Want something to change outside? Change the inside.

My friend Laura (who is a professional spiritual healer) and I were talking yesterday about one of the key factors in having a metaphysical healing of any kind, such as a physical healing, emotional, relationships, financial. You name it, whatever is wonky in your life, it can be metaphysically realigned to a more harmonious state (healing).

Both of us study a profound textbook on how to heal spiritually, called Science and Health. The spiritual ideas can be put into practice every day. You want to know how to deal with/heal any aspect of your life from a spiritual perspective consistently? This is the book.

OK, the key factor. Laura was saying that it concerns her when a patient is expecting a better result, but not willing to change himself. IOW, the patient wants something external to change, but he is not accepting responsibility to change his internal thinking. This is missing the point: The mental state is the “battleground;” once that realigns to a God-centered understanding and conviction of what is really going on in your life, the external adjusts to reflect the good and right of God’s creating.

This has been really fun and inspiring for me to think about. Not that it was “new” or “surprising” — but it crystallized for me what I need to focus on in prayer and what needs to be weeded out.

Here’s how it works: am I praying to change a bad relationship with a co-worker? I start with how I am thinking about that person — if I am thinking about them as an idiot or mean, that needs to change! I need to think about them in the way that God thinks about them: kind, thoughtful, intelligent. This is the child of God’s creating. As I truly come to believe that this is the only image of the co-worker I can have, my thinking has been transformed. And my relationship with the co-worker changes for the better (this has definitely happened to me!).

Am I praying to change a bank account or financial situation? If my thinking only believes that I am suffering from lack of any kind then I am denying that God, my Father-Mother Love, is giving me abundant, constant good. Like, He gives abundance to so many others, but not to me. That thinking has got to change to understanding more about who God is as divine Love, the Love that provides unlimited supply of everything good in my life without reservation. Believe me, I have been in this false mental state too and have seen how, once I transformed my thinking from human lack to divine plenty, I received a wealth of ideas that in turn resulted in financial stability.

It is pointless to pray to God to change something in your world without expecting to see some kind of mental transformation take place first. A transformation that brings you closer to understanding who God is as all-good, who you really are as a spiritual being (the reflection of good) and your blessed relationship with Him (receiving all good, WAHOO!).

Whatever needs adjusting externally will conform to the spiritual understanding you mentally hold. Why? Because you are adhering to the spiritual laws of the omnipresent and omnipowerful Divine Love. What can possibly resist this power?

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to the occupancy of your thoughts. (Science and Health 261:4)

Say goodbye to anger!

A recent story about a presidential-hopeful’s legendary angry outbursts and his effort to control them reminded me of my own healing of anger through reliance on spiritual means. To be honest, this took place over a period of years and only when I specifically wanted to be healed!

Up until I was about 8 years old, I remember erupting lots of times and always with negative results. For a while I was biting people, destroying my brother’s stuff — heck, one time I was so mad at my mom (she said I couldn’t wear some blouse because it was too cold outside) and I slammed the front door on my finger and sliced part of it off! You’d think I would have learned something.

But transformation did happen. When I was 8 I was seriously ill with an allergic reaction to penicillin. Our family doctor could do nothing more to stop the reaction and my health was deteriorating rapidly. As a last resort, my parents turned to prayer through the application of Christian Science. I wrote a blog about the very quick and complete healing if you would like to know more.

In addition to the physical healing, there was more transformation! What before was a pretty frustrated little girl, afterwards I don’t recall any more destructive outbursts.

However, there were still occasional angry explosions in my head that usually involved mental arguments with some other person. It took awhile, but I finally got the upper hand and eliminated these ridiculous and fruitless imaginary arguments when I realized they were only hurting ME! The more I mentally carried on, the worse I felt.

What I came to realize was that I needed to see myself as a child of God and ALL that implied: completely good, untouchable by any destructive forces like anger, fear or hatred. PLUS! I needed to see the other person, allegedly the perpetrator of my anger, as the same child of God.

OK, so I was making progress. But there was one area that no matter what, really really got me rattled and angry. You will be very surprised at how ridiculous this is, but here goes. Whenever something happened to my CAR, I came unglued. Somebody would hit it (no one was ever hurt). Hey, it didn’t matter what car I had, the accident cut me to the core… and I have had a lot of cars.

I wasn’t so angry that I wasn’t functioning (like, I wasn’t foaming at the mouth but I was sputtering). In my head I was so ticked off at the pointlessness of the accident I could hardly think. You know when people say they “saw red”? Yeah, I know what that is like.

My husband was always very nonchalant. “It can be fixed. It is just a car.” Logically, absolutely right. My anger would subside pretty fast, but still not pretty. And it bothered me that anything could set me off like this.

