Sometimes healing eludes us because we are so intent on changing the physical condition that we overlook the real need —the self-evangelization by which we blend with the love of God through the quality of our thought, and thus experience the spiritual harmony that produces health. We need to see that our well-being is really the product of our spirituality, of a calm, clear realization that God and man are coexistent and eternally perfect.

The more we live in spiritual reality, consciously apart from matter—that is, the more we feel and know ourselves to exist in God, in infinite divine Mind—the better for us. We outgrow our troubles by actively rising into a higher spiritual consciousness.

Jesus taught that we must get our priorities straight if we would demonstrate God's goodness. He said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." ^{Matt. 6:33;} And he practiced what he preached, because it is recorded that on occasions he retired to a solitary place, where he could refresh and revivify his awareness of God's allness and man's unity with Him. As a preparation for his healing work he kept alight the spiritual glory of his inner vision, his perception of the kingdom of God within.

The conscious blending of thought with God is the action of the Christ-idea. It empowered the Master, and it will do the same for us if we follow his example. Mrs. Eddy tells us, "Christ illustrates that blending with God, his divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth." ^{Science and Health, p. 316;}

Rarely do we reach at one leap the heights of a healing spiritual awareness. The process usually calls for a step-by-step climb requiring intelligence, patience, courage, and inspiration. Little by little we outgrow the limiting, disease-producing belief that man is living matter and gain clearer and still clearer glimpses of our true spiritual identity in God.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Christ Jesus set up the target we aim for. He said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." ^{Matt. 5:48;} But he knew that men were still in the swaddling clothes of false belief, with many lessons to learn before they could closely approach that goal. Jesus' mission was to show us the way to God—to lead us to find our oneness with Him by lifting thought into a conscious blending with the divine character and nature, until finally we put on in its fullness the Mind of Christ.

Our understanding of man's unity with God develops measurably as we meekly and persistently recognize our complete dependence on Him in every department of our lives. One might ask himself these simple but vital questions: How often do I pause during an average day to recognize that at this instant I am at one with causative divine Mind? How often do I take the time, or make the time, to acknowledge quietly and gratefully that God is the actual Life, substance, and intelligence of my being? Certainly, if one stays alertly aware of his true selfhood and its inseparability from God, he will be rewarded with that deep, satisfying, health-giving harmony that this conscious blending with divine Love alone can supply.

Mrs. Eddy makes this beautifully clear when she writes, "When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven." ^{Science and Health, p. 263;}

As we strive consciously to work "only as God works," it gradually dawns in our thought that all real life—your true existence and mine—must be the expression of the one divine Life. Because Life lives, we live. We are living entities because we are embraced in the one boundless I am. Likewise we begin to see that all intelligent knowing is the expression of God, the All-Mind, and that this Mind is expressing itself in a multiplicity of conscious identities—in the real individuality of you and me and everyone everywhere. Thus we gradually rise to see that God is not only near at hand but actually the sum total of being, the All-in-all. We learn that man lives eternally in the substance of God's love.

If we are faced with some form of disease, the prayerful, grateful recognition of these basic facts can bring healing. This is possible because, as Christian Science teaches, all matter, including the human body with the diseases that plague it, is merely a subjective image in the human mind. And a mental image can always be controlled and corrected by spiritually enlightened thought. The assurance of divine Love's omnipresence and omnipotence heals disease by destroying the fear that causes it.

As thought is filled with the Christ-idea—with what Paul speaks of as "the fulness of him that filleth all in all" ^{Eph. 1:23;} —peace and joy appear in consciousness, blotting out the mental darkness underlying suffering. Here Mrs. Eddy's words are clear and to the point: "The sweet, sacred sense and permanence of man's unity with his Maker, in Science, illumines our present existence with the ever-presence and power of God, good. It opens wide the portals of salvation from sin, sickness, and death." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 196;}

Inspired by these potent truths, we can consciously blend with the divine presence, which constitutes and supports us, and then reject the evidence of disease as a mesmeric illusion. We can vigorously affirm that this falsity has no place to exist, no ability to act, no substance to take form, and no mind with which to know or feel itself. Nothing is really present or going on but the all-space-filling substance and activity of God, the one perfect divine Mind. We can prayerfully and persistently acknowledge and affirm this fact until the illusion is dispelled and harmony restored.

Job said, "I know that my redeemer liveth." ^{Job 19:25.} Those who have purified their lives sufficiently to feel the inner illumination of spiritual sense have no doubt that God exists and is ever present. They are learning to know Him as conscious, living, active Love, and to see their own identity included in the nowness of His allness. They have discovered the Christly way—the blending of thought with God that heals.