Gold coins in our pocket
There may be times that we’re confronted with a problem and we may be thinking that possibly we’ve come across something that God’s power just can’t reach. It may be a financial situation or a relationship problem, or a health condition.
In times like these it's been helpful to me to ask myself this questions: What happens when consciousness is filled with God’s presence and power, doesn’t it simultaneously exclude all that is inharmonious and show that discord can be defeated?
Sure it does.
Thought filled with God’s power results in our experience being filled God’s power. Why? Because as natural scientists and Christian Scientists are learning, thought is manifested in our experience.
Over a hundred years ago the Founder of Christian Science wrote in her publication
Unity of Good (pg 7), “Because God is All, a realization of this fact ... brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All- Mind.” Because God is All!
He is All, not because we’ve asked Him for a favor or started attending church again, or are more studious about reading the Bible. He is All because He is the only self-existence there is and so He fills all space.
Continuing the quote, “Realizing this fact dispels even the sense or consciousness of sin.”
Realizing is a gold coin in our pocket -- a spiritual right idea! Spiritual realization is active because it totally dispels false sense. It counteracts a false sense of substance. “Realizing this fact brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All-Mind.”
And what is this highest phenomena? It’s perfect man. I don't mean "perfect mortal", but perfect
man.
It’s you and me in our real, true, divine, spiritual selfhood. It’s man made with the substance of Spirit.
Man, God's idea, is composed of right ideas. Some of these ideas are wholeness, happiness, abundance, harmony. The list is infinite, -- but all good.
Mrs. Eddy explains, “These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual consciousness, and they have this advantage over the objects and thoughts of material sense, -- they are good and eternal” (S&H 269).
We naturally embody these good and eternal ideas. Embodied they enable us to see and feel a deeper relationship with God. Then this deeper relationship includes a deeper spiritual understanding. This naturally brings our consciousness into alignment with God. It naturally brings our life into at-one-ment with Him.
Mrs. Eddy speaks about this deeper understanding when she writes from her own experience. She records, “Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my heart of hearts, it is due both to Christian Science and myself to make also the following statement: When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein. In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocated joints and raise the dying to instantaneous health. People are now living who can bear witness to these cures. Herein is my evidence, from on high, that the views here promulgated on this subject are correct. Certain self-proved propositions pour into my waiting thought in connection with these experiences; and here is one such conviction: that an acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else can. An incontestable point in divine Science is, that because God is All, a realization of this fact dispels even the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All-Mind” (Unity of Good, p7).
“The acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else can.” Acknowledging God’s perfection confers power by replacing the belief in another power with the clear sense that God is the only power. That’s something we can all do. And we do it by disbelieving the false evidence of the material senses. We do it by filling consciousness with God’s infinitude.
Acknowledging God's perfection is something we can actively do. It, too, is a gold coin in our pocket, a right idea in our consciousness. It lifts thought to recognize God’s presence and power. It heals, because thought in line with God naturally manifests a life in line with Him.
Another gold coin in our purse that helps us gain a deeper spiritual understanding is the coin of divine law. This coin, or right idea, disallows any misstatement or misconception of God’s creation. It disallows any misstatement or misconception by establishing in thought what God does recognize, by stating what He does not recognize. Mrs. Eddy simply writes, “…the infinite recognizes no disease.”
And there we have it - in a nutshell.
It’s not hard to be fooled into thinking that God must recognize our difficulties in order to help us. That somehow He must know matter or another presence or power so He can combat them. That somehow He must know another substance so that He can save us. But this arresting statement from leads us away from such a misconception that the infinite Unseen knows matter and its concomitants such as sin, disease, or death.
Mrs. Eddy felt this point was so important that she called Annie Knott in for an interview in April of 1887. Mrs. Knott records, “Mrs. Eddy began the interview by asking me if I was clear on the great truth that God does not know evil, which she had sought to impress upon us in the Normal class of the previous February. I replied that I thought I did remember her teaching very distinctly, and then she went on to say: if you stood in front of a mirror, and there was a hole in your dress or a pin in your dress, it would be in the reflection, would it not?’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ She then said, ‘It would not be possible to get it out of the reflection so long as it was in the original, would it?’ I answered, ‘No.’ She said, ‘You are clear about this are you?’ I replied, ‘I think I am.’ She then went on: ‘Now God never changes, does He? He is eternally the same.’ To this I again responded, ‘Yes.’ She again went on, ‘Now if God were conscious of sickness, sin, and death, we could never expect to overcome them, for the divine consciousness does not change, and we could never remove from the reflection that which is in the original.’ She again asked me to answer her, which I did, seeing as I had never seen before the vital importance of gaining a clear sense of this truth. This was the substance of the interview, but I have thought of it many times in the years since then, as mortal mind puts up a tremendous argument that God must know evil in order to help us in overcoming it, whereas the opposite is the case” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Third Series, pg.7l).
So, if we can never remove from the reflection that which is in the original, or put another way, if the infinite recognizes no disease, how can man, the infinite’s creation, recognize disease? How can man remove from the reflection that which is in the original? He can’t. And so he doesn’t. He can’t and doesn’t because man is the effect of God and can only be and do what God is and does.
This is why when thought is aligned with God, all you and I can recognize, is God’s oneness. All we can know, the only power we can feel is God’s power; the only presence we can experience is His presence; the only substance we can know is His substance; the only law that can operate in our experience, or that we can participate in, is His law -- when we align thought with Him.
So what do we do with these gold coins in our pocket, these right ideas in our consciousness? We purchase the pearl of great price, the kingdom of heaven within, and in so doing, we find God. Spiritually acknowledging, realizing, and recognizing overcomes all discord.
Have you ever thought about having more than all? Sometimes it seems that’s what we’re looking for, more than all. But Mrs. Eddy explains what man already possesses when she writes “Wholly apart from this mortal dream, this illusion and delusion of sense, Christian Science comes to reveal man as God’s image, His idea, coexistent with Him -- God giving all and man having all that God gives” (My. 5:6).
This spiritual understanding of God and His allness was understood by the apostle Paul. He declared to the Athenians centuries ago, “I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” He then explained what God is and how to find Him. He said:
“God ... made the world and all things therein.... He is Lord of heaven and earth.... Dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with man’s hands,.. seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being;..” (Acts 17:23-25,27,28).
Mrs. Eddy reveals more about what she learned of God when she writes, “To gain a temporary consciousness of God’s law is to feel, in a certain finite human sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attainment of the understanding of His presence, through the Science of God, destroys our sense of imperfection, or of His absence, through a diviner sense that God is all true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we get still nearer Him we must forever lose our own consciousness of error” (Unity of Good, pg 4).
You know, that’s all we’ll ever lose -- our own consciousness of error. And all we’ll ever gain is a consciousness of good, God, -- which results in healing.
We can put off false concepts by replacing them with what is true, spiritual, and permanent. We can scientifically realize, acknowledge, and lean on divine law, our gold coins in our pocket, to find the solution to all our problems.