Finally, I had an experience that made me stop this indulgence, cuz that is what it was. My husband and I were driving home from church (ironic!) and stopped at a stoplight behind a big truck. My car at this time was a Corvette, very low to the ground, and my husband was at the wheel. All of a sudden the truck backs up into my car!! His trailer-hitch went right through the nose of my fiberglass car!!!

I was livid. My husband got out of the car, talked with the other driver who was VERY sorry (didn’t see our car because it was so low) and got all the insurance info. Very civilized and courteous. But I was sputtering.

My husband turns to me and says, “You act like it is all my fault!” I realized at that moment that this anger wasn’t a private war — I was laying it on my dear husband. That is when I FINALLY started to pray for myself because clearly this was a character flaw that I didn’t want hanging on to me any more.

Anger is no quality of God. And since I am the creation of God how could I possibly have a quality unlike God? If I did, then I would be a creator equal to God…not possible and not conceiveable. Therefore, since I didn’t have this quality inherent in my divine nature, then I couldn’t suffer the effects of angry outbursts.

About this time I read a quote from my favorite spirituality author, Mary Baker Eddy:

The pent-up elements of mortal mind need no terrible detonation to free them. Envy, rivalry, hate need no temporary indulgence that they be destroyed through suffering; they should be stifled from lack of air and freedom.

Ooooh. This is when I realized my outbursts were “detonations” and that they were from mortal mind, not the divine Mind (God). And that they were indulgences! How self-absorbed! How ugly!

I also saw in this passage what I could do about it. Stifle these elements of mortal mind with lack of freedom to be expressed.

I expected this to be the end of my anger. And, sure enough, a couple of years later I had my opportunity. New car, same area of San Francisco, only I was driving this time. My husband and I were going to work and I was slowly going down a small street and suddenly a woman opened her car into my car and creased the whole side of it. My husband saw this all happening in slow motion and literally jumped and shouted “D’Oh!” like Homer Simpson.

I started to giggle at his reaction as I pulled the car over to the side. He got out and talked with the woman driver who was REALLY upset (evidently had a few insurance claims already). He got back in after getting her information and I then laughed out loud. He did too.

And I realized that was the end of my anger. That was probably 15 years ago (and 4 or 5 cars!). Not to say that I don’t occasionally get mildly ticked off for a few moments but the spiritual reasoning of who I am and who the other person is to God quickly takes front and center in my thinking. And the reaction evaporates.

Phew. I am glad that character flaw is gone…now I can work on healing other ones!

Don’t give power to fear

A few days ago, a news article caught my eye: “Cancer fears create self-fulfilling prophecy.” The article talks about how almost half of Americans believe that there is nothing they can do to prevent cancer, so over 25% don’t even attempt to do things that would actually prevent 2/3 of various cancers (eg don’t smoke, eat fruits and vegetables, avoid too much sun).

Seems to me the article doesn’t go far enough to address what the title describes: fear itself.

A spiritual mentor of mine summed up the power of fear to affect bodily conditions (and any other problems, as a matter of fact!): get rid of the fear, you get rid of the problem.

Medical science also describes the all too-powerful nature of fear when describing the effect of stress on the body. Research shows that 60-90% of all physical problems are caused by stress. What is stress to you? Fear of the unknown, fear of the consequences, fear of making a mistake, fear of certain people, etc., etc.? Yeah, I definitely equate stress with fear.

Fear or stress, the point is that the cause or dominant contributing factor of diseases is a sustained mental agitation. Even the American Heart Association says that the thing that causes the stress isn’t the really big “thing” — it is your REACTION to the thing. Hello! Your reaction is a mental decision you make.

So doesn’t it make sense that if you eliminate the fear, you eliminate the disease?

Further, if you don’t eliminate the fear (IOW the root cause) and simply focus on treating the disease, how will the disease really be eliminated?

The question really should be, how do you eliminate the fear? It is all well and good for the AHA to say “Chill! Don’t react to stuff!” To be consistent and effective, seems to me you gotta replace the fear with different facts.

Mary Baker Eddy, in her seminal work on spiritual Life and its impact on our daily living, Science and Health, writes: “Remove error (or fear) from thought and it will not appear in effect.”

She goes on to write that the key is to see one’s being as completely spiritual, made in the image and likeness of the Creator. This Creator couldn’t possibly make anything unlike itself, so how could there be anything to fear? In fact, how could a spiritual being even HAVE fear since the Creator didn’t create THAT?!

In Eddy’s words, “A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive.”

The fear is removed with the knowledge of our complete and perfect identity as the image of God…and the effects of this fear, with nothing to sustain it, are similarly removed.

