pianist or a great painter didn’t do so easily. They had to put a lot more into it to get to that point. I kind of like to use the analogy that there’re a couple of different ways to pray and there are some easier ways to pray and some ways that are a little bit more involved.
But perhaps the ways that are a little bit more involved get us a little more involved with Spirit. I can see where it would seem on the surface to be a little bit more difficult, but let me explain it in these terms: You can pray in a couple of different ways. You can pray to know if God is willing to help you, if God is able to help you, or you can go and find out, How does God help you?
Now, in the Bible we don’t have any record—at least in the New Testament—of Jesus asking God: was He capable of healing and helping, was He willing to do it? He accepted that God was capable and willing and he went into the, how does God do that? And Christian Science prayer—or a term we like to use—Christian Science treatment, which is a very scientific, specific form of prayer, accepts that God is capable, God is willing. But then it takes a little bit more work to discover how does God do it.
A similar analogy we all here understand, because we fly a lot,—I do at least—is that there are aerodynamics and those laws are in existence. They are capable. And we know that planes fly, so we know that their capability is being fulfilled. But I couldn’t tell you exactly how those laws of aerodynamics work, even though I am the beneficiary of them, because I get to fly on planes that operate. I’m really grateful that some people took the time and effort to discover and work with those laws to the point where they could actually make planes that fly—that those of us who don’t understand those laws can appreciate and utilize.
In Christian Science treatment, it’s a little more than just asking God’s capability or willingness, it’s really taking a delving dive into what are the laws of Spirit—how do they operate, how do they work, and how can I make them work, how can I demonstrate them? And yes, it’s a little more work, but boy, to be able to design and fly a plane, that’d be a lot more fun than just getting on it like I do as a passenger! And to be able to really pray with that kind of knowledge is more work, but boy, you get so much out of it. You really get to know God and how He operates.
spirituality.com host: Well, also you develop a sense of confidence, too, so that as something comes along that’s unexpected, by doing some basic learning about those laws, it doesn’t throw you off. You can take advantage of that.
Judy Wolff: And while oftentimes some prayer can be a little bit more challenging and some difficulties can really cause us to have to pray more and get closer to God, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s labored or difficult. It just means we’re willing to go further and try harder and learn more like a person who takes on a much more difficult piano piece, and they’re going to play a much more beautiful, complicated piece. At other times, spirituality can be so natural, as natural as walking and then being inspired by the sun shining and the birds singing and that sweet feeling you feel when you just know you’re in the presence of God, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be labored.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. Now this is from Charlotte who’s in Belvedere, California, and she says: How does spirituality affect a material body?
Judy Wolff: I wish I could thank you personally and shake your hand. I had the same question asked to me by a man who was new to reading Science and Health and the Bible, and he put it in a little bit different term, but I think it was getting at the same thing.
Here we are, physical, he said. I’ve got the five material senses telling me I’m a material being, and yet when I read these books it makes it very clear that God is Spirit and so His creation and we are spiritual. And yet, everything I do, see, and feel, tells me otherwise. So where is the relationship between Spirit and this physical being?
I was thinking about his question, trying to think of the best way to answer it, when I was told by a friend that there was a German deli in our area. I used to live in Germany, and I couldn’t wait to go and see if they had my favorite chocolate candy bars—which they did. And this wonderful analogy came: I walked into this wonderful little deli and I was one of three patrons at the time, and in it was nothing but German products and I could smell the German meats and dark breads, and the other two patrons were speaking German, ordering their food and paying for it, and for the moment I was in that shop, my five physical senses told me, Whoa, you are in Germany, having a magnificent German experience. And the one thing that kept me from believing that, even though all the evidence before me said, here’s German product, you can see the German labels, you can hear, smell, taste, was that I had a much bigger perspective.
Having traveled extensively I knew I was actually in a small shop in the center of the United States—or in the capital of the United States—which is part of the larger world picture. And entering into that store, I knew I was a US citizen, on US ground, under US laws, even though the five physical senses would have told me, You’re not. What kind of capped it for me was, when I went to pay for my purchases I pulled my US dollars out and it seemed so incongruous to the whole experience that I was having that I was sort of laughing to myself as I went out to the car. It was totally German until I went to pay for that.
As I got into the car, this sort of unusual questioning came which I kind of see as spiritual intuition because it wasn’t the way I would humanly reason. And the thought came to me: What would you do if they had stopped you in the store and said, “Hey, you’ve got to pay with German currency. You’re in Germany and you’re under German laws.” Would I have been deceived and said, “Oh, my goodness, now I’ll have to go get some German currencies, or go to jail, or stay in the store?” Of course not. I had such a clear picture where I was with the broader, deeper sense that I would have contested that, shown my ID, established where we were, perhaps have called the police, and the laws would have verified that what was true was: I was on US soil, under US law, the entire time it appeared to be a German experience.
And that’s when the light when off. I saw the connection. It was as if God was using this experience as my blackboard and was showing me that the German store represented the human condition, the five physical senses, this physical experience that we’re in right now, that we can smell, taste, and so forth. While it gives us one set of information, if we are like Jesus—and for that matter, the author of the book Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy—and we have this much bigger sense of Spirit, we actually realize that we’re always in the presence of Spirit. We’re always under spiritual law. And that law actually governs the human experience just like the US law governed that German store, even though it appeared to be German. Ultimately, it never, ever had a set of German laws—it was under a different condition.
