A Man I know was without a job. He'd resigned from his former position, but the resignation had been forced. This came early in what he'd hoped would be a promising career in a large industry, and the temptation to feel inadequate, guilty, and frustrated was strong. Yet, as a student of Christian Science, this man knew he must resist that temptation.

He reached out to God, Spirit, in prayer and soon could see that instead of wrestling with a sense of personal failure he had to walk away mentally from a mortal, material sense of life.

But how could he do that? At first it was difficult to see the way; yet as he continued to pray it became clearer to him that God, divine Love, is ever present. He had often read in the Bible that man is made in the image of God, so he concluded that the possibility for him to prove that he was actually God's spiritual image, or reflection, was also ever present.

We might say that he was faced with a decision to choose what he really was: an inadequate and incomplete mortal or the image of God, divine Love. Both concepts seemed real to him, though he realized that it wasn't actually possible for both to be true. In fact, they were opposite and entirely separate from each other, though claiming to occupy the same space.

As he prayerfully communed with God, divine Mind, he knew which concept he wanted to understand, accept, and live. It was the divine. Right then and there this man resolved to reject as false the mortal sense of himself as subject to failure, chance, or loss.

He didn't reject his daily life or the people in it, but he did reject a godless sense of his life. He rejected what worldly thought was saying about him and refused to be impressed by its cruel assertions. He rejected feelings of resentment, disappointment, self-condemnation. In his desire to listen to God, he rejected every thought which he suspected wasn't given to him by divine Love.

Acknowledging that God was the only Mind, the Mind of man, he yielded prayerfully to what God was revealing to him of his real selfhood. He saw that his only work was to glorify God. While he tried a few jobs that didn't last, he kept on moving, through daily and sometimes hourly prayer, to a higher, holier state of thought where he was able to acknowledge honestly that God and His creation were all that were really present. It became clear to him, then, that his real identity was spiritual, perfect, and complete in God.

As he continued to acknowledge and nourish his understanding of spirituality through communion with the one Mind, everything that had looked so hopeless turned around. The job dismissal became a springboard to his becoming an independent producer in his industry. He loved his new work—it was both remunerative and satisfying—but told me that the best part of the whole experience was that he found his own spirituality and the knowledge that apparent failure is not an end. Beyond failure can be spiritual progress, and if our thought and effort have a spiritual basis for their hope, we can move on to that progress.

If man is regarded as a material being adrift in a hostile universe, there's little basis for hope. But man created in God's own image, governed by God, Love, always expresses Love's infinite goodness.

"That's not me!" you say? Think again. Have you ever intuitively felt that some wrong circumstance just shouldn't be? Have you ever rebelled and decided that no matter how bad things looked, they just weren't the final word on existence? If you have, you've been harking back to your real selfhood, the man of God's creating.

Many of us have had glimpses of spiritual manhood from time to time. If we keep on with that vision and don't let it go, the integrity and harmony of spiritual being become more tangible to us. We find that spiritual concepts and high qualities of thought interest us far more than mere physical objects or material ways of thinking. We don't become cold or indifferent to our surroundings; instead we recognize the fact of man's spiritual nature and live more consistently with our newfound recognition.

If we're expecting but not yet experiencing Spirit's goodness, we need only continue further down the same mental road we're already on. Don't stall! There is a journey, a mental and spiritual movement involved. Far from being impressed with the negative, almost dreamlike images of mortality, we'll move spiritually to that "secret place of the most High," ^{Ps. 91:1.} as the Psalmist puts it, where we can accept only what Mind is telling us about any given situation.

When we, through prayer, focus only on the spiritual fact, we begin to leave behind a mortal sense of life. We come into conformity with Christ and see that God, Soul, and nothing else, has formed us. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, shows that it is God who is impelling this progressive step. "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth." ^{Science and Health, p. 14.} The realization that life is more than "the belief and dream of material living" saves us if we're prepared to learn the true sense of Life, which is God.

Failure is never the end of an experience, though it may sometimes be the middle. But spiritual understanding doesn't confuse the end with the middle. It keeps on where a merely human effort would quit. Listening to and obeying Spirit, we'll be shown the way out of resentment, irritability, fear, pain, despair, or whatever is the challenge. Our holiness—the purity of man's nature as God's reflection—saves us as we understand it and live it.

Daily communing with Mind, we naturally seek out diviner thoughts and holier concepts. We begin to value them and honor them as perhaps we never have before, because we're turning only to Spirit for the final word on reality. With happy wonder we notice a refinement of our thoughts and feelings. New emphasis is placed on the ability to love purely, to be selfless, innocent. As divine Love's spiritual intuitions become more tangible, real, and precious to us, we find that spiritual-mindedness is surfacing and governing our lives and that we trust Spirit.

The material base of thought has begun to change in what Science and Health calls "moral chemistry." The textbook explains: "As when an acid and alkali meet and bring out a third quality, so mental and moral chemistry changes the material base of thought, giving more spirituality to consciousness and causing it to depend less on material evidence. These changes which go on in mortal mind serve to reconstruct the body." ^{Ibid., p. 422.}

It was Christ Jesus' demonstration of spirituality that saved him in the tomb. He had refused to accept either the hatred of his enemies or the finality of death. Immediately after the crucifixion it must have looked to others as if the Master had failed utterly. But he didn't give up, because divine Life and his own spiritual innocence and strength wouldn't allow that. Although there may have been moments of despair when he was on the cross, they didn't govern the situation. God, Life, alone governs. And Jesus' demonstration of man's spirituality enabled him to prove this.

We must acknowledge and prove man's God-given spirituality in our prayer and our living. We can watch to see that divine qualities take precedence in our thoughts and actions. As we do, we discover more of our true selfhood. Yielding to God in this way removes the veil of mortality from our sense of man and lets our divinely bestowed spirituality show forth. This spirituality is our strength.

As we nourish, exercise, and rejoice in pure spirituality, it comes to the rescue in time of need. We'll find that our hopes for health and happiness have a spiritual basis which can't be denied, and we won't quit halfway down the road, because we'll know what it is we're counting on!