Have you ever watched a star shining out of the enormous night and sensed the deep mystery of it—why it is there, what kindled its fires, what exquisite poise sets it among its numberless neighbors and the silent worlds we know not of? Yet the mystery of that distant star is no greater than a mystery that calls to us every hour— the mystery of our own true self. Christian Science sets one on the grand path of self-discovery, leading him into the conscious presence of Deity, the creator of stars as well as of man.

Perhaps we have begun to understand ourselves and our relation to God by glimpsing the ultimate reality of His perfect spiritual goodness and the consequent falsity of material existence with its pain, sorrow, and limitation. Maybe this basic understanding has healed us of some difficulty, because any mistaken belief, which all troubles are, ceases to exist even as the fabric of illusion when in its place our consciousness takes hold of Truth.

To continue to progress in our understanding of what we really are, we must reach out beyond just knowing about Truth. Christ Jesus said, "I and my Father are one" ^{John 10:30;} and "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." ^14:9; Centuries before that Moses had seen God as I am; Paul saw the same thing when he wrote, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." ^{Gal. 2:20;} And Mrs. Eddy writes, "There is but one I, or Us, but one divine Principle, or Mind, governing all existence." ^{Science and Health, p. 588;} When we become actually conscious of our eternal self, we are conscious of God's presence, and a whole new dimension of being appears.

Our relationship with Deity is so special that there is no precedent to describe it completely in language. Mrs. Eddy uses the term "reflection" in this regard, but she warns us that "few persons comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection." ^{p. 301;} We usually think of reflection requiring a reflector of some kind, while Science shows that our true being is dependent upon nothing except God to be God's reflection, His emanation.

The word "I" is the only word we can voice that allows absolutely no separation from us, and in this sense it reveals exactly our relation to God. But it is not the mutable corporeal personality we call John or Betty or Bill, with its human sense of goodness and error, that is our divine source. Far from it. That personal sense of ego is a temporary and mistaken concept of ourselves, which never ultimately determines what we are at all. What we really are is the reflection of God.

Being God's manifestation, our real self dwells eternally with Him. We become aware of this in the degree that we manifest His nature, having no other consciousness of self but the spiritual; no personal sense of loving, but only gracious evidencing of the only Love; no sense of our own ability, but only the embodiment of God's action, the only action there is; no sense of personal goodness or health, but only the very emanation of God's singular perfection and beauty.

Letting loose of our false sense of ego will not make individuality fade. Identity is not lost in God but remains distinct and vivid forever. Identity, or individual consciousness, is the essential form that gives expression to all that God is.

Neither does gaining the true sense of self in God deprive us of human happiness and well-being. Indeed, it rejuvenates it, because then we are not so liable to be cramming human experience with self-will, self-justification, and all the little cousin selfs involved in the belief of a personal ego separate from God. Our humanhood can be as spiritual as we are willing to have it—as we care to let God, instead of matter or personal selfhood, be its source. Jesus showed us this way.

When we begin to be conscious of the divine image that we are, we feel we are coming home at last, we have never even been away. There is a wonderful sense of familiarity and comfort. This inner light becomes a conscious presence with us, an awareness persisting deep in our hearts although we are exceedingly busy with daily affairs.

Consciousness of our real being does not require human repose in order to appear. Jesus prayed for his followers: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." ^{John 17:15, 16.} We can be all that we spiritually are, today. God is not conditioned or cycled through material life and time, so neither are we. The intensity and vividness of mortal existence fade on the consciousness brightening with divine presence.

Instead of living with bunches of people and grinding circumstances, we truly live with God alone. The real presence of everyone and everything is Deity's still, eloquent reflection. And gradually, as we discover our own togetherness with God, the mortal sense of seeing others as separations from Deity—as something beside God—begins to lessen. Then when we look at those around us, we begin to see only Love's reflections; and something inside stirs to the understanding that there is nothing outside Love to improve, to change, to heal.

If we will humbly live out from what we presently understand of Truth, be it ever so small, not trying to clutch it or possess it, but letting it possess us, it will rework us, truly dissolving our mortal dreams in self-understanding. In the clear morning dawn of our real self, in reflection of the one infinite divine I, comes the unspeakable peace and freedom of knowing that what we most deeply seek we are.