Have you ever tried to please another person, only to discover that they are not pleased by anything you do, no matter what you do? If so, it may be time to change who you are striving to please.
If you’re trying to please a mortal mind, efforts will likely prove to be in vain, for mortal mind is never pleased, at least not for very long.
Mortal mind is a phrase used in Christian Science to sum up all material beliefs, wants and desires.
Mortal mind may say, “Give me your money and I’ll be happy,” to satisfy a want for money, and it may be happy for a while, at least until the money runs out. But will likely come back again with the same demand, no happier than before.
Or mortal mind may say, “Give me your time,” to satisfy a personal craving for personal attention from others and may appear happy while you’re sacrificing everything else in your life to provide that time, but as soon as you leave to keep balance in your own life, it turns on you and gets upset.
The lesson we learn from these experiences is, that mortal mind is never pleased. You can’t truly please mortal mind, for mortal mind is a state of perpetual material want.
The wiser way is to please God. Ask, “What would God have me do to help this person?”
People certainly have legitimate needs and it’s compassionate and right to help each other be successful. However, the primary need is always spiritual. Mortal mind believes the need is material and will make material demands to promote its belief; but the underlying need is something only God can provide through Love.
The real need may not be for more money or time, but for more wisdom, discernment, discipline, unselfish caring, sharing and giving.
To best help another, act according to what spiritual sense reveals to you will best meet their needs. Don’t let mortal mind boss you around. Listen to divine Mind and discern what will spiritually bring the greatest benefit.
Please God first! When God is happy with your actions, everyone will be happy and benefited. And the so-called mortal mind demands will fade away and disappear.
LOVE this, Evan! It’s SO true and I’ve seen it so many times. Humanly contrived attempts to “be helpful” or satisfy a demand so often fail…or end up making things even worse…divine Mind’s leadings never fail! The best solution to any problem that mortal mind presents is to see the perfection already there that God sees. If any “human footsteps” are required, let Him reveal them.
This is real. Mortal mind a liar, can never be pleased. No one should spend time and effort in pleasing that which is not, rather turn to God who is all – knowing and there you will bring happiness and joy to all at all times.. Thank you Evan.
Grace.
Exactly the message I need right now.
As we all know the dangling of the carrot is the image of mortal mind’s endless banner calls. The incessant voice in our heads of what will satisfy is a cacophony of desires and wishes. Stay alert and be aware of the voice in our heads alias mortal minds.
Evan your subject today can so relate to world conflicts where a personality tries to define their country and no amount of power, land, and abuse of others ever satisfies.
Biblically based thinking is so clear in this quote from Matthew’s gospel : “ Make no store of wealth for yourself on earth, where it may be turned to dust by worms and weather, and where thieves may come in by force and take it away.” Matt. 6:19 BBE
Thank you all for your very appropriate and helpful comments.
‘To Please God’:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/2jlnedmyplq?s=e
‘To Please God’:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/2jlnedmyplq?s=e
thank you Angie.
Angie, thank you so very much for this article!♡
It’s excellent and very helpful!
Perfect message for me today, Evan thank you for putting this concept into words that heal.
So true that mortal mind can never be satisfied, it’s an endless well of dissatisfaction based on the lie of materiality. It can present itself as someone else making demands but often masquerades as our own mind and tries to tell us a story about what is wrong with “us” or what is missing from “our lives.”
If God is our Life and the source of our good, what can really be wrong or missing? As Evan said, “don’t let mortal mind boss you around” and “the underlying need is something only God can provide through [His endless] Love.” Greetings and blessings to all you lovely Spiritviewers!
Thanks Rose for your comment; so right what you say! Love to you♡
This is so wise. Mrs. Eddy wrote: “Charity suffereth long and is kind” but wisdom must govern charity, else love’s labor is lost and giving is unkind.” MY 231:17. The Golden Rule says love others AS ourselves, not more than.
Thank you Evan and all. Angie, as usual perfect article. Thank you
Spot on! And sooo helpful. We read/hear a lot about boundaries these days — and there’s a need on a human level for this. But your words here take it to a much higher place, and plant it firmly in Christ. “What would God have me do to help this person?” My new favorite question to ask myself ALL the time! Thank you,
This posting immediately addressed a problem presenting itself today…thank you!
Thanks to everyone for their comments!
And thank you, God…what a blessing!
