What do you spend the bulk of your time seeking each day: pleasure, pain or Truth?
The pleasure-seeker is busy planning various ways to derive sensational or physical happiness. Perhaps substantial effort is expended on maximizing joy derived from eating food, entertaining himself through the eyes and ears, earning and hoarding money, engaging multitudes of social contacts, indulging long periods of idleness, fantasizing about the future, or any other type of preoccupation bent on creating a sensation of physical, mortal, or material pleasure.
The pain-seeker is down on the world and on his future. He sees woe everywhere he looks. In his eyes, the world is fraught with trouble and the future is bleak. Suffering is inevitable. Disease happens. Death is our final fate. And there’s no use in even trying to make the world a better place or improve one’s lot because evil has the upper hand anyway. This type of attitude is not necessarily consciously seeking pain, but receives it into its fold because of the very nature of its perspective. It attracts what it expects, and the outcome is misery.
The Truth-seeker is sick of the world and hungry for heaven. He has seen the futility of seeking pleasure through the senses because he has learned from experience that it is all vanity. Yes, the world promises thrills, and delivers them on a regular basis, but at some point they dump you over the cliff, walk away, and couldn’t care less how far you fall.
The Truth-seeker has figured out that true happiness, enduring joy, and worthwhile pleasure have their roots in knowing God and in living a spiritually inspired life. The Truth-seeker is no longer deceived by the wiles of the devil that promise joy, but deliver woe.
The Truth-seeker understands the difference between temporal pleasure and eternal joy. The Truth-seeker is ready to let go of the world and run to God with arms open wide. The Truth-seeker finds his greatest joy in learning truth, expressing Love, and helping and healing others unselfishly. The Truth-seeker is headed for heaven and eager to sacrifice whatever it takes to get there. The Truth-seeker has found heaven right here on earth, and that’s the greatest pleasure of all.
“There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality — to have no other consciousness of life — than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses.”
~ Mary Baker Eddy (S&H 242:9)
I am surprised that, so far, I am the only one commenting. Evan hit it on the head so geniusly. He actually described the false human thought in the 1st two paragraphs and the true in the last paragraph, summing up all human emotions.
There is nothing like the system of Christian Science which sums up and explains what all types of thinking is.
Thank you Evan! You laid it out so clearly!! Having fallen off the material cliff a few times I am happy to be a Truth seeker and have never been happier! Still its a great reminder that we should watch what we are spending our time on because its easy to get caught up in the in the human planning and pleasure making!
Amen, Evan.
“The Truth-seeker is sick of the world and hungry for heaven.” That’s an interesting choice of words. Doesn’t the Truth-seeker search for Truth because it brings him/her closer to God, not for a negative reason?
To above,
Many people, probably more than not, end up seeking Truth because the world has failed them. They have learned through experience, the hard way, that happiness, health and joy are not found in fame, fortune, material ways and means, medicine, or any type of so-called comfort in matter. They grow tired of looking where there is nothing to find, and finally turn to God, the source of all health and happiness to begin with.
So, you’re right, an interesting choice of words. It got your attention!