Whenever I have a physical or emotional problem I am dealing with, I always ask myself, “What are you afraid of?” It never fails, I always get to the root of the problem — identify the deep, dark fear — and shine on it the light of my true spiritual being as the child of the divine Creator. When I am convinced that this spiritual identity is the only true ME, because I understand the reasons WHY, the fear evaporates. And what I see reflected, in my body and in my life, is the effect of peace, harmony, goodness.

What does it mean to be “poised”?

When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted to seen as “poised”. To me, that meant being confident, comfortable in talking with peers and adults, totally together in my thinking so that I sounded smart no matter what the situation.

I didn’t feel like this at all. In my mind I was terribly shy, resisted making conversation with people and felt anyone could push me around. (Even today I can totally relate to young girls who talk about how hard it is to grow up.) As a result I consciously looked for opportunities to challenge myself — to change myself.

My closest companion during this time was not a person but a book. A spirituality book. Seriously. I still have my girlhood copy of Science and Health where the blank front and back pages are filled with neat and tidy handwriting noting special quotations/spiritual insights that were beacons for me. They made sense to me and each time I thought about them I would feel just a little bit better about myself.

These quotes helped me get through every day, I kid you not. For the most part, they are all about true beauty, true identity — clearly all about my true spiritual nature that incrementally built my self-esteem. Because I was learning about my true self as the reflection of the Divine, the Christ-nature.

Here’s one that was a favorite:

Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Being possesses its qualities before they are perceived humanly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color.

I don’t remember ever talking to anyone about my struggle. All anyone saw — my parents and friends — was good academics, socially active and successful music studies. This book, and these citations were spiritual lifelines for me. Believe me, any success I had in high school was due to my spiritual anchoring.

Over time, I gained a sense of poise — composure and self-assurance. Lately, however, I have been thinking and praying about the verb “poise”: to be prepared, to stand by ready for action. To me, this means being poised spiritually.

Think about it, how many times in a given week does a friend or acquaintance mention something sad or upsetting? Instead of just letting it hang there in space and saying something like, “oh, how sad…” I am really wanting to be spiritually poised to offer something meaningful, something comforting. Something that can lift the spirit.

Just in the last two days, I have had two friends come to me with sad news. One is in the middle of divorce and she was feeling very vulnerable and very afraid. She asked me to help her with practical advice on what to do. I replied that my expertise was more in the spiritual support for her and that if she liked I would be happy to help. She thought that sounded like a good idea!

Another friend told me that she just received the news that her mom had inoperable lung cancer. She isn’t ready to talk to anyone about it, so I am praying to be poised with whatever is needed to comfort her and assure her that her mom is safe in God’s love, right now and forever.

I am thinking that “being at the ready” to respond with help and healing is a continuation of the spiritual progress I started in high school when I wanted so much to “be poised.”

Who hasn’t been a prodigal son?

The story from the Bible about the Prodigal Son has long, and I mean long (since I was 10 years old or so) been a favorite of mine. Mainly because there are so many life-lessons in the story that it continues to teach me spiritual insights. It’s like an onion with the layers, each layer becoming more and more profound.

Basically, the story is about a father and his two sons, the father being a prosperous farmer. One day the younger son says to his father, “Give me my inheritance right now.” IOW, the son is effectively saying to his father, “You are dead to me now…so give me the money today that I would receive upon your death.”

Ouch! How harsh can you get?? The biblical storyteller doesn’t tell us at all about the father’s reaction, only that he gave his son the inheritance. And the son left the farm for the big city lights.

Cut to the chase: the son wastes all his money on high-living. Think Las Vegas and all its enticements. So he has no money and, to top it off, the region has a major famine. Desperation. He finally figures out that even his father’s hired hands have food to eat, so he swallows his pride (hehe, all that he has to eat at this point!) goes home and asks his father for a job as a worker.

His father not only greets him with unconditional love, he restores him to his place as a treasured son AND he throws him a big party!

NOT THE END OF THE STORY! #1 son, upon hearing about the return, the blessing AND THE PARTY is really really ticked off. “I didn’t leave, I’ve worked hard every day without a break, did everything you asked, how come you never gave me a party with my friends?”

This was my first lesson learned at age 10. My older sister (yes, in the #1 position) was also really ticked at the treatment of the older son. She felt the same way — the kid brother screwed up, he shouldn’t be forgiven so easily….the oldest did everything right, just as he was supposed to, how come he was not treated as well as him? It’s not fair!! Yes, she took it very personally.

