Christian Science teaches that God is the source of your individuality, that you express Him in your forever individual way. Your way is a gift to you from God. It is built into your inseparable relationship to God, as your expression of His nature, His qualities of love and intelligence.

The way you and I and each of us express what we know and what we are as God's reflection is our individuality—the true character of each of us. True individuality is the spiritual and complete yet eternally unfolding expression of God, who is Mind, Spirit, Soul, divine Love, unlimited in expression and development.

Your individuality, then, is not comprised of limited abilities and personal traits, either good or bad. It does not depend on material advantages or possessions, is not determined by heredity, and cannot be developed by mere human will or ambition. Neither can it be submerged by negative human traits that birth may have seemed to saddle you with.

Logically, there is infinite variety in true infinite being—no dull sameness characterizes spiritual individuality. To express Himself completely, God needs each of us. Each one counts. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "The divine Mind maintains all identities, from a blade of grass to a star, as distinct and eternal." ^{Science and Health, p. 70;}

Do you know that there are no two blades of grass exactly alike? I did not believe this until I examined a handful closely and found each blade to be different.

Each blade of grass has its roots in the soil from which its individual nourishment comes. The blades grow closely side by side but are not dependent upon one another. Yet how beautifully rich is the well-tended lawn to which each makes its individual contribution!

There is great individual variety of dress and life-style today. Some of this is merely personal nonconformity or rebelliousness. True individual expression comes from honest self-knowledge, coupled with the understanding of infinite Spirit, God, as the source and cause of all true being. "God has countless ideas," Mrs. Eddy tells us in the Christian Science textbook, "and they all have one Principle and parentage." ^{ibid., p. 517;}

Each one of us, dependent alone on his divine source—Mind, Spirit—for life and intelligence, wisdom and joy, grows and develops individually. We can, however, work and live together in harmony without becoming personally dependent upon one another. Valuing our individuality means further that we cannot be negatively influenced or limited by others and that we won't limit them. Nor would we put them on the defensive, nor feel so ourselves.

As we learn to accept for ourselves and each other our common yet individual source, the one divine Mind, God, our growth individually is free and strong. We are also able to act harmoniously as a whole when group action—family, church, or business—is called for.

No conflict can result in inharmony when differences are respected and honored. Self-importance, opinionatedness, criticism, fade when individual freedom is understood to be inherent in one's identity and in that of one's neighbor. Loving one's own individual freedom as Mind's reflection, we love to grant it to another. Feeling free to express ourselves honestly, we gladly accord this freedom to another.

To release each other in this way does not mean indifference. Rather is it true appreciation and support of one another because it recognizes our individual oneness in Christ—our unity with infinite Mind, the one and only cause and source of being. Truly to value individuality in another is a generous acknowledgment of good and strengthens recognition of individuality in ourselves.

Since we have the same loving source, we can see there is no reason to wish we were like someone else, or had what he has, and so we can have no reason to be envious or self-abasing. If so tempted, we can just put our roots down deeper and draw more fully on the infinitude of ideas the one Mind is ever imparting to its individual expression.

Valuing our own individuality, we value others' also and do not try to change them over to our pattern, to the way we think they should be. Nor do we try to change ourselves to their pattern or the way we think they want us to be. We don't waste time comparing or competing. And we need not indulge the suggestion that if so-and-so were out of the way we would be so much freer. Nobody can limit us.

If we are wise, we measure our efforts not by what others do but by our own good use of what we know ourselves to be as God's full and individual expression. And we can be quick to rejoice in another's good. For spiritually to see good is to be good, and to have it.

How satisfying it is to know that each one of us has all the love, all the wisdom, all the good he needs, to use in just the right way for him. Mrs. Eddy says, "Man reflects infinity, and this reflection is the true idea of God." ^{ibid., p. 258;} This helps us to take hold of any task with confidence and assurance. We discard self-doubt, self-condemnation, and fear.

This wonderful teaching enabled me to overcome a shyness so severe that through school years I was given written tests whenever the other pupils had oral examinations. This only increased a terrible self-consciousness, which continued through my junior year in college. At that point Christian Science came into out home. Through its merciful teaching of individual spiritual freedom, I was healed of shyness and have enjoyed reading reports and addressing large groups of people on many occasions.

While we can trust our individual oneness with God as His expression, we should distrust whatever binds or limits us. This can never mean to neglect self-discipline nor to act without kindly consideration for others; these qualities are part of our individual expression of God, who is Mind and Love. Nor could it mean we do not have to pray and listen for God's voice to guide us; it is from God that our individual ability to think and act rightly comes.

Each has his own responsibility to fulfill God's purpose for him, and each has a place no one else can fill. The distinctness of each is forever. Since the source of your being is forever, it unfolds throughout eternity and is continuously supplied, spiritually renewed and refreshed.

The myriad identities of the one Mind, God, are individually distinct and eternal and are harmoniously related by reason of their common source in one all-inclusive divine law. No matter how little you may believe you have grasped of the divine fact of your individual place in God's family of ideas, be aware of your ability to cherish and protect it while it grows into fuller realization. The Revelator records these words of the Spirit: "That which ye have already hold fast till I come." ^{Rev. 2:25.}