What we’re discovering with our understanding of Spirit, God, is that we’re always in Spirit’s presence, and we’re under His divine, beautiful, healing laws. If we’re not deceived by the so-called material or physical laws, and we realize we’re still under those spiritual laws, those spiritual laws reign right where we are physically. And so they have all say about what’s going on. It’s like appealing to the Supreme Court in the United States. For those of you who are not in the United States, a lower ruling is always topped by that. Whatever the Supreme Court says, that flies.
Well, we can go to the Supreme Court of God which is a most benign court. It always wants the best for all. And we can overturn physical and biological laws that may be harming us. So I hope I’m getting back to the original question which was, Spirit and spiritual laws have all say in our physical condition, because that’s really what we’re truly under.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. We have quite a few questions now. This one is from Margaret in San Francisco who says, “It’s often said that all paths lead to the same God, which is vehemently denied by others. What do Christian Scientists say on this subject?”
Judy Wolff: Well, I’m going to say that there’s just one God so I can’t see where anyone could go anywhere else. And you can call Him whatever you want, whatever is comfortable and right for you in any religion or faith, whether it’s Love or whether it’s Spirit or whether it’s Allah—all those names are reverential names for the same one God.
Now, there are different ways to go. There are more direct ways and there are indirect ways. I truly believe—and I’m speaking for myself, I couldn’t possibly speak for all Christian Scientists—but that there must be kernels of truth, there must be spiritual ideas in every faith to some degree, more in some than others, or people wouldn’t have been blessed by what they’ve gotten out of it. They wouldn’t feel the love, they wouldn’t feel the good that they’re getting from that, if there wasn’t something good. What I love about Christian Science is that it’s a Science of all these truths and it tries to pull them all together and bring them into one accord. But because it’s a Science, like the science of mathematic numbers, it doesn’t belong to anyone. You can know one truth in mathematics and I can know another, and someone else can know it, and it’s true for all of us, whatever we call ourselves.
But it’s interesting. One time, I was having a debate with somebody that I know—he’s an atheist—and he had told me he wasn’t feeling well, and I was praying for him. And he said, “Don’t you dare pray for me.” And I said, “I was just praying for your leg, to help you with that.” And he said, “Oh, I bet you were praying to convert me to your religion.” And I said, “It never occurred to me.” And he said, “It wouldn’t? Why not?” And I said, “Because ultimately, there is only one religion, because there is only one God.” It’s those of us as human beings that put up these little umbrellas and say, “This is my religion and this is your religion and mine’s right and yours is wrong.” But taking it back to what I said earlier in the program, looking at God’s creation from God’s vantage point, He sees all His beloved ideas, and they’re all in one faith, one brotherhood, one family, from God’s perspective. And that’s the perspective I think most Christian Scientists choose.
spirituality.com host: Oh, that’s really helpful and a nice way of putting it. This is from Jerry in Raleigh—possibly Raleigh, North Carolina—“I’m listening to this chat with a friend and I need to understand what I should know about my aching back.” And that’s getting back to spirituality. Do you have some thoughts?
Judy Wolff: I think I’ll go back to that analogy I made with the German store—that right now, you are under the laws of Spirit. And that’s important to know because those laws are operating on your behalf. The laws of Spirit are laws of health. You know, God is health itself, and He bestows on all of His beloved ideas the idea and the concept and the strength of health. God bestows on all of us the unity and the oneness and the harmony that right now you are under the law of God. You do not have to be under the material laws.
Remember we talked about in the German store that if they tried to stop me from paying with US money, they had no standing. They had no power to enforce that. Well, whatever may humanly be the source of this—whether it’s stress, or a pulled muscle, or too much exercise, you know I don’t know the situation here—those are the material laws that the spiritual laws override. I should actually clarify that—not only override, the US laws would not have overridden the German laws, the US laws were actually the only laws that governed that situation. You are really only under the laws of Spirit. One of those laws is that God loves you dearly, and because He loves you dearly, He gives you all to have—the comfort, or what we call the Comforter, all the truth, all the inspiration, all the healing messages you need to have this healing.
spirituality.com host: And also, doesn’t that law also bring out that we are really all spiritual? We never have been material.
Judy Wolff: Thank you. I probably should have said that earlier, but thank you. Exactly. Because one of the things that that wonderful German analogy proved to me was that I was spiritual. You know I was a US citizen before I went into the store, I was a US citizen during the experience when I was in the store buying my wonderful German chocolate, and I was a US citizen leaving that store. My identity never changed, and the laws that governed that never changed. And so we are spiritual right now despite what the five physical senses tell us otherwise. And the laws that govern us are governing us right now.
spirituality.com host: And they’re laws of good. This is from Tiffany in Albany, New York, and she’s also asking a question about healing. She says: “When do you give up if you’ve been working on trying to get healed for a long time, and your spouse wants you to seek medical help?” She also talks about feeling like a failure. But I think that to some extent maybe she’s being taken in by that German chocolate.
Judy Wolff: Well bless her heart, she certainly isn’t a failure because the responsibility isn’t hers. The responsibility goes back to Spirit. It is Spirit, God, that governs the universe—that does the healing. It’s her job to acknowledge that, but it’s God’s job to care for God’s creation.
