Healing happens at the point of letting go

Amazing.  It has been six years to the day that I started this blog.  It was a small group of Christian Science practitioners who got together over several conference calls and learned as much as they could to see how to further the word about Christian Science and its healing prayer through the internet.  Today, I have lost track of how many sites there are about Christian Science!  Each of us has a singular voice sharing with the world that most singular and universal love that can be demonstrated and practiced in Christian Science.  This post is six years old, but the ideas are ever new!  Enjoy!

Explore with me a minute what this means: healing happens at the point of letting go.

Healing through prayer can at times sound so simple as to seem simplistic, or as one of my friends said after hearing an explanation for the first time, it seems like magic. It is neither simplistic nor magic. The basis of healing through prayer, as taught by Christ Jesus, is sound. Its basis is comprised of three basic facts:

• God (good) is All.
• We are His reflection.
• Anything unlike God (good) is unreal and powerless.

When I work with a patient, I listen and mainly work with these three ideas, whatever the situation is. For example:

• What Truth calms an anxious thought about the future? Understanding that God is All.
• What Truth dissolves low self-esteem? Knowing that we are God's reflection.
• What Truth heals disease? Reasoning that anything unlike God (good) is unreal -- that is, powerless to impact who you are, as God's reflection, because God is All.

When the faith in God grows to be more than the faith in evil/disease/death/bad things happening to good people, we are more ready to trust God and let go of our concerns, arguments, and fears.(Click here to see Science and Health citation.)

When we understand that we can never be separated from God ( because we are His reflection) and that God is All ( good is always present) and we are safe ( bad things have no power to impact us/ anything unGodlike is unreal), we can let go and experience healing.

As a child, I grew up with some simple and profound ideas:

• Let go and let God.
• Don't outline good, because you can't outline good enough!
• There is no spot where God is not.
• Just Trust.

God is incredibly, powerfully, thoroughly good. His power dissolves and dissipates anything unlike Him, and we are safe in His care. (Click here to see Bible citation.) Understanding this - even in a degree - helps us to let go and experience healing.





photo from http://binged.it/rbMRrX

to reassure depressed hope

Spiritual resource to share: hope

Spring has sprung in the northern hemisphere and with it, nature is sweeping away the cold and muddy, and is persistently bursting forth with new growth.

Sweeping away what is muddy to reveal new growth reminded me of healing depression. I came across this quote from Mary Baker Eddy's primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

Instruct the sick that they are not helpless victims, for if they will only accept Truth, they can resist disease and ward it off, as positively as they can the temptation to sin. ....... The fact that Truth overcomes both disease and sin reassures depressed hope. It imparts a healthy stimulus to the body, and regulates the system.

I found it helpful to break down this whole paragraph - to get a deeper look at its healing influence. Walk with me on this one:

Instruct the sick that they are not helpless victims,

This has to do with rightly identifying ourselves - we are not thrown to the winds of chance, bad luck or bad circumstances - but have the ability to think, to choose, and to love. The qualities of intelligence, discernment and authority are spiritual, not subject to limitation.

...for if they will only accept Truth...

Openness or receptivity to Truth keeps the channels of thought open to receive new ideas. Accepting Truth, we give our consent to Truth and open our thought to the power of Truth and Love in our lives.

...they can resist disease and ward it off, as positively as they can the temptation to sin.

Truth is not a naive brush over illness, maliciousness or lack. Truth is active and transforming. Just as light dissolves darkness, Truth annihilates anything untrue. Love annihilates anything unloving. Life destroys death or anything that limits or restricts good. Physical disease can be resisted in the same way that the temptation to sin can be resisted.

The fact that Truth overcomes both disease and sin reassures depressed hope.

The active expression of Truth (of purity, honesty, principle, Love) is the antidote to depression. Understanding the omnipotent nature of Truth lifts off the burden of self-doubt and of thinking that evil has power. Hope is released.

It imparts a healthy stimulus to the body, and regulates the system.

Seeing that Truth is always operating on our behalf, frees up our thought which leads to expressions of freedom, flow and growth. Circulation of new fresh ideas becomes the norm. Balance is achieved. Systems in the physical body and systems of organization are regulated in accordance with efficiency, harmony and progress.

