Health now determined to be contagious - revisited

What would happen if you were to see this in your local paper's headlines? "Health now determined to be contagious."

Headlines are popping up about the swine flu. And there is a great fear of impending disaster. This has always been the case throughout history. It is easy to be manipulated when one is fearful about the unknown, about being separated from help and about being made vulnerable. It is enough to be scared out of knowing that we have what it takes to deal with these issues! So, how do we un-scare ourselves?

Most of us probably agree on the following:

• Fear spreads disease and in many cases is the cause of disease. Even my one cousin (a medically trained doctor) said that about 90% of his cases come in because of stress, and another cousin (a hypnotherapist) said that most of her cases come in due to a fear of loneliness.
• Loneliness, stress, fear, these are all mental causes to illness. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures over 125 years ago, “Sickness is a growth of error, springing from mortal ignorance or fear.” (p.188)
• Health is natural. Even the body will fight disease in an effort to cure it.
  

But let’s take this a little farther. Mary Baker Eddy gives a brilliant look at contagion in an article aptly named Contagion. In it, she asks that “If only the people would believe that good is more contagious than evil, since God is omnipresence, how much more certain would be the doctor's success…”

Health is good. Health trumps illness. Health is from God and is powerful, self-creative and permanent. Health, like God, is eternal.

As children of God, we reflect the power of health, the ability to see and experience the fact that good overcomes illness. We can experience a release from fear and feel God's perfect love. “Perfect love casteth out fear" the Bible writes. God as Love tenderly cares for us. And the natural attraction of Love compels us all to share the truth that makes us free: Health is contagious.

For more discussion on the issue of ensuring healing and protection from swine flu and other contagious elements, please see spirituality.com.

"Contagion" by Mary Baker Eddy

Spiritual resource to share: our consent to robust health

Fueled by recent news stories of studies of anti-depressants and our ongoing reading of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, our other Science and Health discussion group talked about the mental nature of disease and how we give our consent for its cure. Mary Baker Eddy deals with that theme thoroughly in her article on "Contagion."

I have copied half of the article here, and at the end you can click onto the full article - as well as several translations of the article - from spirituality.com.

Contagion
by Mary Baker Eddy
from Miscellaneous Writings

Whatever man sees, feels, or in any way takes cognizance of, must be caught through mind; inasmuch as perception, sensation, and consciousness belong to mind and not to matter. Floating with the popular current of mortal thought without questioning the reliability of its conclusions, we do what others do, believe what others believe, and say what others say. Common consent is contagious, and it makes disease catching.

People believe in infectious and contagious diseases, and that any one is liable to have them under certain predisposing or exciting causes. This mental state prepares one to have any disease whenever there appear the circumstances which he believes produce it. If he believed as sincerely that health is catching when exposed to contact with healthy people, he would catch their state of feeling quite as surely and with better effect than he does the sick man's.

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Click here to read the full article.





To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, or email this article to a friend.