If you want to grow spiritually and advance quickly in learning how to be an effective healer through prayer, it’s critical that you set spiritual goals that empower you to accomplish that result.
We pursue our goals, and we throw all our energy, attention and focus into reaching that goal.
For instance, if you begin a road trip and your goal is to drive from Los Angeles to Seattle, you will get in your car, set your mind on reaching Seattle, and focus all your time and energy on making the drive to Seattle. All other priorities will become secondary to reaching your destination.
The same outcome happens with other types of goals we set during the day. If our goal for the day is to get up, get to work and finish Project A, that’s where all our time, energy and attention is going to flow, toward completing Project A, and everything else in our life takes a backseat.
When we set material goals as our leading goals, our spiritual priorities suffer. They take backseat. They get compromised, forgotten, even lost track of, and our progress toward Spirit is slow, maybe nonexistent.
The wiser way is to set spiritual goals above all else. You may still need to get Project A finished at the office, but you can do it with grace, poise, joy, gratitude and abounding love in your heart. Make expressing these spiritual qualities and evidencing God’s presence while accomplishing Project A your #1 priority.
Love above all else. Don’t let pressure get to you. Don’t let someone else’s callous remark bother you. Don’t get harried or tense. Love, live love, express love, be Love in action. Nothing else is more important.
And you know what? Your project will still get done, but more importantly, you’ll have advanced spiritually while doing it. You’ll be a better person, a more spiritually inspired thinker, and a more effective healer.
Make growing in Love your #1 priority and you’ll make the quickest progress.
“Let love be your highest goal!” Apostle Paul, I Cor. 14:1, NLT.
Thank you Evan, this is so true. At one stage, I let increasing workload and dead!Ines gradually nudge out my CS study time. I felt hugely pressured at work, but having experienced several redundancies before, felt I needed to do all in my power to keep that job to pay my mortgage. Wrong approach. I should have been letting God, my only provider lead the way. So…..I’m out of work now anyway, but trying to listen to God for guidance and provision, and to express more love in everything.
I agree with Chris, below, Marion. There will be something much more rewarding and satisfying for you. Trusting that God is totally in control and will provide what is best for you at the right time (patience) will show you the way.
seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
King James Version (KJV)
Public Domain
Matthew 6:33 in all English translations
From the Master, Christ Jesus.
I heartily agree with Marion! This IS so TRUE … thank you (also) Evan for such an inspiring Spirit View today! My days have been increasingly more stressed lately but now I see why!: I have put the wrong items at the TOP of my “To Do List”! Your strong and courageous post today will help greatly here, I can already feel it! Thank you Evan! And my heart sings to know that Marion is being lead to an even more fruitful and joyful endeavor! May all good things and ideas be apparent today! Big Hugs!
This is really good advice. Thank you, Evan!
The God-inspired (impelled) desire
to wrestle with and overcome
“self-will, self-justification, and self-love”*
is always rewarded.
*Page 242, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
It’s when we set God’s will first that all other things fall into place. That which beset you before dissipates to expose the true view and you realize that what is accomplished can only be the work of that higher authority because a mere mortal could not possibly arrange it all as divine principle has always done. Thank you Evan as the others I failed to recognize that it was more important to do God will first and see mine need resolved within it.
Thank you, spiritview friends, for your thoughts. I am certain there is a good plan for myself and everyone. I am so grateful for unexpected provision which has come to me, and I often pause to say “thank you father that at this moment I have everything I need through your Love”. Also hugely grateful for what I am learning because I have more time to study. God is good! Thank you Evan for today’s inspiring posting.
We certainly have deep thinkers in our family of commenters, and Evan has an ability to bring out the best in us…So thank you all….Many paradox’s grace my reading and study as i plumb the depth of CS thought. A CS practitioner counseled me recently with this…”You will never become more spiritual, more perfect than you are right now”…This was great food for thought.
The paradox is the seeming effort we make to improve ourselves, seemingly to add something in the way of understanding or knowledge to make ourselves more spiritual.
If mortal mind is an illusion and therefore impossible to have existence in Gods Mind, why does it appear so real and being an illusion why does it it require effort to dispel because in Truth, with regard to this illusion “there is no there, there”
Lastly if God is not aware of mortal mind and matter why did God seem to send a remedy in the form of Christ Jesus?…..Also if Divine Mind is as stated in CS theory, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient and available in its fulness to each individual because it is the only Mind, our Mind, and we can access it instantaneously, then what use are books of knowledge or even the bible, for divine Mind contains all knowledge….
