If you are a meticulous housecleaner and someone drops a bowl of spaghetti in the middle of your kitchen floor, do you leave the mess there and pretend like it didn’t happen? I doubt it. Most likely, you’ll get the mess cleaned up pronto and take steps to prevent it from happening again. The meticulous housecleaner is not going to put up with a mess in his or her nice clean house.
In the same way that a caring housekeeper disallows messes in a clean abode, we should never put up with messes in our mental house.
For instance, a growing resentment would be a mental mess. Hatred, despondency, uncontrolled anger, are mental messes. A neighbor graphically describing her latest disease could turn into a mental mess if we soak in the details. There are many ways mortal mind at large would dump a mess into the middle of our thinking and suggest we take it on as our own. But we don’t have to! We can clean it up with truth and love and eliminate it from consciousness.
We can keep a clean house in thought just like we keep a clean house in our home.
God is on your side. God has provided you a perfect state of mind in divine Mind that is never soiled or spoiled by mortal mind. It’s filled with love, truth, integrity, unselfishness, holiness, and more, all clean states of thought that bless you and keep you healthy and happy.
You don’t have to put up with mortal mind messes in the middle of your thinking. They are not yours to harbor or claim! Clean them up with truth and love, and live free.
Human consciousness would be the kitchen floor that was made with some material that soaked up that spaghetti sauce, whereby the consciousness of God is built with a more durable, spiritual substance, a substance which will NOT be influenced by any mortal “mess.” When a mess seems to happen, we just “know” it right out of existence!
Rod,
Thank you for the metaphors of the analogy to the spaghetti mess!
Recently, I was visiting one of our sons in his apartment near his university. he was taking time to have a meal and after I put some food away in the refrigerator, I began cleaning up some spills. I had traveled some great distance and had washed his sink in the lavatory as well. Apparently, my son noticed what I was doing, for he said, “Mom, you are welcome to come sit with me if you like. You really do not have to clean!”
Well, I got to thinking about this. I am not a person who feels uncomfortable walking into a space that must tidy things. I realized that I was cleaning up two spaces that if the spills of toothpaste or of recent cooking splatters were allowed to harden, it would be a difficult thing to clean up. As they were, it took no effort at all to clean the few splatters on the stove or the unrinsed basin in the lavatory.
My son indicated that no offense was taken, and I shared that I had learned to clean up things as quickly as possible so as to avoid the use of harsh chemicals or extra scrubbing later.
Well, your comments made me realize that no matter what the seeming material substance of the “floor” maybe, the spiritual ideas never become one with the material. If we put an adhesive bond on a stamp and emplace it on an envelope, at no point does the stamp become “one” with the envelope. The two may seem to be as one, but the stamp will never be of the exact same fibers of the paper envelope. it is comforting to see that a limited concept of a line may seem to coincide with a point on a circle, but the line cannot conform to the circle. Mrs. Eddy explains her metaphor on page 282: 3 -22. She states, “The circle represents the infinite without beginning or end; the straight line represents the finite, with both beginning and end.” She says, “The straight line finds no abiding place in a curve, and a curve finds no adjustment to a straight line.”
So, no matter how long the “mess” may seem to be lodged in our mental house, it is very encouraging to realize that there is no abiding place for mortal concepts in consciousness!
Excellent ! You & Rod have developed Evan’s GOOD lesson today!
I am unceasingly grateful for the unlimited developments in thought we find through our study of Christian Science
Love
I have today been praying about the Hong Kong riots and the Chinese influence via Huawei in Western security communications and was very fearful of the outcomes due to the enticement to make a lot of money rather than taking a moral stance against slavery and brutality. Yes, a big mess on the kitchen floor. Thank you Evan for showing me how to pray about this, and stand strongly on the side of our Christ Identity.
I had to smile when I read your blog, Evan, for I am on a mission to lighten my load for the year 2020. This includes letting go of mental baggage and physical baggage as well. To move out of thought and out of my home all that is not necessary or productive. It is such a freeing process. Order is a quality of Principle. Order of thought and surroundings is liberating. I love your term mental messes. Once cleaned up with truth and love as you say, everything falls into order. Orderly right thinking ripples out into the whole world as we claim the Mind of God for all mankind.
