Walking: an exercise with Mind rather than of the body
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
I love to walk. When I’m at work, I usually eat lunch in 15 minutes and spend the rest of my lunch break walking. On Saturdays, I take a half-hour walk early in the morning. I like to think of walking as an exercise with God, with Mind, rather than exercise for the body. It’s a time for me to talk with God.
My husband, meanwhile, prefers to jog. And occasionally, on weekends, when he's finished his six-mile run, he’ll walk with me. One Saturday, he got home just as I was heading out, and said he’d join me. I didn’t plan to do it, but found myself jogging with him—one mile, two miles. During the third mile, my husband asked if I would jog all the way with him. I didn’t say yes or no, but just continued at the same pace. I finished the entire six miles—and I didn’t complain or feel any fatigue.
During the jog, however, my husband warned me repeatedly that I would have aches and pains for days, maybe weeks afterwards. Every time he said this, I mentally contradicted the belief that I had to be sore, telling myself instead, No, nothing can happen. We exercise with Mind, not with our bodies. My activity was an opportunity to express God, divine Mind, not to strengthen, or stress, muscles.
When we reached home, I relaxed so I’d be ready to go to my job at a Christian Science nursing facility. As soon as I stood up, however, I felt intense pain from my hips to my waist. I started praying at once, declaring that I couldn’t be punished for doing and acting right.
This passage from the book of Job in the Bible explains the spiritual basis for my prayer: “I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause.”
Nursing involves lifting patients, and I didn’t feel up to doing that. But I kept reminding myself that nothing could stop me from serving a good cause. My husband drove me to work. I could hardly get out of the car, but my husband carried all my things inside for me, and that helped.
As I continued to pray, this question came to my thought: Do you want to reflect the perfect model? Or do you want to act like a bent old woman? From my study of Christian Science, I knew right away what the answer should be. The perfect model is what each of us truly is—the spiritual child, or idea, of God, complete and perfect.
With this spiritual model in thought, I hurriedly straightened up, but again felt intense pain. These lines from “the scientific statement of being” in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy were a wonderful antidote to my fear: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.”
I was thankful that day was not a busy one. I could hardly walk, but I continued to rely on the truth of “the scientific statement of being.” I even recited it aloud at one point.
To ease the pain, I pondered these beautiful statements from Science and Health: “There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence has all-power, and to acknowledge any other power is to dishonor God.” And: “Exercise this God-given authority. Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action.” These ideas helped me.
The following day, still praying about this difficulty, I went to church. I silently absorbed the gospel message in the Sunday service. I knew I was fully healed when the Reader came to this passage: "The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal."
Later in the service, the Reader read "the scientific statement of being," which I mentioned earlier in this article. Hearing this statement once again reconfirmed my conviction that I really was healed. As I walked downstairs after the service, I felt no pain. When I met my husband at the car and told him about my wonderful healing we both rejoiced.
Man as God's perfect reflection:
Science and Health
260:7
527:4
228:25-27
393:10-11
428:22-23
468:9 There
King James Bible
Job 5:8
II Cor 5:8