Check out these links to read about how people have overcome depression in their lives:

Drug-free answers to treating depression
What got me going again
Freed from depression
I shone a spiritual light on Seasonal Affective Disorder
A healing of manic depression

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, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Some musings on the entering the "closet of prayer"

Spiritual resource to share: the clarity of words

If all of nature teaches of God's love to man, then it has taken all of nature to get me to the point of understanding the practical dimension of prayer, with a nod of thanks to my teachers: the pines, lakes and broad sky.

What I’ve most noticed about living here in the northwoods is that there is a lot of space between words. Let me explain. I can think – and there are few other distractions squeezing into my thought space. I can walk in large and open frozen lake fields and among tightly grown harvesting pines and not be ruffled by opinions or glamour.

Unlike the city, invigorating as it is, where I go outside and my words are layered onto a cacophony of billboards, traffic, and other conversations; here I say one thing and it goes zinging into the open air. Each word has its own stage, and is given its own weight.

I don’t need to shout. There is no din. My thoughts do not compete with distracting elements and do not conform to editorial agendas.

It gives me a new sense of what is purposeful and prayerful.

My thoughts and words turn to prayer. In prayer, I am not trying to make a point or to defend or convince others. Stripped of ambition, competition and cleverness, my thoughts and words are naked. They form in their own atmosphere of intelligence and clarity. They rise up like a bubble from the depths of some lake and pop on top to the perfect word. They are delivered for the joy of seeing thought articulated.

My prayer is full of words with integrity because prayer is affirming what God has always known. My prayer words blend with God's word, and I know more of God than I did before.

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." My prayer transforms me and the words are made flesh.





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, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Conference call today! Share your healings and inspiration!

Spiritual resource to share: your spiritual journey - your healings, your inspirations, your joy

Hi All!

Every Wednesday at noon (time in Wisconsin), a group of Christian Scientists who manage the website csdirectory.com, put on a conference call that is a combination of inspirational readings and a spontaneous time for sharing healing stories and inspiration from the study and pratice of Christian Science -- aka a testimony meeting. I have given the inspirational readings a few times and so appreciate that we have a way to join with others who don't have a church to go to or can't make it to a service!

I'm going to be reading on the topic "Humility: washing one another's feet" today and invite you all to come!

You can go to this website http://www.csinteractivechurch.org/ and get all the information you need. But in a nutshell, from the US, you call 1-201-793-9022 and then you'll be prompted to put in the access code of 7040344.

Hope to see you there!







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, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

What does one need to be healed? What does one need to grow spiritually?

Spiritual resource to share: willingness

These two questions are inseparable. Being healed spiritually is a whole transformation of thought that results in a more spiritualized thought and that may result in physical cure, balanced relationships and conditions, and improved character.

I was thinking about how Jesus healed. In so many of his healings, he required or asked something of the one seeking healing. Like the following:

And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? Mark 10: 51
When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? John 5: 6
Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. John 5: 8

This made me ask, what was being asked of those seeking healing? What type of thought did they have that enabled them to grow spiritually and to be healed?

The first thought was that it was willingness. This actually covers a lot of ground. MBEddy says it succinctly:

Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new,
renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. SH 323

In other words, willingness to become new! To drop ego, and discard hidden or unhidden agendas, bad habits, anything that would limit, dependence on things or processes (like – “I have to have my morning coffee!”), rehearsing arguments in your head, rigidly outlining outcomes and so on.

Now this is easy when we are sick. Who wouldn’t want to be free of some sickness! But it is a little harder when dealing with sin.

What other qualities were expressed by those who were healed? With my own healings, and looking at those stories in which Jesus healed, there are some similar qualities of thought:

• An openness and receptivity to take in new ideas
• An expectation of good – expecting that there will be an insight, an improvement and satisfaction; expecting to be surprised with new insights and solutions
• Humility – that is that willingness to lay aside ego
• Giving our consent – similar to expectation, but consent gives permission or agreement to the healing and transformation expected
• Gratitude – seeing what is good and true in every situation; even the recognition of good in the smallest of circumstances can get you started in the right direction.
• Stating what is true – like gratitude, even stating what you already know to be true (that God is Love, that we are all created by God, Love, and so on…) can grow into a fuller understanding and acceptance of your wholeness and completeness.

