When confronted with physical or mental distress, mortals usually attribute these troubles to causes or circumstances outside themselves, and they seek relief from other individuals or from methods outside themselves.

Most of us seem to find a sort of Cainish glee in claiming an alibi for our woes, blaming them on almost anyone or anything, but not on ourselves. Yet the gist of the matter is—however much we may try to dodge the fact—that because we accept a false sense of self, to which every one of our troubles is indigenous, they are always self-inflicted. Conversely, we can rid ourselves of every one of our troubles as we accept the true and harmonious sense of man which, in the degree that we understand it displaces the false sense of self with all its troubles. Shadows cannot adhere to sunbeams. Trouble cannot affix itself to God's man.

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 588), Mary Baker Eddy defines "hell," in part, as "self-imposed agony." Some persons still think of hell as a physical location which they have no part in making. They regard it as an extremely tropical environment evolved by a personal devil, but open to those not favored by God.

Contrariwise, Mrs. Eddy exposes the fact that hell is a state of mind, and that whatever measure of hell we experience is "self-imposed." Her keen perception thus indicates the way out of this miasma: "The human thought must free itself from self-imposed materiality and bondage" (Science and Health, p. 191). Thought must free itself from the hell that it has unwittingly imposed on itself. We impose a hellish experience on ourselves by mentally accepting the lie that our selfhood is what negative material thought says it is. This negative material mind says man is a physical body with a material mentality, the product of physical generation, and subject to the material beliefs of sin, sickness, and death. The material mind claims to make, control, afflict, and destroy this material man, and would support its claim by material sense testimony.

Take a simple illustration. Mortal mind suggests to Mr. A a sinful act. He puts up a mild resistance, but finally listens to the tempter's voice, believes he would derive pleasure from the experience, and soon finds his consciousness controlled with mesmeric evil thoughts impelling him to stage a sinful scene. He accepts the role of a sin-loving mortal willing to do evil's bidding. The alluring window dressing that evil pictures of pleasure and satisfaction from material indulgence he believes to be true.

He carries through the sinful experience. Soon afterward comes the temptation to repeat the offense and he succumbs, perhaps, not once, not twice, but often, with a deadening of his moral sense, and a state of thought blinded to his true being. Finally a serious physical disorder results. Were these unhappy experiences self-imposed? They were, if not intentionally, then ignorantly.

Now if Mr. A in his extremity should choose to give up his mistaken concept of origin and manhood for the spiritual and true concept of God, and of man as His son—as many have done—he can find his way out of the morass in which, by his own consent, he has become involved. If he is willing persistently to challenge the suggestions and conclusions of the negative material mind on the basis that God, good, is the one true cause or Mind, and that man is always Mind's sinless representative, or spiritual and God-sustained idea, he has begun to work his liberation. And this applies whether it be sickness, failure, or unhappiness that appears as his temptation and affliction.

For the many false fears and mistaken concepts characteristic of material selfhood, he can find an antidote in the spiritual truths of the Bible and the teachings of Christian Science. He can disentangle his sense of selfhood from the net in which he seems caught. He can begin to see something of the fact that the material misconception of cause and effect never has supplanted or endangered God and His universe—true cause and effect—wherein his true life eternally is.

He sees that in the degree he destroys his belief in the misconception with an understanding of the true, or spiritual, idea of God, creation, and man, he frees himself from all the afflictions resulting from the mistaken belief, be they fears, sinful impulses, physical disorders, or material losses. God and His law outlaw them every one. He does not put off all mortality in a moment, but he does definitely begin to prove through his increasing understanding of his relationship to God, and of God's control of his thoughts and life, his natural superiority to fear, failure, sin, and sickness.

As he asserts with confidence his sonship with the Spirit, or Mind, that is Deity, and learns to silence negative, aggressive suggestions with spiritual facts, he begins to realize his native dominion over error's lie—the material concept of God and man. He knows that God's power is operating for and in him to bring to light, with understanding, the health, holiness, fearlessness, and harmony which prove that God is now the only real Mind, Life, Soul, and substance of man. It is the Father Mind that worketh in us through His constructive thoughts to accomplish our deliverance from all self-imposed agony. Says the Apostle Paul in one of his epistles, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God" (II Cor. 3:5). If it shocks us to find our troubles are self-imposed, it should rejoice us to discover that through our God-enlightened true self, they can all be overcome.

Paul Stark Seeley