A friend of mine is a coach and was working with a student one day on gaining more accuracy and strength. The student had been training for a few hours and was very tired, so when the coach asked him to correct his technique again, the student replied, “I just can’t!” Immediately he knew he had said the wrong thing. But before he could say another word, the coach gently told him, “Don’t say ‘can’t.’ Say, ‘I’m not doing so right now, but I will practice to do so!’ ”

When it comes to developing our spiritual sense and understanding our relation to God more deeply, we may feel a bit like this student. We may want to grow and get stronger spiritually, practice more of what we’ve learned in Christian Science, and bring about quicker healings, but when challenged with a problem in our lives, we may hear ourselves saying, “I can’t!”

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (p. 209). This capacity comes directly from God and is ours by reflection. The divine Mind that knows us as its eternal creation has provided us with the ability to know Mind, God, as our creator. The Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings elucidate our present perfection and our unity with the one divine Mind as its reflection. Consistently keeping thought open to this spiritual message enables us to demonstrate our oneness with God in our daily lives and grow in our spiritual understanding and expression. 

The divine Mind that knows us as its eternal creation has provided us with the ability to know Mind, God, as our creator.

Sometimes, though, it may seem difficult to grow spiritually. Thought keeps harking back to a problem or hatred or evil—to a false suggestion that something other than God, good, is present and has power. It’s helpful to remember that our spiritual sense is our defense against this mesmeric materialism. It is our armor against the false beliefs of life in matter, including sin, disease, and death. 

Christ Jesus counsels us, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). To watch means to keep alert to what is passing before our thought. It means to utilize our spiritual sense to determine its source and either accept or reject it. Is what’s passing before our thought good, and therefore from God, or erroneous, and therefore stemming from the carnal mind? If the need is to reject a false belief, say, of disease, then we can be alert that we don’t allow our thought to outline disease, check the so-called progress of disease, or fear disease. Rather, through our spiritual sense, we can turn our thought to God, good, and replace the belief of disease with the understanding of Spirit, God, and our relation to God as His spiritual reflection.

We can also deepen our spiritual sense through scientific, prayerful reasoning—through prayer that affirms pure fact: “I am, as God’s child, at one with Him. I am attracted only to Spirit, good. My spiritual sense is God-given and God-protected.” In this manner we uplift our spiritual sense and understand ourselves as pure and undefiled, separate from the elements of the carnal mind, away from the worldliness of materialism that would claim to tarnish, warp, or deteriorate our relation to divine Spirit.

How do we know what elements of mortal experience may be pulling us away from the purity of our oneness with God? We might ask: Do I listen to spiritual sense when choosing movies or books or lyrics, to avoid putting into thought a picture of a degraded mortal experience? Do I expose my thought to what Science and Health refers to as “nauseous fiction,” “materialistic knowledge,” or “novels, remarkable only for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity” (pp. 195–196)? If we are praying to follow the leadings of spiritual sense, we’re alert to turn from these mortal falsehoods and instead seek out expressions of purity of thought and action.

Spiritual sense is our defense against the false beliefs of life in matter, including sin, disease, and death.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: “Man’s enslavement to the most relentless masters—passion, selfishness, envy, hatred, and revenge—is conquered only by a mighty struggle.… If man is not victorious over the passions, they crush out happiness, health, and manhood” (p. 407). Our spiritual sense defends us against any and all enslavement to “relentless masters,” which are matter-based. Whether we’re being confronted with obvious forms of temptation, such as alcohol and drugs, or subtler ones, such as selfishness and envy, our spiritual sense guides us up and out of these quagmires of material belief, onto the safe and wholesome paths of Truth. This understanding, this spiritual sense, shows forth our true and only nature as God’s image, pure and perfect.

If we find the going a bit slow or repetitive, it helps to not only be patient with ourselves, but to also realize the fallacy of saying, “I can’t,” and give ourselves the needed encouragement by stating, “I’m not doing so right now, but I will practice to do so!” And then to keep on practicing, keep on watching, until we can say with confidence, “I can! And, I am!” 

We all can yield to divine Mind’s leading and guidance. We can gain a deeper, unswerving sense of God’s presence and power. We do this through earnest prayer, through watching our thought, and through scientific, right reasoning that reveals to us our “conscious, constant capacity to understand God.”