As I look over my life and the healings I've had, of physical, relationship and financial problems, I see that they have all benefitted me personally, but most important of all, they have benefitted me spiritually, and I am so much better for it!




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, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right

asking the right questions

Spiritual resource to share: spiritual framework

Did you ever hear of this question – or a question like it? When did you stop beating your dog?
This question, and questions similar to it, point out how important it is to ask the right questions.

Of course, in answering the question above, you are stuck. Providing that you have never beaten your dog, you are stuck responding to false accusations and are trapped in having to explain yourself outside of the framework of the question. The problem is -- it's the wrong question!

Asking the right question is critical to getting a right answer. In asking a question you do three things. You:

• establish or respond to a premise
• provide a framework for the answer
• and lead the conclusion - whether in a bias way, a general or a specific way.

I've found that the question Why do bad things always happen? is similar to the one about beating the dog. So are questions like: When will I stop being a jerk? When will my life turn around? The premises are all faulty, the frameworks for the answers are too narrow and the conclusions are biased toward accepting a faulty premise!

So, in healing, how can you be sure how to ask the right question? I think that the answer is simple. Start with the right answer. The right answer sets up the right premise.

Here’s an example: The right answer is that God is One. That means that God is omnipotent and the only power. So God’s governing is supreme. Anything contrary to that not only breaks the First Commandment, but is set up to be corrected or reversed until it comes into conformity with God’s government.

Instead of the question being Why do bad things always happen? -you can ask, How are bad things to be healed?
Instead of When will I stop being a jerk? -ask How can I reflect God’s goodness more and more?
Instead of When will my life turn around? –ask How can I be open to more of God’s infinite possibilities? How can I see myself as God sees me?

These are the type of questions whose premise helps to shape the most healing and transformative answers!





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, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

FASCINATING conversation with a physicist.....

Spiritual resource to share: brilliant friends!


Two friends (one who is a physicist) and I were talking about the decades old rash of studies dealing with the effect of thought and prayer on healing. The physicist started out the conversation with a couple of things I would like to share here:

He asked what the difference is between
Brain over body
Mind over matter
Spiritual healing?

It seemed easy to answer on the basis of MBEddy’s outline on the scientific translation of mortal mind. Each of these three approaches to the different medical studies could be defined in the context of that definition! (Note: MBEddy’s translation of mortal mind is in bold and my comments are in italics.)

Scientific Translation of Mortal Mind

First Degree: Depravity. (Marginal heading: Unreality)

PHYSICAL. Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, disease, death.
Brain over body deals with a wholly material basis, proposing that thought is a result of reactions of the brain and works to manipulate matter to produce healthy effects
Brain over body studies deal with the physical: passions, appetite, and the analysis from a material basis of sin, disease and death.

Second Degree: Evil beliefs disappearing. (Marginal heading: Transitional qualities)

MORAL. Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance.

Mind over matter deals with thought as well as body; seeing that thought has an impact on health and works that idea toward healthy conditions
Mind over matter studies deal with the moral qualities of honesty, affection, compassion and humanity; these are transitional qualities

Third Degree: Understanding. (Marginal heading: Reality)

SPIRITUAL. Wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.

Spiritual healing deals with absolute spiritual principle coming from an infinite and omnipotent Mind, God; the application of these principles bring about harmony resulting in health
Spiritual healing studies deal with understanding: This is the basis for reality.

So what’s the point here and why is this important for us to understand?

Whereas these studies and theories point to an increased discussion (and elevated discussion) about the role of thought and prayer on health, it is only the ones that deal with the moral element that bring the discussion to that “transitional level” and may open the way for more inquiry to and practice of spiritual healing. Other studies are looking for a way to reduce God to a neurological impulse – keep God at a material basis.


