Spiritual Thinking Is Positive

One morning I felt intensely miserable. Angry, complaining, critical thoughts seemed to assail me from every direction. In short, I had a king-sized grouch. And, not surprisingly, I was not feeling well.

As I began to ponder the situation, I suddenly realized that the cause of my misery was not the weather, not my fellow commuters, not even a physical problem. It was, in a word, negativism. I saw that since leaving home that morning my mental attitude had become totally self-seeking. And whatever appeared to threaten or disrupt my selfish frame of mind was being mentally pounced upon with feelings of righteous indignation, resentment, and the like. To heal this unhappy predicament, I simply had to make the effort to reverse this negative mental attitude.

And so, tentatively at first, but with increasing confidence, I mentally reached out to embrace the universe with outgoing joy, gratitude, and love. I affirmed the allness of God. Soon, positive, constructive, spiritual thoughts began to take control, and a sense of peace and well-being surged into my consciousness. When I reached the office, I was perfectly well.

What had happened? As a student of Christian Science, I knew that positive human thinking had not produced the healing. But the effort to acknowledge the allness of God, good, and to express His ever-present goodness and love had opened the way for Truth to destroy the mesmeric, self-imposed dream of material existence and reveal my true identity as God's spiritual reflection. The mesmeric sense of life in matter had been replaced, in a degree, by a sense of spiritual well-being, and healing had inevitably followed.

Someone may ask, "But since there is so much evil, would not an acknowledgment of the allness of good require a trick of the imagination?" Christian Science teaches that because the only real universe is God-created, and because God is infinite Spirit, or Mind, the universe must be spiritual, not material. What appears to be a material universe is a negation, the physical senses' supposititious opposite of the real universe of infinite Spirit.

Mrs. Eddy writes: "Spirit is positive. Matter is Spirit's contrary, the absence of Spirit. For positive Spirit to pass through a negative condition would be Spirit's destruction." Science and Health, p. 173;

To embrace the positive universe of Spirit, God, we need to reverse the belief of a material universe. This is accomplished as we learn to correct the false, negative traits of the "carnal mind," such as egotism, pride, and hate. This false mind, which Paul described as "enmity against God," Rom. 8:7; is constantly trying to deceive us into accepting matter as real and powerful. It claims that man is a mortal, and that this material existence is positive, substantial, true.

Conversely, false belief also asserts that the opposite of matter is negative, insubstantial, untrue. It brazenly identifies itself as man, as you and me, and says, in effect, "You have a problem, and it is positively real and powerful!"

But we don't have to listen to these deceptions. In spite of error's plausibility, it can never be true, however much we concede it reality by thinking it is true. Mrs. Eddy makes this statement: "Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent." Science and Health, p. 186;

When we become convinced of evil's nonexistence and aware of the falsity of the claims of the physical senses—evil's sole claim to a lifeline—evil no longer influences us or controls our experience.

Evil is nonexistent in Truth. Truth never really attempts evil's destruction. The activity of Truth is not an eternal war with matter and evil. Truth's activity is wholly and positively being what it is. And man is Truth's expression. The realization of this brings healing. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Truth is affirmative, and confers harmony. All metaphysical logic is inspired by this simple rule of Truth, which governs all reality." ibid., p. 418;

We need to guard ourselves against the notion that our spiritual progress is solely dependent upon our abstention from evil. Christian Science shows that while we certainly need to overcome all error, progress comes as the result of our positive expression of God, good, divine Love. It is the healing radiance of the Love we reflect, not only our struggles with error, that banishes the dark negations of materialism from our lives and the lives of others.

A denial of error does not justify feelings of indignation, criticism, or vindictiveness. These attitudes would only make a reality of evil, whereas evil should be overcome. These approaches would make us personal arbiters between Truth and error. But our denial of error needs to be based on the allness of God, good, the one divine Mind. Then we cease to see ourselves as mortals battling with a multitude of upsetting errors. When positive Mind, divine Love, controls our thinking, we cease to be disturbed by error and handle it with calm assurance.

Christ Jesus' rebuke of sickness and wrong was always positive, firm, and clear. He did not compromise with evil, for he knew that evil, in whatever form, was always untrue. The directness and simplicity of the healing Christ, Truth, was evidenced in Jesus' counsel to his followers: "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." Matt. 5:37.

We can be positive in handling error by affirming Truth. Reaching out with Christly love, we can silence negativism with our clear, positive awareness of what is divinely true.

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PAUSE WITHIN PROGRESS
February 23, 1974
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