Thank you, Evan, for the excellent concise summary that explains so much of my life experience, pondering, and observing others, with gradual insights. Here are some supportive details that might help make it more relatable and useful for others as a bridge or connection to their experience.
One of the biggest advantages for me of being born into an abusive family is that I could learn at a very early age that nothing I did made any difference in stopping how I was hated, scapegoated, and abused. I could do everything right with the best motives and even at age 88 my father has never smiled at me, and he would get angry that I was too smart or too good. While my sister could do everything wrong and be so dishonest, mean, disobedient, contemptuous, destructive and incredibly intentionally cruel and yet she was and remains his favorite even as she abuses him now. And having all that material money and things and power and status has never made her happy or healthy. I might be rejected and unfairly treated and wrongly accused and in a lot of physical pain, but I have that inner confidence and inner peace because I can trust my integrity and I am motivated by compassion, and my very loving of others is its own joy and freedom.
When I was in college a guy wanted to marry me who was frantically doing everything he could to fight his inner demons and overcome his traumatic past to make people accept him and respect him and love him. But everything he did that society said would make the difference only resulted in others rejecting him more. He was a bodybuilder, a black belt, a champion athlete in a variety of sports including triathlete, a mathematical genius, a concert classical guitarist, a computer coder, painter, author, with a PhD and MD in artificial intelligence and the human brain, inventor, entrepreneur, getting richer and richer with bigger homes, etc. It seemed that other people were defensive feeling insecure or inadequate compared to him and they had no empathy or compassion for the scared hurting child who just wanted to be safe and accepted. The more he felt rejected and confused and helpless the more he got defensive and self-righteous and contemptuous, then the worse they reacted to him. And in his trauma and hyper focus he never understood. The harder he tried the more they rejected him.
One of my ongoing Christian Science nursing patients was introduced to me as impossible to please, and I began eager to reassure her by me being perfect and generously forgiving until I would be sleepless before each shift and over the years I experienced her as persistently refusing to accept my loving care, but no one else was ever good enough either. I knew God loved and lived us and put us together for mutual lessons and blessin’s to also spread healing in our churches and movement. I would try so hard to be perfect for her until I realized it was her addiction to perfectionism that came from her fear of her imagined mother’s rejection and her resulting addiction to self-righteous self-pity and hyper criticism of others, allowing her own hypocrisy to starve her of the very love and joy she sought. The turning point for me came when I had my heart go out to this dear little bush that she was never pleased with would have folks chop away at. One day I had done such an excellent job of pruning it that she didn’t even recognize that it had been pruned. I loved that bush and I knew that it was just innocently being true to its own Bush-ness, just trying to live and do its job and so I prayed for protecting its innocence. The whole thing became so ludicrous that I finally could laugh and get my freedom from trying to appease and please her. I found that her sabotaging tasks, no matter who her workers were or what were the other church members issues or tasks, she would give conflicting messages and prevent the environment to allow what you claim to want, demanding that her workers do strategies that would prevent her from getting the end result she wanted, and her own healing and her relationship with workers. Finally after years, I only felt more gratitude for God teaching me through her, giving me more practice of cheerful prayer and nursing, do the craziness no longer disturbed me or made me have such a false sense of responsibility trying to fix it or fix me. And I just dearly cherished her, loving her and the others involved from a higher sense than super human generous loyalty. It was such a joy and freedom. Now whenever I see that species of bush anywhere I praise God and ask how I can even further improve my nursing practice.
I know someone else who is so super talented and popular with a huge crowd of people who enthusiastically enjoy and support her. But it seems to me that she tries so hard even at the danger to her own health and safety at risk of life, to manage her marketing façade and all the fans and “friends” don’t really know her or her past or share her ideals and values… so they don’t have the opportunity to accept or affirm or befriend who she really is. So all her money and super accomplishments and huge friends and Fanbase and positive references cannot truly satisfy her.
I have spent some time in various churches and types of groups claiming to have certain values and to be certain ways only to discover that they were not that way and they really did not have those values to do the work and take the risks and sacrifices to become what they professed. So they actually undermined the very personal progress and social change they wanted. The very esteem they wanted they lost by prioritizing appearances over substance, social acceptance over principled self sacrifice. The more they blamed and criticized others, the more they themselves made themselves unhappy and were blamed criticized.
I learned through marriage to a psychopath to pay attention to what others accuse someone of being because that often describes what the critics are actually being themselves. It is their own projection and fear. It is their own attempt to distract and redirect attention.
