Have you ever gotten frustrated, discouraged or upset about a situation that is not changing for the better despite your best efforts? If so, it might be time to examine your motive. Are you working for a spiritual or a material outcome?
If working for a material outcome, human and physical ways and means will be employed, and results from those efforts can be very frustrating or even nonexistent because of their limited possibilities.
If working for a spiritual outcome, the infinite resources of divine Mind are relied upon, and hope and joy abounds, for there are no limits on what can be discovered and experienced in the realm of the infinite.
In Science we are not mortals trying to improve a
mortal condition.
We are immortals demonstrating the spiritual facts of being.
There is a big difference between the two approaches!
How do you define a spiritual goal and spiritual outcome?
Since all emotion, memory, personality is being better and more completely defined through neuroscience as wholly material interactions in our 100 billion neurons and other cells in the brain (matter). What do you ascribe to this “spiritual” dimension and how do you perceive it or distinguish it from intuition or a neural feedback loop?
Isn’t feeding all the hungry a noble goal that many have prayed for? Why is God forestalling (or how could human minds forestall/obscure the “true reality of perfection” if it truly is reality)?
Phineas, ‘how could God forestall?’ , what about neuroscience? All your questions are the same one’s that fit the questions we all had before we knew otherwise. The world was flat, for sure. The plague was from bad air until we made the rat link. All these things we knew for sure, turned out to be turned over when the truth was known.
The difference between a material and a spiritual outcome is the feeling behind it. When you feel the uplift of God beneath you, the material then has no validity as All is Well. It is a feeling thing, yet tangible. The material reality can align to this perfection, but I see it more that our mind aligns to God and then we SEE differently. God is Truth.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote in her revolutionary book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, that
“the human footsteps … are indispensable…” (pg. 254)
Knowing of the hunger of much of the world’s population and praying about it does not give us an excuse to sweep it away as “unreal.” But scientific prayer can bring the spiritual clarity which reveals the best thing for each of us to do about world hunger, until we grow to a point of being able to see through this illusion.
Divine Truth is practical in the here and now. This has been shown to me over and over again. I need not feel terrible anguish about the world’s plight, (it is not easy, tho) but rather work spiritually to uplift my own and others’ belief about this awful evil
illusion which says that God is oblivious of the situation and therefore cannot do anything about it.
Prayer helps clear the mist.
We are far, far more than neurons endlessly seeking material solutions to material problems. The solutions can only be divine Mind’s removal of mortal mind and its myriad beliefs.
“The necessity for uplifting the race is father to the fact that Mind can do it…” (S&H pg. 371)
God, divine Truth, is overturning, overturning, all false theories and practices.
Thank You, Father.
S
Here’s a lovely thought about motives that I include in my daily prayers:
When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone, — but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the “river of His pleasure,” the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow, — even that joy that finds one’s own in another’s good. To love, and to be loved, one must do good to others. ~ Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127
Hi Phineas,
It’s nice to hear from you. “How to define a spiritual goal?” you ask…
For me, my spiritual goal is to understand eternal life better and demonstrate it’s blessings more in my everyday life. It requires spiritualization of thought, which takes consistent and dedicated prayer.
You write that personality has been reduced all down to neuro-science and so forth…well, I have to disagree on that one. To a neuro-scientist immersed in study of the brain and neurons, it might seem that way, but from a Christian Science understanding, everything the neuro-scientist is studying in the brain is effect…effect of thoughts that exist outside of the brain. Someday, they will figure that out when they reach the limits of what the brain can tell them.
The world is not what it appears to be to the material senses. We live in a universe of Mind, of divine Mind, where things are thoughts and ideas are substance. The physical sciences are discovering the limits of matter and gradually moving beyond them, and eventually will come to the conclusion that there is a divine Mind, a Grand Creator behind it all.
The best in life is so much more than a physical sensation. It’s spiritual sense that unlocks the highest joys of life, and the source of those joys will never be found in a neuron. They are found in divine Love.
Hope that helps.
Well said, Evan!
To add a little to Phineas’ question–neuroscience, interesting as it is, may seem to be a spiritual or metaphysical phenomenon, as defined in new age thought, and made popular by a hit feature film several years ago, “What the Bleep Do We Know,” but it’s still matter based, and doesn’t touch the fact that consciousness, intelligence, is really in Mind (God), and expressed individually as man, not really in neuron activity.
When you really think about it, how can matter, or brain, be actual consciousness? Is our thought reduced to the mere electrical impulses of matter? If so, then what distinguishes us from each other? In Christian Science, matter (brain included) doesn’t even factor in.
On world hunger, the motive to help those in need can be a spiritual one, if it’s love-based, but if it’s fear-based, noble as the desire to help still is, it’s still limited. Contrary to sensible evidence, we live purely in a thought world, and the challenge is overcoming the mass of world thought that tends to be locked in matter-based, limited consciousness. In truth there is no matter (physics pretty much agrees on that), and what appears as matter is really limited consciousness. It’s a tough one to overcome… tends to take a lifetime. But much healing can be experienced along the way as thought gradually and fully transitions from matter to spirit.