Here are some examples that could be categorized into the three degrees of Mortal Mind as defined by MBEddy:

Brain over Body: God as a Physical phenomenon

Emotional Intelligence By Daniel Goleman
“…we are wired for compassion and concern” There is a new field of science called neurotheology, which applies the methodology of neuroscience to study the “God experience,” or GE. A National Institutes of Health study showed that one third of Americans had an experience in which they felt “a divine and wonderful spiritual power.” Scientists are now interested in studying and measuring what is going on in the brain during these experiences. They want to know, “Is spirituality genetic?"

Mind over Matter: God as the source of Moral Qualities

What Happy People Know By Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth
What one reviewer wrote: "Dr. Baker engages and entertains by writing in a conversational style sharing inspirational experiences and insights. The book takes a "positive psychology" approach teaching the reader what actions one should take to be happy and suggests that simply talking at length about a person's problems in a private office can't get you as far as going out and taking action. He says love is the answer - we should practice altruism, appreciation, and forgiveness. This great book is easy reading but unbelievably interesting and thought-provoking."

Spiritual healing: God as universal principle

"Intelligence is everywhere. And the deeper you go beneath the surface, the more intelligence, the more dynamism, the more awareness, until at the foundation of the universe there is a field of pure abstract universal existence-universal Consciousness…the unified field.”
From: “Consciousness in the Unified Field” John Hageli, Light of Consciousness(Spring/Summer 2006)

So, would love to hear comments on this! Especially with those of you who have backgrounds in the sciences. (PS - Thanks to my Association mates who researched the above books and quotes!)







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, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

On my knees

Spiritual resource to share: healing as worship work

It's not uncommon for people to ask me "Does Christian Science work?" when we get into a discussion about healing through prayer. I say yes, and then we are off to a neat discussion.

In these discussions, I try to lift thought above the idea that prayer is like a pill - something you can take to alleviate the pain, heal the wound, make the bad things go away, etc. The healing prayer I practice is not just about physical phenomeon, but about transforming the whole understanding until we see more clearly who we are as a child of God. When this happens, the whole body conforms. We shoot for the high goal of understanding God and our relationship to Her. Then everything falls into its natural place of harmony, balance and mobility.

About a year and a half ago, I had taken a tumble down the stairs and badly wrenched my knee. Not only that, but my dog started limping. Thinking it may be that something was lodged between her pads, we went to the vet to see what it was. There was no thorn, he said, It was her knee. So all two of us were limping around.

What started out as a desire to heal wrenched knees became a prayer to go beyond the complaint of the body to the praise of and communion with God.

I saw that God fills all space - that God is expressed in Her purity of affection and unconditional Love that is pouring out more than we can even comprehend. Love nourishes, supports and guides us, that is, God causes us to grow; God feeds, supports, preserves, encourages and strengthens us. Every ankle bone, knee joint, muscle and connecting tissue is an expression of the fluidity, agility and grace of God's creation.

I also reasoned that each of us is completely mobile with no obstructions, accidents or scar tissue to interefere with our expression of joy. Our movement and energy is indestructible.

We reflect light (light also means easy, agile and nimble). Now this line of reasoning was something that I needed to persist with. Seeing my dog limp and feeling the pain in my knee were discourging. But I did persist.

The end of the story is that now we are all moving about normally, running, working out, I even did a cross country ski race that following winter. Our dog runs, jumps and dances (it's like a running, twisting, tail wagging kind of combination).

But the glory of the healings is in knowing that through humble and persistent prayer, we can acknowledge and feel so much more than just an improved body. We have an improved understanding of who we are as a child (or dog) of God and can "glorify God in (y)our body, and in (y)our spirit, which are God's."




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How big is God?

Spiritual resource to share: expansion

I have been reading this verse from the book of Hebrews over and over again this week.

"...the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than eny two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

Wow. Does God get any edgier than this? Not only does this sentence cover the speed and power of God's word, but also God's expansive scope from soul and spirit to the intents of the heart.

When I am dealing with my own problems, there is a moment when I am caught up in it and it feels like I can't get out of a cloud of pain or fear. It is this moment that I pray to commune with God. Knowing that God's word is quick and powerful and that God knows the most intimate thoughts in my heart breaks that mesmerism and healing follows. And not only healing, but an increasing joy to know, once again in a new way, that God is all. And I am assured that there will be an infinite number of opportunties to understand and experience the infinite God.

