Get to know your spiritual identity

For a very long time, people believed that the world was flat. That belief, which was so entrenched that it was considered fact, never changed the structure of the planet, did it? Some courageous adventurers—and a new, accurate perspective—helped everyone see that the earth is a globe.

Similarly, to admit and act on the fact that man—in the generic sense—is 100 percent spiritual may sound as radical as the first person who proposed that the earth might be round. Yet just because everyone has been taught that the human state of existence is primarily physical, with a little spirituality thrown in, doesn’t make it so. But while we’re thinking of ourselves in material terms, we aren’t able to reap the benefits that are ours as the spiritual sons and daughters of God.

Soul, a name Mrs. Eddy used for God, is the true source of man. We each exist here and now as ideas of God. It’s not like we don’t have identities—we do. But just as the world isn’t flat, our identities aren’t physical. As the expression of God, our substance is spiritual, and we possess the ability to perceive, express, and enjoy the spiritual goodness that is truly ours.

How do we do this? Mary Baker Eddy explained in her main work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul.

“These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual consciousness, and they have this advantage over the objects and thoughts of material sense,—they are good and eternal.”

That may sound rather abstract, but if we apply those ideas, we’ll be able to break free from the false belief that we exist in a limited, material body. To resolve “things into thoughts,” we need to understand that God never created a helpless, material individual or universe. Like produces like. So Spirit naturally creates spiritually—a 100 percent spiritual creation. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” said Jesus.

When I think about qualities instead of physical attributes, it helps me understand what spiritual really means. To be spiritual means to be made of divine substance, of divine ideas. “Spirit, the synonym of Mind, Soul, or God, is the only real substance. The spiritual universe, including individual man, is a compound idea, reflecting the divine substance of Spirit,” says Science and Health.

Think about one of your good friends. Wouldn’t you agree that he or she is probably much more to you than a physical object? You might think of the person’s kindness, sense of humor, energy, intelligence. These are among the qualities that really define your friend, much more than a material body. They also evidence the character of our source, which is God.

Intelligence, for instance, is an attribute of Mind, and as Mind’s expression we are intelligent. Kindness is an attribute of Love, another name for God. We are healthy because Truth and Life are whole and eternal. We are satisfied and happy because we reflect the qualities of Soul.

Resolving “things into thoughts” in this way isn’t just a mental game. It actually has a practical effect. First, it gives us a totally new view of our capacities. If we’re empowered by infinite Mind, we can be confident that we’ll always know what to do and how to do it. Mind will guide us as we turn to it in prayer. And this understanding of our spiritual nature becomes progressively clearer as we look more and more to God for evidence of who we are.

Mary Baker Eddy instructed readers, “Emerge gently from matter into Spirit.” This doesn’t mean that we are on a trip, starting out as matter, and then becoming a mixture of matter and spirituality, finally ending up as a spiritual being. Nor do we start out as spiritual, become material for a while, and then return to being spiritual. No, we’ve always been spiritual. It’s just that we discover our spiritual natures step by step.

Familiarity with our spiritual identity frees us to heal and be healed of any problems we may confront. I remember one of the times when I had such an opportunity. I was playing baseball and involved in a collision with another player and broke my collarbone. I chose to rely on prayer for healing. But at first, I was a little bit like someone who thought he was a material being on a journey to spirituality. That is, in my prayer I was thinking of myself as a material body with a broken bone in need of mending.

That didn’t get me anywhere, so I stepped back and examined deeply what being truly spiritual means. Instead of focusing on trying to adjust a material collarbone, my prayers addressed the false belief that God’s spiritual expression—my actual identity—could somehow be injured. By doing this, I was recognizing that I didn’t live in matter and never had. So I couldn’t be in a material condition or situation that would lead to accident or injury. That was a different approach altogether.

As I prayed, I could feel God’s presence and assurance, and I realized that nothing could make me believe I had ever been or could be material. I began and ended my prayer by yielding to the fact that, as God’s creation, I am the expression of God, infinite being. My only true identity is spiritual and perfect because it’s the outcome of God. I decided to acknowledge only God and what God was expressing in me.

A couple of hours later, I noticed that I was completely healed. I hadn’t noticed it at first because I had been so focused on God and my spiritual identity, inseparable from Him. I was, in essence, exchanging the object of sense—belief in a broken collarbone—for the idea of Soul, my full perfection as God’s idea.

This experience and many others like it encourage me to continue to explore more deeply the nature of our spiritual identity. There’s obviously a lot to learn about it. But in the end, all the attributes of God, including spiritual perfection, are owned by God. And we have the privilege of imaging them. When I step back and look at the big picture, there’s no escaping the fact that what God knows is expressed as man. We’re safely spiritual, and perfectly at one with God here and now. That’s our present, spiritual identity.

Spiritual ideas:

Science and Health
269:14-20
468:21
485:14 (only)

King James Bible
John 3:6 that