I am a new student, as I have stated before, and please understand I am not in anyway refuting
our teachings, rather I am sincerely attempting to understand. I may also be framing my questions incorrectly and therefore should not expect to extract Truth from a false premise.
So, I have taken to heart MBE’s admonishment to her students regarding the “problem of matter” where she recommends setting aside this difficult to understand aspect of study, especially in the beginning, and you shall return to it further down the road finding yourself having the ability to see it clearly in the light of Truth.
So I offer these ideas to all of our beloved family with hope of hearing your views and experiences of grappling with the same.
LOL as I know this has something to do with setting goals…
I keep checking this page to see if anyone gave any answers to your questions, which I think are good ones we all wrestle with. As I work with the belief of disease, I find myself greatly distressed as I go back and forth between being a spiritually complete idea in the here and now, and the hard work and effort it seems to take to really arrive at that. It can be confusing. Hope someone more seasoned than I responds. I also have wondered if God didn’t know about our plight, why did he send Jesus to help us? How could he have known we needed that help?
I forgot to add that I’ve also been wondering about how in the story of Moses, God tells him to put his arm inside his cloak and he takes it out and it’s leprous, then he tells him to repeat it and it is not. How did God know about leprousy?
dear Anna,
you should not argue too much about bibel storys like that of Moses and what God tells him to do in order to show that God is with him.
You should not make uncertain questions about such Bibel storys like these.
Please read in the Manuel of The Motherchurch on page 15 where Mrs. Eddy tells us in the first of the 6 tenets: “as adherent of Truth, we take the inspired word of the bible as our sufficient guide to iternal Life”.
You see she advises us “to take the i n s p i r e d word of the bible…”
and in Science and Health she advises us also to understand the bible spiritually. Otherwise the bible would be only a book with very often bad occurences and nothing else. So the best would be to pray to understand the bible in a spiritual manner which will really bless and heal us.
.
Mrs. Eddy also said “the time for thinkers has come”, so I don’t think it’s a sin to ask questions, and I appreciate Evan’s kind reply. No disrespect was intended at all.
God didn’t know anything about leprosy, but God did know the omnipresence of His power to protect, empower and enable Moses to do good works. Moses’ experience was Moses’ interpretation of what he was hearing from God at the moment and is what made sense to him considering where his understanding of God was at the time. But God is still infinite omnipresent Love, where the threat of leprosy is impossible, which is what Moses proved with his growing understanding of God.
Jesus Christ appeared as evidence that God’s love is always present to help and save us!
Hi Maximo,
You ask good questions that many new to Christian Science wonder about.
Per your first comment about “improving ourselves,” I think of CS prayer as not improving myself but as discovering my real self. There is a big difference. To believe you need to improve yourself is to believe you are an imperfect mortal who needs to get better. But in CS, one learns that your real self is God’s image, and it’s already perfect. You don’t have to improve yourself at all. However, to experience the best Life has to offer, you want to be fully in touch with your real spiritual self, which is what practicing CS is all about.
You ask about mortal mind, and where did it come from. The answer to this question is worked out through demonstration. You have to prove for yourself through your own demonstrations of Truth, that it is not the reality it appears to be. Every time you have a healing, you prove to a degree, that evil is a lie. That it was not the reality it appeared to be. If it was a reality, you could not heal it, because something that is real lasts forever.
Death appears real to mortals. But it is not. No one ever dies. They drop the earthly body and continue to live with identity and individuality, as Jesus proved. Death is an illusion. An illusion is not a reality. However, to the mortal who believes in the illusions, it appears real to them. But someday, they will learn either through increased understanding or experience that it is not real. Just like every one learns when they pass on, that they did not die.
And so it is with all of mortal mind. It will be proven by everyone, eventually, through Christ’s help, that mortal mind is not. There is no mortal mind, just like there is no death.
You say Jesus Christ was material, but if you understood him in his true individuality as the Son of God, you would see differently. It’s your perspective that makes all the difference.
Hope that helps!
Evan you have answered my main question, Christ Jesus I had mistakenly thought of as material, and the “light bulb” flashed on….Thank you so much as this is like a revelation to me and now appears as something I had not seen that was in plain sight…..This has come after asking 3 other highly respected CS members and even though I appreciated their view I was apparently not ready to understand, yet you have given me the key…So once again, Evan, thank you, this is deep appreciated…..