I have infinite compassion because I’ve had a couple of long term challenges, too, where you begin to think, what is it in my thought, what am I doing wrong here, and so forth. Because you think that the healing should come more quickly. But something came to me when I was having a challenge of that nature. I kept thinking, What’s in my thought, what am I doing wrong that I’m not having this healing? And I realized that that very question was a sin because it was saying I was wrong, and I wasn’t having the healing, and it was denying God’s ability to give that healing message to be responsible for me at that moment. Mrs. Eddy talks about “Trials are proofs of God’s care.” So I turned it around and thought instead, How can I glorify God? How can I take this as a wonderful trial—and not dwell on the trial, but dwell on proving God’s care, seeing that there’s an opportunity here to prove God’s care in my experience?
God is caring for this dear one right now. You never give up. I don’t care if you’re in a hospital bed. I don’t care if they’ve told you you don’t have any more time to live. We never give up on learning about God, because God is eternal and God is forever, and so let’s just start right now learning what we can at this point and building on that.
We’re learning eternal issues that we’re going to keep forever. So stay with it, no matter what the human condition is. Stay with that spiritual no matter what is going on in the German store, so to speak.
spirituality.com host: Right. And I think that that is—human conditions can change and all kinds of things can happen from that standpoint, but God never leaves us. That power of God is always with us, and it’s sometimes quite remarkable what happens as a result of trusting that love and knowing that. It doesn’t matter where you are, whatever door you walk through, God is there with you.
Judy Wolff: You can’t get away from that, and I’m so grateful.
spirituality.com host: You bet. Now this is a bit related. It’s from Carol in Wisconsin and she’s asking, “How are we to think correctly about our bodies?”
Judy Wolff: I think that’s a really fundamental question that needs to be asked when we’re praying. There are two models. And I’m going to say this rather bluntly: There’s the medical model, thinking about ourselves as an organism, as a biological, material container, and maintaining that container, and identifying ourselves with that container. And then there’s the more spiritual concept.
Jesus didn’t identify himself with a biological, material container. He was always taking himself back, and relating himself back to God, as God’s son, as God’s beloved, as God being his Father, his life, his source, and consequently he had all that God was giving him and all of God to relate to—all the qualities and attributes of God. Therefore his identity was—he identified with God, not with a piece of matter.
Really when you look at it, the only difference between Jesus and you and me, is that he always identified himself back with God and we, well, I probably shouldn’t say that about you, but I can say it for myself…
spirituality.com host: Go ahead.
Judy Wolff: There’s a tendency to identify ourselves with a piece of matter. When we identify ourselves with God, we’re identifying ourselves as spiritual beings that have a specific identify and a specific distinct way of expressing God that’s unique to us—each and every individual—that we never lose. I’d like to make the analogy: notes in music. Every note has a specific identity and we can count on that identity being permanent and eternal so we can use it in different songs and music through the centuries. Composers today are using the same notes that Beethoven used 500 years ago. But they’re using those wonderful, spiritual ideas. We’re spiritual ideas with distinct identities that can be put in a wonderful variety of situations that we might call humanly family, and church, and friends, and business, that a composer might call notes in a song. But they’re spiritual ideas and identities and we come to know those and they’re permanent and eternal.
Paul hits the nail on the head when he said in Galatians, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” Those are really the attributes, or spiritual qualities, that each of us have and that each of us uniquely express, distinctly, in a beautiful way that we can identify each other. And when we identify each other—which we really do, humanly—we identify each other by how kind someone is, and how honest someone is, how loving and selfless someone is. Those identities or qualities are more important than whether they’re 5 ft. 6, or blonde, or dark-haired, or brown-eyed. They are really what define individuals. And it’s a matter of identifying ourselves with God and the way we reflect His spiritual qualities like the ones I read from Paul’s writings, more so than identifying with a piece of matter. The more we do that, the more free we are of that piece of matter, and the more we can use that human body to reflect and express the qualities of God for God’s glory.
spirituality.com host: That’s very interesting. Now this is from Paul, who’s writing from the West Coast. He says: “So many religions are convinced that they know what happens in the afterlife, and at the same time, they differ as to what it is, how do we know for sure, what—if anything—happens after we die? Even Jesus, after the resurrection, had a physical body and said that, ‘... a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.’ How can we know for sure what happens? Assertion is not proof.”
Judy Wolff: I love that question because, first of all, it asks a larger question: Is there pre-existence and post-existence? And again, I hope this individual was on board with us when I gave the example of the German store. I used the German store, entering it in the United States, under US law. It was truly the United States even though it appeared as a German store because it had German product. I was a US citizen going in, I was a US citizen while I was experiencing the German store, and when I exited. It wasn’t really a pre-, post- and so forth. I was a US citizen all along.
spirituality.com host: Continuity.
Judy Wolff: The continuity. So, we’re spiritual all along. We weren’t a spiritual being that became a human being that sometime is going to exit the human condition and become a spiritual being again. We are spiritual right now, and so we don’t have to wait for a so-called hereafter to determine what spirituality is, what Spirit is, how we are as spiritual. The great privilege is that we can discover that here and now. We can discover what Spirit, God, is, how He operates spiritually, what the spiritual laws are and how they are operating on our behalf at this moment and governing the universe at this moment. And so we can discover, experience, and use human terms here, but sort of taste or glimpse the divine, the spiritual, right here, right now. And so it isn’t a matter of waiting until hereafter. Jesus experienced the spiritual right here. He did things that defied or went beyond the physical laws. And he so understood it that he was able to express it, demonstrate it, and say things, like that wonderful quote, that we’ll be spiritual after. To try to turn the materially-minded thought to the spiritual, so that they can begin to understand that right here and now.
spirituality.com host: I was thinking of Lazarus and Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, (I’m doing this from memory) that if Jesus had believed that Lazarus had lived or died in matter, he could not have raised him, but that his consciousness of Lazarus’s actual spirituality was what made it possible to do that.