When confronted with a situation in healing, we may be impressed with trying to find out how big the problem is. The better approach may be to ask the question is How big is God?







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, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Coming home to Truth

(Note: this is a long one, but it's good!)

I shared this with you all before, that the universal ideas of Christian Science are fully explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. When sharing this book with others, I often heard responses from new readers of Science and Health like

“This is what I have always believed” “I always knew this to be true” and “I have known this all along.”

To many of these first time readers (and actually for us old time readers as well!) these ideas aren’t foreign, but feel like a homecoming, welcoming us to see as real the hopes and ideals we had always hoped would be true. Reading Science and Health ideas like: God is all Love, that good is not helpless, that Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need, etc. these cherished ideals are true and can be demonstrated over and over again.

Once when I was working in a Christian Science Reading Room (a specialty bookstore focused on the practical healing ideas of Christian Science and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy), a woman came in to ask about The Christian Science Monitor. We got to talking about Mary Baker Eddy, who started this international newspaper, and her other achievements. When I told her that Mary Baker Eddy discovered a system of healing based on Christ’s work and Scripture, her eyes opened wide!

Taking a deep breath, she started pouring out her story of how she was healed through prayer while she was a patient at a hospital.

“People thought I was crazy, but I can’t explain it any other way,” she said.

I assured her that she was not crazy, and talked to her about healings I had had. This conversation felt so good! Not only was I able to validate that she had a healing, I could introduce her to hundreds of healing experiences where healing was accomplished through prayer alone. (Many Reading Rooms keep an archive of articles and testimonies of healing that had been published for over a hundred years.) My hope is that she gained some peace after her visit and realized that she was not alone.

At another time, a visitor stepped in the doorway of the Reading Room, but didn’t commit himself to coming all the way in. He explained that when he was in prison, he got a hold of some Christian Science literature and some of the ideas really stayed with him. He carefully shared an incident when he was working in the prison kitchen and accidentally poured hot oil over his arm. Immediately he said his thought went to one of these spiritual ideas and he felt that he was totally safe. Sure enough, there were no marks from the accident whatsoever.

After telling me this, he must have thought that I didn’t look amazed enough because he said,

“I don’t think you heard me, I said that it was hot oil poured all over my arm!”

(I am used to stories like this, and learned that I need to be a bit more responsive!) Like the woman mentioned above, I shared how happy I was to hear this and introduced him to scores of stories of healing through prayer and offered encouragement for his spiritual path.

The recognition of healing through prayer seems to be growing. Browsing the web there are a growing number of sites like The Order of St. Luke and their stories of healing, spirithome.com, lifechallenges.org, (and their report on the recent Harvard symposium on Spirituality and Healing), spirituality.com, etc. etc. It is fascinating to follow some of these sites.

I used to think that Christian Scientists had a corner on the market for healing through prayer. Indeed, the very purpose of the Christian Science church is “to reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” Now, I can see that healing through prayer is broadly practiced in a wide variety of ways.

I needed to ask myself, what distinguishes Christian Science? And I came to the conclusion that it is its textbook, Science and Health. This book, dedicated to the sincere seeker for Truth, explains how healing through prayer works, and how it can be demonstrated. It continues now, as in its over 125 years of its publishing history, to heal those who read it again and again. It has the potential of bringing into sharper focus the science behind healing through prayer – taking it beyond an unexplained phenomenon to a repeating practice.

A good friend of my mother-in-law used to be a nun and shared with me her healing of multiple sclerosis through prayer. This was done under a doctor’s watchful eye, and with the help of her church’s prayer groups. She commented that she is hearing in her own church community of more and more healings being accomplished through prayer. Delighted to hear that I was in the practice of healing prayer, we had a lively and happy discussion on the growing recognition of healing through prayer.

Another new friend explained to me her work with a prayer practitioner who lived across the country, and how sessions with this practitioner were helping her gain a sense of dominion over her life. More secular in its orientation, the prayer she worked with touched on aligning thought with one’s spirituality.

My hope is that this site is one, that along with others, can help bring that validation that healing through prayer is alive and well and spreading. We are all coming home to the cherished realization that

“with God, all things are possible.”

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