Something in human nature needs the assurance of belonging—of feeling that we have found our right place. But in this confusing world of top-speed competition it's often hard to know how we're going to find and establish ourselves. A constructive first step might be to come to an honest appraisal of who we really are and of what we can offer others as a result.

It's possible that some of us will be leaders, others will be followers. Some will initiate, others will be part of the support team. Yet as times change, so may our roles in the world. To develop a reliable base, then, we need to dig deeper than personal skills or education. We need to find out what our purpose or destiny is. And Christian Science provides firm guidance in this area.

Mrs. Eddy writes, "Each individual must fill his own niche in time and eternity." ^{Retrospection and Introspection, p. 70.} For years I read this statement as if the words "in time" were not there. By doing so I was failing to see the redemptive link between divinity and the human scene. God's law upholds each individual in his real spiritual being—in divine Mind as Mind's idea. Man is therefore always employed as the expression of God's nature—of His intelligence, wisdom, joy, love, health, purity, and so on.

A recognition of this spiritual truth means that we have full-time employment in the most basic sense—whatever our human circumstances may be. And to the degree that we understand such truths and apply them, we will find that they act as a law of adjustment to our experience.

Human will and self-deception would tend to obscure the action of this law of adjustment. An obedient, listening attitude toward God's guidance is required, as is utter meekness. These qualities can't be faked.

Sometimes intellectual pride is an obstacle to attaining true meekness. When I first started studying Christian Science, I had just completed two years as a student-teacher at a private school in New York City and had been invited back for a third year at an increased salary. Before that, I had graduated from an Ivy League college in the United States. As I grew more involved in Christian Science, I become uncomfortable with this background. I felt that my thought was being changed by divine Truth's influence. I had yet, though, to listen deeply enough to feel the full impact of this change in increased receptivity to God's specific leadings.

It took some years before I realized that early, so-called advantages and academic training were not valid reasons for either personal pride or personal guilt. I learned to appreciate them as modest means for making me of greater potential to God through devotion to the Cause of Christian Science.

Self-condemnation may pose as meekness. At one point during my early years in Science I felt I had not been living what I knew to be the highest standards. I felt critical of myself as a result, although I was continually struggling to do better. Then one day an acquaintance greeted me with obvious respect. Startled, I thought, "Why, that person thinks more of me than I think of myself!" It was a turning point. I pulled myself up by my metaphysical bootstraps and began to try to live in the present to a much greater extent than I had been doing. In prayer I claimed more of my true selfhood as an active, individual expression of my Father-Mother God.

Soon after that I was brought together with work I felt at home with, and this work—in varying forms—has continued over many years.

False responsibility is perhaps one of the greatest roadblocks to true meekness. We have to learn that God is responsible for His creation, His universe, His work. If He is all-power—and He is—nothing and no one can impede His Will, reverse it, or ultimately fail to obey it. To the material senses there may be many impasses and apparent reversals of what would appear to be His will. But God is infinite good and knows only infinite good. Therefore reality abides only in what reflects that infinitude of good. We can rejoice that we are "workers together with him," ^{II Cor. 6:1.} with Christ Jesus, who showed us the way; and with God, remembering that He (God) is always the boss!

And what about human will?

Sincere prayer to God, knowing that He uses the qualities we reflect from Him according to His plan, is much more apt to bring us into our proper niche than any amount of pushing and shoving. If we're pushing and shoving, it may seem that we have the initiative, that we're moving heaven and earth—for wholly necessary and righteous reasons, of course! A deeper understanding of Christian Science shows us that the opposite is the case: we are being victimized by mortal mind, or human will, and thus losing sight of God-given poise, patience, meekness, and receptivity to God's reliable directing.

Again, Christ Jesus is our example. Although endowed with divine Spirit above all other people before or since, he said, "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." ^{John 5:30.}

Honesty demands that we keep before us such fundamental questions as: Is my thought reaching out to God full of inspiration? What is my purpose? Am I obeying God's leading? Is my heart truly meek?

Most of us have much prayer and much proving to attend to before we can clear away human pride and human will in their many undesirable forms. Are we still unduly proud of accomplishment, wealth, family, education, talent? More basically, are we casting aside, step by step, even the pride that would claim a mortal identity, a nature separate from God?

The problems apparent to human sense can suggest themselves successfully only if we first agree to believe that we are mortals. Human pride cherishes mortal attributes because it believes they make one special. Have you ever heard two people exchanging a list of symptoms of illness?

Christ Jesus recognized these subtle phases of human pride. In writing of his healing of the man with the withered hand, Mrs. Eddy says of Jesus: "He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, 'That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;' but he cut off this vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking away the material evidence." ^{Unity of Good, p. 11.}

In her Miscellaneous Writings Mrs. Eddy offers this provocative question, followed by a moving pledge and a wonderful promise: "Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true ideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I will love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of good, my true being." ^{Mis., p. 104.}

No one else is you. Each of us is unique. Each has his or her own spiritual individuality, God-given gifts, and ability to cherish, to develop, and to offer them to the glory of God. This is our rich heritage—one that will surely be fulfilled.