Judy Wolff: And along the line, that German store again (I hope you all are not getting bored with the German store) but while I was praying about that and thinking about that, I thought, you know, Jesus was like coming to that store. He came fully aware of spiritual reality. He already recognized each person as a spiritual being and when he entered that human experience, so to speak, or that German store, he recognized each person not as a mortal, but as the spiritual idea he had always known as a spiritual idea, under the laws of Spirit, under the laws of God. Because of his unique birth, and because of his unique upbringing and so forth, this wonderful virgin birth which Christian Scientists very much accept, he came to this human experience with a full understanding of the spiritual. Part of his mission was to get human beings to understand, to some degree, the spiritual nature that we can experience right here and right now. I kind of felt like if I had walked in that store and seen one of my neighbors. I wouldn’t have thought, Oh, there’s some German, or he’s become a German. I would say, “That’s my neighbor, that’s my spiritual neighbor, who’s still spiritual.”
spirituality.com host: That’s right. Now this is from Anthony in Switzerland. And he says “Which spiritual quality seems to be the most pertinent to you in making God less mysterious and more available?”
Judy Wolff: Wow. I love the question and I’m trying to narrow down which spiritual quality. One quality that helps me a lot is meekness—and humility—because it gets myself, Judy Wolff, out of the way so I can really allow God to take the consciousness. I had an interesting discussion one time with a Presbyterian minister who let me know point blank that he did not approve of Christian healing because he felt it was the realm of charlatans and TV evangelists and cults who were taking advantage of people. So he let me know that he didn’t hold Christian Science healing in high esteem.
But the reason we were having this conversation was because he ran a large organization and they were requesting him to begin a series on Christian healing and how to heal based on Bible teachings, of which, of course, he was quite an advent student. We were having this sort of little discussion and I said, “You’re really going to love healing when you start delving into it.” And he turned on me and said, “I don’t think I’m going to because here’s the problem.” (And he was not a happy person.) He said, “What happens if I pray for one of my members of the congregation and they’re not healed?” And then I said to him, “You’ll learn the first lesson in healing and that is you don’t do it, God does. And after you’ve learned that lesson, you’ll learn the second lesson which is, the more we can get ourselves out of the way with deep humility and meekness, the more we can get rid of our sense of false responsibility of feeling that we have to do something to make this person better, and the more room in our consciousness God has to work to do the powerful healing He is capable of.”
And he thanked me profusely, went on, and had a smashing 12-week course, in which he ended up using Science and Health as one of his backups in the Bible thing, and found it amazingly helpful. So that sense of getting ourselves out of the way, silencing what a friend of mine calls in our mentality, “the blah, blah, blah of mortal consciousness” so that we can be silent enough to really let God show us the magnificent lessons He has for us.
spirituality.com host: That’s wonderful. This is from Fred in New Hampshire. He says: “If God created that is, then everything is of God, therefore is not everything that is real spiritual?”
Judy Wolff: Bingo, my friend. You should be taking over this talk. Yes. And what is real is spiritual and what is spiritual is real and it’s not what we call temporal or temporary. Anything that’s material is going to be destroyed in some form, in some way—it’s destructible. Anything that’s indestructible is spiritual. And so we have to grow to the point where our universe gets so much larger, like the universe I had was so much larger than the German store. We’re working with these indestructible, eternal ideas. And I think there’s a wonderful quote here I wanted to use with that. “... Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” We have to get beyond the eyes and seeing. What’s spiritual will last forever. Love is always going to be around. You can’t destroy it—honesty, integrity, true sense of beauty. So isn’t it worthwhile to dig in and find these indestructible, eternal ideas that are going to be around forever because God’s going to be around forever and spiritually we will, too. So why don’t we dig in and do that? I think that’s really it. The real and the spiritual is forever, so let’s learn as much about that because it’s going to be here forever.
spirituality.com host: That’s a very good point. Our next question is a little bit of a challenge to that concept and I think it will be fun to answer. It’s from Dick in Roseville, California. “If a person is honest, kind, loving, moral, etc. does that automatically mean they’re spiritual? People express those qualities who don’t even believe in God.”
Judy Wolff: I love that. I had a good friend who was a secular humanist. She did not deny God’s existence. She’d been raised in an orthodox religion as a young child and had long left it. One of the finest human beings I’ve ever known, she’s just selfless and loving, kind, moral—all those wonderful spiritual qualities he mentioned. And she doesn’t really know God. We’ve known each other for a number of years.
We were colleagues together in one of my previous positions, I loved her dearly, and she knew that I was very actively praying and working with God. She still is expressing and reflecting because those qualities are qualities of God. Whether she recognizes that, whether she acknowledges that, or knows that, does not stop the fact that she is expressing and reflecting God, because those are qualities of God. She may call it goodness in general or being a good person, but she is expressing and reflecting God.
But the one difficulty there is, because of that lack of knowing where the source of that good comes from, is that when there’s a problem, being a good human being isn’t enough to heal. A mutual friend of ours that we both love dearly—actually we were the three musketeers—became very, very critically ill and was hospitalized and went through six surgeries in less than six weeks’ time, and they couldn’t find what was wrong.