This blog with added ideas brought to mind Christ Jesus’ parable of the Woman with 10 Pieces of Silver. According to the gospel of Luke (15: 8,9), the pieces of silver denoted a certain status for a woman during the times of the Bible. I love the truths implied in this very short parable. Firstly, Christ Jesus declares, “What woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece…” Notice how he says, “having.” It implies that her normal and natural state is possession of all of the pieces. It even suggests that just because the one piece seems missing, (or eludes her at the moment), she still possesses the riches. She immediately lights a candle, she sweeps the house and seeks until she finds it. She lights a candle- this wonderful step shows that she does not give way to the human suggestions of loss or darkness. She takes whatever sense of truth that she understands and applies it to the situation. I love that she sweeps the house! She goes all over it with the Light of Truth dispelling every false suggestion. She is thorough in her method and application to her consciousness (house) and leaves no area untouched.
The symbol ‘ten’ may or may not be significant here. One must consider that our Master did not say, “What woman having lost a piece of silver.” The number ten suggests two things. It brings to mind both the Ten Commandments and any spiritual ideas we use in our every day (depicted by ten fingers). I once heard a recording of a lecture by Geith Plimmer, who served on the Christian Science Board of Lectureship who was a beloved Sunday School teacher in the London, UK, area many years ago. He felt that this parable could represent Mrs. Eddy’s search to fully understand how to “have no other gods before me,” Exodus 20: 3. When she searched and swept consciousness clean, she found the realization that all is Spirit, Mind, and that God is All-in-all. At any rate, when the woman is able to account for all ten pieces, she feels whole and “can rejoice with her neighbors.”
Thank you, Evan, and to all of the responses so far! We are able to clean the messes and rejoice in the new-found freedom from limitation that Truth brings to consciousness!
Thank you all.
Yes yes and yes ! Rousing thoughts all. Time to throw open the mental windows letting in the reviving winds of Spirit to purify the atmosphere. Gratitude to Evan and all for these deeply satisfying and motivating ideas.
LOVE THIS! Many thanks to Evan and the Spiritview crew for their insights.
Thank you, Evan and those who have contributed their thoughts to this post. I am very grateful for the blessing these insights deliver.
Hmmm. My emojis didn’t show up. I meant to indicate two thumbs up!
Thanks to all for your thoughtful comments. It’s so very important to keep our mental house clean at all times.
Mind, not soiled or spoiled, but filled with
Truth & Love. Ty, Evan & “crew.”
But you don’t ignore the mess and hope. It will go away you
Make every attempt to clean it up! I have many times have
Lived in a messy house but putting priorities straight ,expressed
The love that young man expressed to his mother….wanting to talk to
Her rather than caring for the splatters, Just a comment re mental
Housekeeping.Good analogy though. One we can all understand.
Love these daily comments from all.
Yes, thank you very much, Evan for another very helpful SpiritView. Very comforting to know, that the thoughts, mortel mind will make us believe, are not our thoughts. As our real thoughts are coming from God, and therefore can be only good and healthy.
So nicely said, Evan, to clean the false material thoughts up with Truth and Love and so eliminate it from consciousness.
Quite funny but so true Evan’s example with the Spaghetti.
Am grateful for the lessons we learn here, also or specially if it is just a valuable reminder!
I do like this post from Evan. It hits the proverbial “nail on the head”, for me. A practitioner mentioned this to me in another way . My neighbour likes to make a long story a out their difficulties and as I told the practitioner about this,..she showed me that it was a wonderful chance to show the other person that they could change their thinking about all this . Then give a couple of helpful thoughts for them to chew on.
Better to do this than get into more misery. Like a little frog my Sunday School
teacher told us about….the frog told his friend that it was easier to hang tight onto the rim of the well they were sitting on ,than it was to fall in and have to pull yourself out of the water down there in the well.
This thought has been a big help to me . Thanks Evan