One may not guess it to read the headlines or catch the top of the evening news, but the lives of many people on this planet are fairly peaceful, well adjusted, and even blessed with touches of laughter, affection, and a sense of purpose.

Keeping a balanced view of life isn't always easy in a world of rapidly expanding communications. Especially when the communication falls prey to an emphasis on the sensational. It takes discipline, perceptiveness, and a good dose of plain old common sense to sort out what's worth taking into consciousness and what's important to reject. Mentally swallowing everything that arrives at the doorway of our thought can lead to mental indigestion!

It is vital to our well-being for us to recognize that we have spiritual sense, the capacity to perceive God's reality. His reality can stand in stark contrast with what the world is telling us. We should prayerfully and gratefully acknowledge our spiritual sense. Then we'll be able to restrain the world's attempt to project into our consciousness excessive attention to thoughts that obscure the continuity of life and goodness. Especially thoughts of mortality, thoughts of death.

Maybe the projection is as simplistic as the bad guy getting blown away in an animated cartoon on Saturday morning TV. Or the Saturday evening movie where the good guy gets it. At another level, the daily newspaper usually carries an obituary column. Then there are news items in all media placing before us countless examples of mortality. Also neighbors talk of a loved one's passing. Society eulogizes those who are famous. A friend in his advanced years, on hearing of the well-known American actor John Wayne's death, sighed in all seriousness, "Well, what's the use of staying around here any longer now that John's gone!"

When you think of it, in today's world, quite a lot about death would always seem to be forcing itself into everyday life. How like the mortal mind! Attempting to feature death in the midst of life!

Perhaps it's not surprising in the light of all this that some people might find that thoughts about death are arriving a little too regularly. Well, most would say, isn't that just the way things are? Actually, no! That's not the way things are. Christ Jesus offered a strikingly different perspective on how things are. He said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). So we don't deal with death by ignoring it or by hiding from it—but by rejecting the concept totally.

In a way, worldliness seems almost in competition with Christliness. The Christ is persistently offering to us truly eternal life. A world of mortality would all too often offer limitations and death. Some might suggest that Jesus must have been pointing to eternal life after death. But since the Bible calls death an enemy, a more enlightened view would be that Jesus was calling for eternal life before death — more exactly, eternal life instead of death.

Does this seem unrealistic? Mary Baker Eddy focuses on this point of eternal life now instead of after death when she writes: "'This is life eternal,' says Jesus, is, not shall be; and then he defines everlasting life as a present knowledge of his Father and of himself,— the knowledge of Love, Truth, and Life. 'This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent'" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,p. 410).

Eternity is not a future time; it isn't something one dies into later. It's something one grows into now. Eternal life is an awakening to God's reality at this present moment, this forever moment. With your spiritual sense, guard consciousness against the way the world would have you dwell on facets of mortality instead of truths of immortality. St. Paul insists that "this mortal must put on immortality" (I Cor. 15:53).

Thoughts of death aren't limited just to feelings about those who have passed beyond this scene. They may be thoughts about someone presently in the public eye, or a loved one, or even a casual acquaintance, who could or might die. At other times they may be thoughts about "little deaths," such as the end of a good time, the end of financial well-being, the end of a friendship. Thoughts of death or the expiring of good can take many forms for people to think about, worry about, wonder about.

And yet, by cultivating our spiritual sense, we'll discern that the Christ is moment by moment coming to us, revealing the reality of life, assuring us of its abundance, its present eternity. We have a choice. When the world subtly or aggressively suggests its thoughts of death, we can vigorously and courageously claim the thoughts that come from God—Christly thoughts, pure thoughts that reassure us of life and peace, not death and evil. Jeremiah recognized the coming to consciousness of this divine healing power and presence in these words: "I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end" (29: 11). One of the original Hebrew meanings of the word end is "posterity." These are the thoughts—those of endlessness or immortality—that we have a right to receive and to manifest.

If you ever find yourself preoccupied with thoughts of death, rise up mentally and spiritually. Insist that the Christ is present at this very moment giving you thoughts of life—abundant thoughts of life.

You can respond to those thoughts of life. You can participate in fulfilling Jesus' promise of having a more abundant sense of life. In fact, accepting this emergence of the Christ within your consciousness can open the door to glimpsing the reality of eternal life here and now.