Have you ever been tempted to diagnose your body for illness? Do you look for lumps and bumps, extra weight or lack thereof, signs of weakness, causes for alarm or any other symptom of disease advertised on TV, promoted in the press or heard from your neighbor?
Mary Baker Eddy had some wise words for the unwary thought that looks for what it dreads. She wrote,
“The ordinary practitioner, examining bodily symptoms, telling the patient that he is sick, and treating the case according to his physical diagnosis, would naturally induce the very disease he is trying to cure, even if it were not already determined by mortal mind. Such unconscious mistakes would not occur, if this old class of philanthropists looked as deeply for cause and effect into mind as into matter” (S&H 161:24).
The fact is, disease never appears on the body unless it first appears in thought, either unconsciously or consciously. So, if one wants to prevent disease in the body, the first place to hold guard is in consciousness. Keep the disease out of consciousness, and it cannot appear on the body.
She also wrote, from experience,
“A physical diagnosis of disease — since mortal mind must be the cause of disease — tends to induce disease” (S&H 370:20).
If you want to prevent a disease from happening, don’t look for it, which simply opens the door for it to enter your thought and then your body. Look for the opposite. Strive to understand yourself more correctly in divine Science, as the healthy, well, and safe child of God.
“Physicians examine the pulse, tongue, lungs, to discover the condition of matter, when in fact all is Mind. The body is the substratum of mortal mind, and this so-called mind must finally yield to the mandate of immortal Mind” (S&H 370:32).
You are not a creation of matter or of mortal mind. You are a spiritual being gifted with spiritual and permanent health from God.
A friend attended a party one Saturday evening, and among the many conversations she had with strangers, one man described in detail his bout with skin cancer on his face. My friend did not defend her thinking from his graphic pictures. The next morning, she looked in the mirror and saw the dreaded disease on her face. She called me in a panic, realizing what she had done. She had mentally soaked in the discussion and now was manifesting it. We prayed together to know she couldn’t pick up disease from another person, that she was spiritual, made in God’s unchangeably perfect image, and that nothing had changed about her health between the party and the next morning. The spot quickly vanished and she was well.
The point being, watch your thought, not your body! Watching the body is like watching the computer screen for typing errors instead of concentrating on typing the right keys in the first place. Type the right keys and the correct letters appear on the screen. Think the right thoughts, and the effect will be good on the body.
God’s offspring is not a material body. It is a spiritual idea. This idea of God constitutes your true identity, your only identity. If you want to know how healthy you are, don’t examine matter, which is a temporal and fallible mortal mind concept. Examine God’s idea. Examine yourself spiritually. You’ll draw the right conclusions and find reasons only to rejoice and be happy.
The fact is, disease never appears on the body unless it first appears in thought, either unconsciously or consciously. So, if one wants to prevent disease in the body, the first place to hold guard is in consciousness. Keep the disease out of consciousness, and it cannot appear on the body.
This is very rich, Evan. Thank you for the reminder to look for health in the right place. It’s never going to be found in a material assessment of it. Health is consciousness, a healthy consciousness. Seems simple, and it is, but the world complicates it with its misconception of health. Guarding our thought is crucial. I’ve always loved:”Ask me of things to come concerning my son”(Isaiah?) which is spiritual diagnosis. And what God has to say about us is all that counts.
Thank you. This is exactly what I needed this morning!!
Thanks Evan! Very timely. I am watching more TV lately that covers football and politics exposing my thought to a lot of garbage. I will be more careful. I love Christian Science and this blog.
This is the very thing I,m facing this morning. I have 4 tof the very nice and caring nurse aides taking care of me who are not C/S and thet found something upon my body, that to them appear serious enough to have to take me to the hospital. I have to keep my thought on my spiritual self as God made me. They are hear, I have to go now.
Home run! Thank you!
Wonderful illustrations! Thank you for the clear and helpful ideas, Evan! P.S. I tried to post via my google acct, but it only took me to a “create a blog” page, (already have one) and never to the sign-in—and no other navigation to get there. So I remain “anonymous” (aka Nancy Hagan 🙂
THE TRUTH, so well stated. Thank you.
Thanks Evan! Great post this morning! A wonderful reminder with so much out there wanting us to move our thought from what what is real to what is unreal. And ties in nicely with last week’s lesson on the reality of man’s perfection and this week on only seeing the light of God’s goodness in all forms!
I am back from the hospital and my wonderful nurse aids who were taking care of me were happily surprised that nothing was wrong with me. What they didn’t know is that every moment of that trip to the hospital, I was declaring that as God’s image and likeness, I am excemped from any mortal law of sickness and none could be found. In only five minutes, I was told by the hospital authorities, “Take this man home, there is nothing wrong with him.” Thus, again I learned that no matter what materia Medica might say, God proved it wrong.
Beautiful Message! Thanks so much for sharing..:)
Dear Evan, how can one be heald of most unconscious thoughts? Your posts are wonderful. Thank you. Simone
Hi Simone,
How to be free of unconscious thoughts, you ask…
What the human mind calls “unconscious thoughts,” are not a threat to you because they are by definition “unconscious.” They possess no consciousness, no influence, no power, no effect.
It seems that many thoughts are unconscious, like the impulse to blink your eyes, or react out of habit. We call them involuntary actions/thoughts/beliefs. You take control of these by understanding the one Mind’s control over your entire being. In effect, by understanding that there is only one Mind, the Mind of God, you are seeing yourself under divine Mind’s harmonious influence, and the one Mind causes the right things to happen in your experience whether you are aware of them or not. The right action of the divine Mind rules out and displaces the so-called evil action of mortal mind.
Thank you so much. Simone