I watched several people in different settings with different belief systems cling to a addiction of self righteous victimization and contempt for others that they thought were the bad guys while they did the very same or worse bad things themselves. And they never recognized how super fortunate they were and how nice to them those other people were.
For decades I’ve observed in my hometown what is consistent nationwide for centuries, police breaking all kinds of laws from traffic to property damage to violent crimes, including rape and murder, and get away with it and get more money for it while they falsely accused and arrested innocent people who were put in prison or killed in prison. Some of my dear friends who are trying to protect others from the same policies and practices have been repeatedly harassed by police after the police murdered their children or other innocent, law-abiding, police-obeying loved ones. I’ve seen how the media— whether it’s victims of police brutality or victims of war profiteers in other countries or victims of the fossil fuel industry —have completely different stories or news blackouts depending upon the race and religion and class of the victims. The same exact behaviors of one country terrorizing, attacking, bombing, invading, occupying, impoverishing, destroying another country Is described differently by journalists according to what country they are a member of or that they can most easily relate to. It’s not about the principle or the human experience of the victims, but the economic profits and comfort of the people doing the judging. Usually it’s based on race and religion. I saw the same thing in my country where people who associate with one team or one color of a political group opposed the other and justify doing the same things wrong themselves that they vilify or imagine is done by the other.
I’ve also seen how people will change their perception and their memories and their relationships with others to defend their ego and their story regardless of the facts and the needed healing.
I’ve seen the same exact behavior or facts woven into supporting completely opposite stories based on the bias of the storyteller.
So obviously their perception of reality or opinions were not valid. Or we’re changing overtime regardless of the facts. So why should I contort myself to fix something that’s constantly twisting and invalid?
So the extreme examples of people that I would see around me and my extreme effort trying to make sense of it or to appease and please them taught me to trust and obey what God had told me since I was a young child. It’s none of my business what other people think about me or do because of what they tell themselves about me. It’s my business to do what God tells me. There is no appeasing or pleasing mortal mind. The divine Mind is always pleased because It only knows reality and love. It’s not my job to judge others on whether they appease or please me. To the degree we judge others we are not knowing them or loving them and we are not able to heal. It’s my job to love them and to live my own values ever better to my improving ability.
It did not matter how much I loved and sacrificed for my son when he was caught up in a brainwashing story and his trauma distorting his sense of reality confused by autism. I simply had to love him and to pray continually that he was able to sense and receive God‘s infinite love. I needed to trust that to the degree he loved others and himself he would experience feeling loved and recognize it and attract it from others. And when hated by others he would be independent of that and protected by his own loving as God loving through him. Whenever I find myself thinking like he talks that he is right and others are wrong I have to be grateful that he’s reminder for me to not think that way. A reminder for me to live God‘s grace to trust it and facilitate others experiencing it. Enter never ever take personally their projection and their rejection. Never take seriously their praise our condemnation. Never take seriously and never cling to my own mortal opinion about myself or anyone else. If it is the human mind or mortal mind it is invalid and I don’t want anything to do with it. If it is Divine Mind, I don’t need to have my ego involved.
If the story has anything to do with humans in time/space or matter then it’s a story of awakening to the reality we are always perfect and spiritual. It is a wonderful learning opportunity to practice grace and love. And not taking things personally. No one is on the planet to appease and please me. And I am not on the planet to appease them please anyone else. Not that it’s even possible to do. Life is not about me getting what I want it’s not about my will. God‘s will is already done and it’s perfect blessing everyone. There is nothing more to better please anyone. Infinite good is already here now and enough.
Wow! Evan, this is a lot to think about and consider. Thank you for giving us a Truth filled way to handle this.
Love God, love one another …reject personality, welcome God given individuality. There is nothing going on with man but God …blessings to all ❣️
Thank you very much Evan for today’s wonderful SpiritView! It is very helpful for me to give God the whole honor and not human, material opinions.
All the comments here are inspiring. This SV reminds me at the occurence of Christ Jesus in the desert with the devil, who tried to get Jesus to listen to mortal mind giving him bread from stones and promissing him all kingdoms of the world when he prays to the devil (mortal mind ) . But as we know, Jesus refused to serve the devil and very firmly said ” go away from me!” And God’s angels served Jesus, because he always trusted God alone,
It is very blessing and healing when we listen to God first and following His loving guidance. Am still learning . And I am grateful for Evan’s helpful spiritual views each day and for the Science of the Christ!♡
And this is all from basically nothingness. no power ha