I listened to my dad, then my mother try to explain to my sister (who was in her early teens) the concept of forgiveness by the father. This is when I heard for the first time that the father of the two sons is a metaphor for the Father and Mother of us all, the Divine, who loves us unconditionally. Wow, that started to sink in!

So even when we screw up, even when we tell our father/Father “I hate you I hate you!” (I never said that but boy did I cringe when my younger sister said that to my mom), the Father (and therefore the role model to fathers and mothers) takes us back with unconditional acceptance and love. No matter what. No questions asked.

What was enough for this biblical father was that coming home showed repentance by the son. He acknowledge his stupidity, suffered the consequences which drove the lesson home, and fully reformed. That was enough. Debt paid.

As a kid, I loved the idea that even if I made a huge mistake, if I accepted responsibility for it and changed my ways, I would be forgiven and (this is the best part) still loved by my Father-Mother as much as I had before the mistake. IOW, I wasn’t any lesser kid in His sight.

Not sure how my sister feels about this now, being a mom herself. Because as a mom she can now relate to how the  biblical father answers his #1 son in the most precious, comforting words any child would want to hear:

“…Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”

I am not kidding, this story has lifted me through many trials in my life. No matter what, the Father-Mother love is constant.

Now I have a friend who looks to be living through Act I of the Prodigal Son (off to Vegas!). Many of her friends, including me, tried to stop her from grabbing her sizeable inheritance (think metaphorically here) and split for bright lights.

Right now I am understanding a little of what the #1 son must have been thinking: “You are gonna get hammered! You’ll see.” But I have to remember there are 3 acts in the Prodigal story. The final act of welcome home, forgiveness and blessing, all riches restored, is assured. It is the Father’s love that matters above all.

And everyone of us can feel the ultimate benediction from our Father: “…thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” That is enough.

Signs of redemption

Ok, anyone who is a regular reader of my blogs knows how I feel about the death penalty (thumbs down). In my previous blog I describe the various “pro” arguments and why I believe from a spiritual basis — as well as from a practical basis — the “pros” don’t achieve the end objective, which is decreasing crime. And why a more spiritual approach would actually be better all around for society.

There is another spiritual argument for not having the death penalty which I didn’t get into, maybe because I feel unqualified to talk about it. That is “redemption.”

But when you think about it, any one of us is HIGHLY qualified to talk about redemption. Any time we screw up, acknowledge our mistake and STOP doing the screw-up again forever, we are forgiven. In between “acknowledge our mistake” and “Stop doing it” is very often punishment of some kind. Why? To ensure we stop doing whatever got us into trouble in the first place. Duh.

From a spiritual perspective, IOW, where a spiritual or moral law has been broken and God is the Supreme Justice, a similar process happens. Acknowledge, punishment, stop, forgiven. (Oh not just forgiven by Justice, actually our spiritual self has been redeemed. Confirmed as whole, pure, perfect as the image God created in us. Extra bonus.)

But here is the difference between the spiritual and the material “justice” process. Whereas you may not get caught in wrong-doing in the material world, you always ALWAYS must square your account with God. And here is the kicker: God is not punishing you, you are punishing yourself by breaking the law He mandates. Always. Forever.

Here’s how it works: Your town installs stoplights at various street corners; one day, you arent thinking and you run a red stoplight; you hit a semi-trailer truck going through the green light; you are injured, your car is totalled. Did God punish you? No, you broke the law and basically punished yourself.

Redemption? Acknowledge your mistake, square your account with God, be forgiven, made whole. Whatever you have done, when you line up again with the spiritual law, the practical effect is your material life adjusts too. Proof of your redemption.

Mary Baker Eddy explains it like this:

We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts. (Science and Health 497:9)

In the news over the past several days, CNN has been tracking the days leading up to the execution of a Tennessee prisoner, Philip Workman. He was executed early Wednesday morning. As is the custom, Workman was given his choice for a “last meal.” Instead of asking for a meal for himself, he asked that a vegetarian pizza be given to any homeless person near the prison where he was to be executed.

This strikes me as an attempt at squaring one’s account with God. One final request, that could have been anything in the world, and Workman makes this selfless one.

Does it even come close to reconciling his taking of another person’s life? No. The Supreme Justice “…requires reformation of the sinner. Mercy cancels the debt only when justice approves.” So, forgiveness and redemption are between man and God…and reformation is required. And Workman has eternity to figure that out. As do we all.

There are those who are glad that Workman has been punished for his crime. I am glad that Workman showed a sign of selflessness, a spiritual quality which points the way toward ultimate redemption.

“Divine Love corrects and governs man.”

No matter what punishment we think is required, Justice demands that we pay the debt through reformation. This earns redemption. And everyone, regardless of what they have done, earns the right to redemption.