What the body needs most

In the last couple of decades there’s been more and more emphasis on a good diet and exercise as being crucial to one’s health. But certain foods seem to go in and out of fashion. Fad diets help people lose weight but aren’t always considered healthy. Individual needs can vary so much that it’s not always easy to define what constitutes proper diet and exercise.

What I’ve found most helpful in thinking through these issues is that our thoughts about our bodies and our health are actually more influential than anything else. This isn’t commonly accepted knowledge, but I’ve proved it over and over again in my life and I know many others have, too.

While life looks and feels physical in nature, my experience indicates that those appearances are deceiving. Life is, in fact, spiritual. Life is God, the divine consciousness, or Mind. A greater appreciation of the spiritual nature of life is what brings us better health. And this health is stable, not subject to the whims of the latest health theory or diet.

Because God is Spirit, His creation is spiritual. He couldn’t create something unlike Himself. So trying to fix or improve the man He created—meaning men, women, and children—through material remedies is ultimately futile.

There’s certainly good intention behind society’s focus on exercise and proper diet. But I find it’s important to remember that a focus on life as physical and material doesn’t supply long-term answers to questions of health. A material view of the body inevitably includes advancing age, physical decline, and ultimately death.

I had an experience a few years back that illustrates this. After dinner one evening, I began having strong chest pains and was soon curled up on the floor from the pain. The one thing available to me immediately was what I’ve found most helpful in serious instances like this—prayer. As I turned to God, I realized that more than being physically uncomfortable, I was disheartened.

The pain’s source was in my feeling of separation from God, divine Spirit. It was depressing and even scary to feel as though I were subject to a material body and material conditions. If my ability to experience life was dependent on a body controlled by material laws I could do nothing about, then I was doomed. Limitation, pain, sickness, and death would be unavoidable.

I figured this is what the Psalmist in the Bible was getting at when he cried out to God: “My flesh and my heart faileth ….” But the psalm doesn’t stop there. It goes on, “… but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.” It’s God who lives, and He forever expresses Himself, Life, through His creation. That’s me and you and everyone else.

This thought bolstered me. And when I could get to the phone to call a friend to help me pray, he shared this same message with me. Life and well-being are found in God. Awareness of the thoughts coming to us from God not only brings the body the care it needs, but helps us feel truly loved and nurtured. It keeps us safe and on track with God’s good and inspired purpose for us.

As a result of my prayers and those of my friend, I understood more deeply that this awareness was what I wanted and needed. And it was what my body really needed. Two hours after the pains began, they completely vanished. Interestingly enough, some months later, they returned a bit while I was feeling burdened about something. But once again I prayed, and I’ve been free of them ever since. Perhaps most significant, I’ve felt more convinced of God’s unstoppable good purpose.

Referring to God as Mind, Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health explains, “Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images of thought and destroying the woes of sense which each day brings to a nearer tomb.” It’s only a human perspective that brings the feeling of pain and doom. God’s inspiration replaces that feeling with a conviction of the unstoppable nature of good in life. This feeds and sustains us beautifully.

St. Paul encouraged us to “be absent from the body” and “present with the Lord.” This can happen as a result of an invigorating run or from spending less time eating. But ultimately, we need the inspiration that expands our horizons toward Spirit and a spiritual sense of life. As our conviction of Spirit’s presence and love increases, we see more clearly that each of us has a good purpose, given to us by God not just for today but for all eternity.

Spiritual creation:

Science and Health
248:8
 

King James Bible
Ps. 73:26
II Cor. 5:8