Atmosphere of health, not allergies

A good and really long friend of mine emailed me the other day about helping his daughter find a new home in the dry, semi-arid climate of northern New Mexico. Evidently she is very sensitive to mold that grows in moist climates of the coast (where she now lives).

Oooh, when he described to me the mold that sets off his daughter’s reaction, my vivid imagination pictured the mold I have seen in two houses I lived in in the San Francisco Bay Area years ago due to extreme, and I mean EXTREME moisture. Ick. I had no physical reaction to mold but it was definitely not pleasant.

I replied right away that our climate was GREAT: really, really dry all year ’round. In fact, today’s humidity is 12%. By contrast, for instance, today in Santa Monica CA is fair, 72 degrees and 49% humidity.

So I was feeling good about his daughter’s move… and then I thought about the struggle with allergies I have had since moving here.

STOP! Thinking about the allergies finally stopped me from being fixated on the belief of germs floating in the air and attacking a person’s health. Because I have made significant progress in eliminating the effects of allergies in the past year through prayer alone. And I realized that what I have come to believe about God’s power to heal me of allergies can support my friend’s daughter too.

Last year, when I felt under constant attack for months, I finally got serious about turning to Spirit for help. Why did it take so long you ask? In all honesty I thought that the season of high pollen count would pass quickly and I would get over the allergies that way. Aaaaargh! New flowers, new trees, new grasses kept coming from spring through the summer. First lesson: the passage of time is NOT an effective cure for anything!

Finally, I got smart. While all my friends had recommended various drugs, potions and even acupuncture, I declined in favor of relying on spiritual means for help.

“If you decide that climate or atmosphere is unhealthy, it will be so to you. Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take.” (Science and Health, 392:21)

Time to step up with a decision on the side of the atmosphere of good. This is the consciousness of God, which I understand to be the definition and life-force of the entire universe. All of God’s creation He created to be good, to be healthy, to be beneficial to every living being. How could He create a flower or tree or grass to release harmful pollens to any of His other creatures, like me?

God cannot create anything unlike Himself and living things have no power to create on their own, so where does an allergy or mold come from? This reasoning set me off on the right track to learn more about my true, harmonious and impenetrable being as a reflection of the one Creator. There couldn’t possibly be something harmful penetrating the atmosphere of His creating.

“The human mind acts more powerfully to offset the discords of matter and the ills of flesh, in proportion as it puts less weight into the material or fleshly scale and more weight into the spiritual scale.” (Science and Health, 155:21)

I love this because all I have to do is put more weight into the scale of spirit, the scale of true health as created by God. I don’t have to figure it ALL out, just believe a bit more in the reality of spirit than I do in the alleged reality of matter.

There were moments when I actually thought that my husband and I would have to move from Santa Fe, that this atmosphere was inhospitable to my health. But right on top of that thought came this one, that it wasn’t a physical change required, but a mental change in thought about where I truly live, and move and breath: in God’s pure, healthful environment. It is uncontaminated and totally life-giving.

The past several months have been so free of any effects, even with our very wet spring and bountiful flowers. And when the thousands of pinons released their yellow pollen in the air all I saw was the fresh green of new growth and re-birth.

Like the earth in spring, I have felt renewed and rejuvenated! OK, now I know how to support my friend’s daughter…I will embrace her in the atmosphere of good. This can only lead to practical solutions for her next home.