My friend, who had been visiting her, called me and said, “I’ve been to visit her. I’ve done everything I can. I don’t have anything more I can do. I’m at wit’s end. Now Judy, we need you to pray, because I have no idea how to pray, who to pray to, or what it is.” Her good human experience could only take her so far. She was a good human being, doing all she knew how to do for this individual, visiting her, helping her family, doing her highest sense of expressing God’s qualities. But she acknowledged at that point there was not more she could do. And she asked me to go down to the hospital and pray with this friend, which I did. And I joined her Methodist family, and she asked me to pray, and within a couple of hours of our praying, the doctors found what was wrong and within two weeks she was out, and it was over with.
And she told me afterwards—the woman who had the severe illness—she knew it was my prayers at that point, that when we really brought God into focus, things came into light, and she said she acknowledged God’s doing it, and my friend who’s a secular humanist said “I don’t know what happened, but I know it was something beyond what I could do humanly.” And so, yes, these individuals are wonderful people and they’re expressing and doing a wonderful job expressing God, whether they realize it or not. But when the chips are down, it really helps to have God and know how to go about with those spiritual laws.
spirituality.com host: Thank you. This is from M. in Atlanta. “Do you see misunderstandings with the word metaphysical as often as spirituality? Would you consider those terms synonymous? What terms should we use to define correctly the techniques as herbal therapy and yoga, etc., especially to someone who might come in to a Reading Room, for example, and want to have discussion about that?”
Judy Wolff: While spirituality and metaphysics are similar, they do have their distinctions. I’m not an expert on regular metaphysics but metaphysics can be applied to mathematical equations and laws. It can be applied to a number of things. It basically means, above or beyond physics, whereas, spirituality as we’ve been talking about in this discussion (specifically in this discussion) relates back to Spirit, or God. Now Christian Science we would categorize as divine metaphysics. Not only is it above the physical or beyond the physical, but it’s divinely based. It’s beyond the physical and it’s based in the divine. And that’s a whole different perspective. Divine metaphysics is the law or the science behind metaphysical sciences such as mathematics and musical composition. All those can be considered metaphysical, but it’s the divine Science, the laws of God that under gird or are expressed in these beautiful other sciences.
spirituality.com host: Well, that’s very helpful.
Judy Wolff: Oh, I guess we didn’t answer how do we help others who are taking these material remedies? I like to think of them as symbolic, that they may be symbols or rituals that remind us that we need to go to the spiritual. We’re not going to put them down per se, especially if someone is getting some benefit from them. We’re just making the clear distinction between someone who has a photograph of someone and the actual person in the room. One may be something that reminds us or helps us get to a certain point, like a photograph, but when we’re actually in the presence of that person, we don’t need the photograph. I use that often as a symbol for the Eucharist. It’s a symbol but it isn’t actually spiritual per se. But it’s a gentle, lovely reminder to go to the spiritual. If I have my husband in the room, I don’t need a photograph of him. But when I don’t, it’s nice to have that reminder to remember all the qualities, all the good that’s there. But when I’m in his presence, the photograph is a really one-dimensional situation, I’d much rather have all his multi-dimensional qualities and attributes being expressed. And so, I understand for some people, there may be a human need to have some representation that reminds them, that gets them to go back to thinking spiritually.
spirituality.com host: Cheryl in Seattle is asking again a physical question, but she’s connecting it to our spirituality talk. She says, “At the moment it is all I can do to put one foot in front of the other. The bigger picture of connecting to spirituality eludes me. How do I start?”
Judy Wolff: I’m grateful she’s putting one foot in front of the other. That’s not being flippant. We start with where we’re at. I’m grateful she’s conscious. I’m grateful she can put one foot in front of the other. We take inventory of what’s good and we multiply that. The times when I’ve been at the lowest low, when I feel like I’m six feet under the bottom of the barrel, if I can have one ray of light, sometimes that one little tiny ray of light means so much more to me than a gorgeous radiant day. And so, if spirituality eludes you, be grateful for one simple thing—the love of a friend, a bird singing outside the window—because even these small things are the grace and the beauty of God being expressed to us and they can be a really big help in a time like that. I’m just grateful that you can take one step in front of the other, and take the one step.
spirituality.com host: Yes. This is from Marie in Albuquerque. She says, “I feel like I am no longer capable of loving, but I’ve been told love is the key to spirituality. Now what?”
Judy Wolff: I think love is both the key and the outcome. The good news is divine Love, or God, is capable of loving, and you are being dearly loved. Your ability to express or reflect that is fully there. Oftentimes, we’re deluded into selling ourselves short when we really do feel love—when we really are able to be kind and helpful and selfless to others. But I think the more important thing isn’t what we can do and how good we are at loving, the more important thing is how infinite is divine Love? How perfectly is God caring and loving and taking care of you? And that’s going on, regardless of your own estimate of your own abilities—that’s what’s most important.
spirituality.com host: I think this might be a follow up question from Carol in Wisconsin, or someone who’s following up on an answer we’ve given. And that question is: “But how do we think correctly when there doesn’t seem to be a healing?” I was thinking that spiritual concepts maybe seem a little bit abstract, but the reality is that putting your thought in harmony with God and keeping it there, sometimes is very challenging but it does get you past those feelings of discouragement. In addition, we often expect a healing to come about a certain way, we’ve kind of outlined, I will think X and then Y will happen. But that isn’t always the way it works, is it?
Judy Wolff: No. Interestingly enough, the medical model outlines, you do X and Y and Z and then you should have this physical result. Really spiritual healing in Christian Science is not about getting a specific outcome. In actuality, healing is a side effect of Christian Science. The real purpose of the Science of the Christ or spirituality is to get to know God. And in the process, a great deal of good happens.