Hi Maximo,
Great questions! The URL below is a link to an answer that was published in the Christian Science Journal in response to a similar question to the one you asked about Jesus being sent as a “remedy” for mortal mind and matter.
http://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/31w0ms9h12?s=e
I too appreciated Evan’s response and the other comments. But I was also inspired to search JSHOnline to see what I could find there and this is what I found. I read this multiple times and even used the technique of reading a single sentence at a time and thinking deeply about that one sentence before moving to the next sentence to try and fully understand the meaning the author intended to convey. When studied in that way it was helpful to me. I hope it is also helpful for you and others too.
Just one word of advice…At one time, about 20-30 years ago now, I got so fixated in my study of Christian Science on what I did NOT understand that I completely lost sight of what I DID understand about Christian Science. This fixation on what I didn’t understand prevented me from being able to use what I did understand and even prevented me from benefiting from the help of Christian Science Practitioners. Eventually I came to peace with not immediately understanding everything and I learned to tell myself “Brian…You don’t understand [some question] now…but you can just push that question to the back of your thinking for now and continue to glory in all that you do understand of this wonderful Science…knowing that at some point in the future the answer to that question will be revealed”. That in no way is meant to discourage you from continuing to study, search and ask questions. Only that if you don’t immediately find an answer that satisfies you, just “let it go” and continue to use and be grateful for what you do know. Nothing helps you learn more, and find answers to questions, like putting into practice what you do understand about Christian Science!
Thank you so much Brian for the link, so helpful!
Am also grateful for the interesting inspiring discussions here on this topic.
best advice ever!
This is so interesting! I felt this goal this morning so strong!!!! One divine Mind speaking to us all!
Grace, short and sweet, you hit the nail on the head.
Thanks Evan
Thank you Evan for your inspiring SpiritView!
And thank you Grace for reminding us at the wellknown Bibelverse – the best to do – I love that ;-).
Thank you all, but Brian thank you for all you share. I so appreciate your making thiose links available so I can read them so effortlessly. Today’s blog had so much to digest so Evan it is so wonderful to read your responses. I feel that every day I strive to understand Chistian Science and often am frustrated why we were ever put here in this mortal body to struggle to see its not our true self. There is a lot of confusion about the real and unreal . Why would such a loving God create this way? Maximo we all have questions and I’m not getting any younger! But I feel love and comfort trying to understand God. I feel His presence and power in my life and I am grateful for the daily lessons and blogs ,and periodicals that are there for us to grow. Sometimes I feel like I wish that I were back in Sunday School.
WOW!!! What a great message Evan. Also wonderful discussion by all. Evan, your response to some questions benefited all of us. Thank you all for this marvelous lesson.
An idea I found really helpful in thinking about statements in the Bible and Science & Health that seem to contradict the spiritual reality is something my CS teacher shared, (and which Evan likely teaches as well.) There is a difference throughout our writings between “absolute” and “relative” statements. Absolute statements refer to the absolute spiritual reality, whereas relative statements are those which address the seeming reality, to human consciousness only, of any kind of error.
Here are a couple of articles from jshonline on the subject that look helpful:
http://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1917/3/19-29/truth-absolute
http://journal.christianscience.com/issues/1964/4/82-4/absolute-and-relative
What a lovely idea you shared with us Evan – to stay focused on our daily priority Projects at work, not forgetting to consider our spiritual goals too. Because ultimately we are all here to make our spiritual progress and how can one lose sight of it?
The method you showed, too is great viz. to fully focus on the pet project at work, by performing it with poise, love, care, patience, grace, joy, gratitude and abounding love in our heart. I love this idea you shared, and its certainly going to help me a lot.
The bonus here is, “By expressing good spiritual qualities whilst performing our projects at work, we sure evidence God’s presence.”
Yes Evan your guidance is great, that if we put love above all else, we can avoid pressure and stress. Secondly love will enable us to forgive someone’s callous remarks at office, and it will not bother us much. Daily identification work keeps us alert to counter hatred with love. We need practise to keep living love, expressing it all the time.
Evan, what touched me most is, Nothing should be more important than adding the flavour of love to our work. We read in one of our Hymns, “Love, love alone is Life”.
May “LOVE” another name for “GOD”, always lead us to love one another, no matter what, and make it a priority in life. Expressing love, brings the healing presence of God in our life. Revenge and animosity takes us down to the dumps.