I’d like to give a specific case. I had a man call me and he had a large, what appeared to be, cancerous growth on his nose, and it was getting worse. He’d had two different people in the medical field who were friends tell him that it looked like it was skin cancer and it was very serious. And he’s a Christian Scientist and he really wanted to work it out in Christian Science. Initially, he was very terrified because he’s the only Christian Scientist in his family, came into it late in life, and most of his family—if not all—had died of various forms of cancer. And as he told me, the question wasn’t: Will you die of cancer in my family, it was, what kind of cancer will you die of? And so this had weighed very much in his thought.
We prayed together. He’d call occasionally over a period of several months—it probably went on for almost a year. We’d touch base every once in a while, we’d be praying about it, and he was really patiently going in it. But about six months into this, there was a real change in his thought. Up to that point he was just plain terrified. It was something he couldn’t ignore, and it was something everyone saw and commented on. It was bandaged and it was just, as he said, “just literally in his face.” At that point in his thought he lost his fear that this was going to kill him. His understanding of God as Spirit and his own spiritual being had become more predominant in his thought. He had more conviction in that reality than in the material, and he lost his fear. And from that point forward, we really started having fun praying together. His spiritual growth was amazing. We stopped talking about the problem and the comments and the things that were going on with it, and every conversation was about what he was learning about God, spiritual breakthroughs he was having, a sense of peace. And you could tell that even though the physical evidence had not changed, his thought had so changed that he was just now really motoring in a much more spiritual basis. The love of God, the desire to know more about God, had become so strong in his thought that he was actually now pursuing this for the love of God more than to fix this growth on his face.
We were working along this line when he called one day, and he was having another physical problem and he asked for some help. And I hadn’t heard from him for a while, and he said, “Oh, by the way, that thing on my face still seems to be there, but you know, I’m not even giving it any thought anymore.” And he began to share some of the spiritual ideas we were working with, and so we worked on the specific thing that he had called about on that day.
And the next day I got a call from his wife. And she said to me, “He asked me to give you a call because he had an appointment.” He had to run out the door at that moment. But,” she said, “he came in to me and he said, ‘Guess what? I just blew my nose.’” And she said, “Well, what the heck are you telling me that for?” And he said, “Because I haven’t been able to do it for more than a year—put anything near my face.” He said, “Look at my nose.” And this is a woman who had helped put a dressing on it for more than a year. It had not needed dressing the last couple of months. She said it was as clean and perfect as if nothing had been there. And neither one of them [noticed]—she laughed when she was telling me this—she said, “For a year I’ve had to look at that.”
The healing was so complete—he’d drawn so close to God, that his whole motive had been to draw close to God—that neither one of them had known when the healing took place. It truly was what it is in Christian Science, a side effect to the beautiful spiritual growth. But what was even more important, he was a new man that had a sense of purpose and belonging in God’s kingdom that he hadn’t had before. And it was just really almost a footnote about that healing. But more than that all the people who had told him about that had seen the healing and said they didn’t even know a surgeon who could have done the beautiful job that his nose looked like at that point. And so the real purpose is drawing close to God. But if you really draw close to God, you can’t help but see human changes for the better that best reflect God.
spirituality.com host: Well, that’s a wonderful healing. And Judy, we’re running a little close to our time. Would you have five or ten minutes? We’ve got a lot of questions. Could we just run a little bit over?
Judy Wolff: Oh, absolutely.
spirituality.com host: We won’t be able to do them all but it would be nice to do a few more. This is from Joy in Switzerland and it returns to the question of eternal life and the afterlife. She says: “Concerning the afterlife, how do you answer someone who asks about where we go and what we do after? If we are spiritual and eternal, what actually is eternal life?”
Judy Wolff: It’s interesting. I had a conversation with a Sunday School student who had had some of the similar questions. One of the things that the Sunday School student raised was, If we’re all spiritual, aren’t we all identical? And she said, “I don’t want to die and go to heaven where we’re all just this amorphous spiritual and we’re all the same. It sounds real uninteresting. Everything’s perfect. Nothing interesting’s happening.” She said that just doesn’t work for her.
I was thinking about that because we were talking about how each of us have all of God’s spiritual qualities, here, hereafter—wherever you want to call that location. We all have those spiritual qualities and we all have access to the infinitude of those spiritual qualities. And so she said, “That would be really boring.” I was praying about how I could better answer that. I was taking a visit in Florida where the skies hang very low to the ground in Florida—it’s very flat—and you feel like you could almost touch the clouds up there. And I was taking a walk where I walked over a bridge with a little height. I was just praying to God, thinking what is the right answer? What is happening here and hereafter? Are we all just sort of these spiritual amorphous blobs? I knew that wasn’t the answer, but I wanted a better definition myself.
And just then the sun was setting and it was one of those gorgeous skies. I think everybody listening can relate to that—where there were these beautiful clouds and the sun was coloring them all in different cotton-candy shades. And it was as if God was saying, Okay, here’s my blackboard again—these wonderful spiritual lessons. And I looked up and each cloud was expressing each of the qualities. Each had shape and form and outline and softness and fluffiness. Each expressed the beautiful colors that were being reflected off the sun and each did so beautifully and distinctly. There were no two identical. And that was my answer, that we are spiritual beings.
We have in a spiritual sense, color, shape, form, and outline—a beautiful spiritual identity that is recognizable. Now, the way you express kindness will always be distinct from the way I do, and we’ll always know who you are by the way you express your kindness and the way I express mine. It doesn’t make us amorphous spiritual blobs or heavenly angels that are boring. It makes us these beautiful ideas that reflect all of these infinite qualities. I remember looking up in the sky and thinking, it wouldn’t have been nearly as beautiful if there’d been one lone cloud because that would have been all that would have defined cloud for me. But having this huge horizon of just all these different clouds showed me how rich and vast a single idea called cloud was expressed just vastly here. There were so many variations and so many distinct ways of seeing the idea called cloud. Well, that’s the same way God expresses Himself in rich and varied and textured spiritual ideas. Not unlike the human condition, in the sense that we have so much richness and texture, only in spiritual terms.
And to answer the question, What’s it like beyond here? The best analogy that came for me, again, I’m using analogies and they’re imperfect by the very nature of being a human analogy trying to describe an infinite spiritual concept. But the human condition or the hereafter—at least in the resurrection experience before we really understand the fullness of God, because Jesus showed us that after death there’s still a resurrection period in which we need to correct and uplift our human concept until it really reflects the fullness of the divine, which then becomes the ascension experience—is sort of like if you got on a plane, and you fell asleep. And you woke up on a plane and you went from, we’re in Boston right now, and we went to Cincinnati. And if we woke up in Cincinnati, we’d be in a different place. But everything we held in our consciousness and held as true, would be true for us. There’d be different people there and we’d have a different experience, but we wouldn’t go to Cincinnati and say, okay, now I’m going to Cincinnati and all my problems are going to be solved, and everything’s going to be happy, and I didn’t like my job back in Boston but boy in Cincinnati I’m going to have a perfect job, and I’m going to find the perfect mate, and have the perfect home.
There’s a sense that hereafter suddenly by the very convenience of dying, which all mortals do in the material sense, that we’re going to awake and everything’s going to be perfect and everything’s going to be great and hunky-dory, and we’ll be free of whatever diseases or problems we had, and we’re going to find these perfect solutions in the kingdom of heaven. Well, Jesus’ resurrection said, No, there’s a little step in between here where we have to learn our lessons because—I make the analogy—it’s no different then when we pass on or fall asleep, so to speak, we wake up with the same consciousness we had prior to death. It’s just that it’s universally held in the human consciousness that the place we wake up in is different than the place we fell asleep in—that’s sort of the universal human dream.
Like we fell asleep on the plane in Boston but we wake up in Cincinnati, but we wake up with the same understanding and concepts we had when we went to sleep. We still have to spiritually outgrow that to appreciate the fullness of Spirit, God.
spirituality.com host: And that’s why it’s good to learn the laws of God in advance.
Judy Wolff: It’s like going to school. The more you learn in the class, than you don’t have to keep flunking the class and taking it over again. The more we learn here about Spirit, the more we can appreciate and experience Spirit right here, right now. And the more we don’t have to learn in Cincinnati.
spirituality.com host: Right. Although we both think well of Cincinnati.
Judy Wolff: Exactly.
spirituality.com host: This is a follow-up question, we’ve had a couple of questions about this. This is from Helene in Jupiter, Florida and she says: “When you were helping your friend in the hospital, how does Christian Science enter in and not appear to be mixing with medical thought?”
Judy Wolff: I’m grateful they did because it needs to be clarified. We all have the right to pray for anyone at any time because we’re not going in and mentally interfering. I was not going into that hospital to convert my friend, who’s a very devout Methodist. I was not going in there to change her thought. I have too much respect for her. I wasn’t going where I wasn’t asked to go. But, I have a right, as a child of God, to see her as God sees her, which is a beautiful, spiritual idea, as a child of God. I always have the right to correct my own thought about another individual, and I refused to accept what I see as a lie about her—that she is an ailing or dying or sick individual—because I don’t believe for a second that that’s what God is causing and making happen to her.
I have a right to say, Do I accept what’s before me mentally, or do I reject it? I wasn’t going there to convert or to change her thought. I went there to see her as I know God is causing her to be, which is whole and complete, which is a full representation, a full manifestation of God expressing all of His spiritual qualities, including strength and health and wholeness and wellness, and perfection. And I went with that in mind.
And that’s different than had she asked me for Christian Science treatment in which she’d say my thinking isn’t quite correct and I’d like some help in correcting my thinking. She did ask me for her prayers. And so I have a right to pray in the way that I know best, which is to see her as God is causing her to be. My seeing that allows me to see her more clearly humanly as a healthy, whole being. And by the next day, things had just come together for her, and she just felt those prayers had helped. I didn’t talk a lot about it. She asked me to pray, I told her I would, and I told her that God loved her, and that I loved her, and that I would go home and pray about it. And when I went home and prayed, I, myself, refused to accept the various medical diagnoses, without interfering with whatever she was doing, but I don’t have to accept that for her. I saw God loving and caring for her right where she was.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. Now this is from Pickering, Ontario, Canada, from Sonia, and Sonia’s asking, “How do I build that confidence as I seem to hear in all your voices when you speak. I am new in Christian Science, but I am eager.”
Judy Wolff: I love that! And I have to see that that is God working in you, and giving you that idea, and God is going to bring that to fruition. It’s like anything that you have confidence in. The more we get to know God, and the more we get to understand Christian Science, the more it proves itself true, and the more God reveals Himself and we get to know God so well, like a good friend. If I work a lot with a particular friend, I find that she always comes through when she says she does, she always follows through, so the more I get to know her, the more I have confidence in her.
The more we get to know God, the more awesome, the more omnipotent we see He is, the more powerful, the more help we see He is. We begin to really have confidence because He gives us evidence of His efficacy. The more I work with Christian Science, the more I appreciate, the more I learn, the more I see proofs of it. You know, I’ve just spent many years seeing day after day in the Christian Science practice, case after case like this, it goes way beyond anecdotal. It becomes scientific laws that you can really count on. And so, that’s a wonderful desire. I just trust God has planted that desire in you and will bring it to fulfillment. And the more you work, the more you will have evidence of that and you’ll have more confidence.
spirituality.com host: Absolutely. We’ve talked a lot about physical healing and this question takes us in a somewhat different direction. This is from Lucy in Illinois and she says, “How have you dealt with sensuality that has led to criminal actions with children and conviction?”
Judy Wolff: Well, let me give that thought. I could tell you that I’ve had actual cases of people who were being tempted by the carnal mind, as Paul calls it, or the mortal mind, as Mrs. Eddy calls it in Science and Health, to believe that they were tempted by pedophilia or violence. And at first those cases took me aback because it’s really an [affront] to everything that is pure and wholesome in our consciousness, and I had to get to the bigger picture.
And if this person was involved when I used the analogy in the German store, I had to get out of the human condition altogether because those type of things seem so mesmerizing because they are so awful. Something that seems so awful or violent or sensual it’s hard to heal it because it’s so impressive. For me, the easiest way is to turn from that picture altogether and get completely into the divine—to really see what God sees. And God does not see a pedophile or a terrorist. I’m not saying that they don’t exist humanly. I’m saying from God’s vantage point, He isn’t causing and creating these things. And the only way we can get to the point of seeing clearly, is to get to God’s vantage point where He sees the reality. I have come to see that the greatest sins, the greatest errors, force us to see God most clearly. And where the greatest sins or the greatest problems are, is the clearest picture of God, if we can see through it. It really causes us to go deeper than we’ve ever had to go, and we find that the purity, the innocence of God, was already there.
spirituality.com host: I’d just like to add briefly, a long, long time ago I read a book about a man who engaged in many terrorist activities—not a terrorist kind of thing that we know now, but it was bombing churches and synagogues in the South (United States). The book made really clear that this man had no redeeming qualities. But he kept pursuing this faith that was very antagonistic, it was a kind of hate-filled faith, and he read all the literature of it and he believed in it deeply. Somewhere along the line—and I don’t know how—he was back in prison again. And he was reading that literature, and one day he just lost all taste for it. He had this incredible, what they call “jail-house conversion,” except it was the real thing. His whole life changed and he was filled with sorrow for what he had done. And he became a minister, and his whole life turned around. I guess the reason I’m mentioning this is that even in situations where it seems totally hopeless or where the person that you’re thinking of seems totally unredeemable, it’s still possible.
Judy Wolff: It’s not hopeless to God. It’s like the sun. You look up on a really cloudy day and you think, no sun’s going to get through. But from the sun’s point of view, there’s nothing but light and sunshine, and that sun does break through the clouds at some point. And it’s up to the sun, not up to the clouds. It’s up to God and divine Love, not how hopeless this individual is.
Spirituality.com host: That’s so true. Now, there’s just one last question and then we’ll have to close. This is from Tony in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He says: “How much do I have to fight to live in abundance and harmony? Where’s the middle ground? Surrender versus fight? Passive versus active?”
Judy Wolff: Great question. And it’s finding that balance. We see it in Jesus. There were times in front of the Pharisees and scribes and his condemners that he was quiet. And there are other times when he called them hypocrites and turned over tables. So there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer here. Jesus really showed us in different circumstances there are times when we really have to battle and there are other times when we are as gentle as doves. And both, when done spiritually and led by God, are our right answer at the right time.
spirituality.com host: Judy, you’ve just been wonderful. I’m so thankful that you were here. Do you have any final comments before we close?
Judy Wolff: Only that I wish we didn’t have to stop!
spirituality.com host: I feel that way, too!
Judy Wolff: I just want to bring back that there are laws, spiritual laws (like we talked about with the German store), operating all the time, and on everyone’s behalf. I don’t care what listeners are calling themselves, what faith. The law and love of God is operating and blessing every individual.
But the joy of Christian Science is that we get to learn what those laws are and what spiritually is, and to utilize them. It’s like the laws of aerodynamics have always been around, the laws of electricity. Somebody had to figure out what they were and then put them to good use, and then look at the amazing things we’ve been able to do with them. Well the laws of Love, the laws of divine Science, or Christian Science, have always been around but Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy and a lot of individuals in between, such as Martin Luther, were inspired individuals who grasped to some degree these laws and helped others see them.
I think the culmination, for me, Science and Health, really takes these laws, puts them together, and we have one concise book of laws, based on the Biblical laws that we can use—those spiritual laws are right here. We can harness the power and the healing presence of God and utilize it to bless ourselves and all mankind. That’s what true spirituality is about, getting to know Spirit. Because we get to know Spirit, we get to know how good, how powerful Spirit is, and we get to use the laws of God to bless all mankind.
spirituality.com host: Thank you so much. And I’d just like to remind any listeners who are unfamiliar with the site, that you can read Science and Health on the site if you’d like to check it out.
Citations used in this chat
Science and Health
King James Bible