Healing through the Christ-consciousness

During summer ‘01, I had the enormous pleasure and privilege of being a housemum to 11 sparkling young women between the ages of 18 and 22. It was at a holiday camp called Focus, which was for young Christian Scientists. As I got to know the girls, I was in awe of their deep spirituality and reliance on God’s power and guidance in their lives. Quite honestly, at their age, my only interest was pop music and clothes and my sole mission in life was to find a boyfriend!

We had many physical and emotional healings in our accommodation block, the whole atmosphere was so conducive to it. There were talks or discussion sessions every day on some aspect of prayer-based living and we were mixing with like-minded people, some very spiritual and inspiring indeed. When your thought is filled with the All-ness of God and the nothingness of evil or discord, healing is a very natural outcome.

This particular experience though, was very special to me as it showed so clearly that healing is not about fixing anything or changing sick matter into well matter, but about understanding the All-ness of God, good, and our relationship to that goodness as HisHer beloved child and that fact that we are NOW and always HisHer perfect image and likeness.

I'd just rushed in from buying our midnight snacks from town (having got caught up in the rush hour following the races in Newton Abbott) and was getting a drink before a houseparents' meeting 5 minutes later when Rachel passed the kitchen on the way from the showers and just said "I'm going to bed, I don't feel good. Will you pray for me please."

Talk about praying on the run! I had no idea what the problem was so couldn’t get bogged down with symptoms, expectations or anything else. All I could do was to go to God, to know the All-ness of Good and the perfection of HisHer image and likeness. I’d been telling the girls about a remarkable man called John Wyndham who had been interred by the Japanese during WWII and overcome torture and starvation, accused of being a spy ( he had made notes describing why evil could not stand, based on his understanding of Christian Science and that was used as evidence against him). After the war he used to lecture and at the end he would hold up three fingers and say: "There are 3 things God will not give us - sin, sickness and death." then he would make a huge ark with his arms and say "All the rest is yours."

What came to me as I set off to my meeting was "The three things that God does give us in infinite abundance is Life, Truth and Love." I just held to that beautiful and profound thought as I walked down the path. The houseparents’ meeting was opened by reading hymn 15 from the Christian Science hymnal:

As gold by fire is tested,
Its purity shown forth,
So cleansing fires of Truth may prove
To man his native worth.

And as a mirror shows us
A likeness clear and bright,
So God forever sees His child
Revealed in radiant light.

'Twas thus the loving Master
Saw man's perfection shine,
Beheld God's child forever pure
In radiance all divine.

As I heard those words, even though I didn’t know what had been the problem with Rachel, I just KNEW that they exactly met her need and that she was healed. I knew this from a higher level, from the Christ-consciousness. A couple of hours later she was in her place at choir. Nothing was said that night and I just assumed it had been a headache or something, but later on she told me what had happened:

She had been horse riding that day and had developed an aggressive allergy to the horse (something she'd had before.) Her throat had begun to swell and a rash was developing over parts of her body, which was very itchy. She was quite upset by this and then also developed a thumping headache. She decided to have a shower, miss dinner and get a couple of hours sleep instead as she wasn't coping but felt that she wouldn't think about it all while asleep. Rachel was quite new to Christian Science but had already had several wonderful healings and was a great little metaphysical worker herself and an inspiration to us all.

If you read the words of that hymn again, you’ll see how perfectly they did meet this condition (which, because we understand that it is unreal, because not from God, we would call a belief). To me, it shows how wonderfully our needs are met before we even know what they are, when we turn to and trust God. Well, needless to say, when she woke, she was completely healed, all swelling, irritation and headache gone.

I honestly feel that had I been confronted with all the descriptions of the symptoms, it might have been harder to have understood the unreality of it and to have just been bathed in the reality of the spiritual harmony and wholeness. I didn’t have to try to fix swelling and irritation and pain. All I had to do was to be a witness to God’s power and Love and perfection. So simple!

After Focus I received an e-mail which read in part:
> The other thing I wanted to share with you was about
> the healing you helped me with at Focus. I never told
> you what had appeared to be the problem, but I'd come
> back from horse riding and had an extreme reaction to
> the animals. (Before Focus I had always struggled with
> the belief of animal allergies) When I asked you to
> pray for me, I was feeling physically ill but also had
> some areas of my body that had formed a rash. As you
> know, within an hour (I went to sleep so I didn't
> carry on scratching which confirmed the belief rather
> than discard it) I was perfectly fine and I thought
> that was the end of it and that I'd had a wonderful
> healing and that was great.
>
> Anyway, when we got to Canada my brother his g/friend
> and I all stayed with my cousins and my parents stayed
> with my Aunt and Uncle. My cousins have 3 cats and
> normally I would have been quite fearful or in the days
> before I knew about Christian Science, I would have taken
> drugs everyday to combat the allergy. To be completely
> honest I hardly thought about this at all until we
> came home and I heard my father talk about a serious
> reaction he had to the cats when he came over to visit
> us at the apartment. It was only then that I realised
> that I'd been healed from this belief at Focus and
> therefore it wasn't even an issue in Canada. I'd had
> the cats all over me, sleeping with me on my bed etc.
> It was also great proof for my parents as
> non-Scientists to realise that I had no reaction and
> I wasn't taking any drugs (my brother had to take them
> 3 times a day) to stop it. So thank you so much for
> helping me with that one.

Mary Baker Eddy who discovered these laws of healing wrote in her book Science and Health: "The spiritual power of a scientific, right thought, without a direct effort, an audible or even a mental argument, has oftentimes healed inveterate diseases." and that’s what I feel happened here. What a joy to be part of that glimpse of the perfection of God and HisHer universe and to have proof that help is always right at hand - immediate in fact.

Love and peace,

Judy

RE: Healing through the Christ-consciousness

Hi Judy,

Good to see you at your inspiring best!

These are some of my thoughts on healing - how do they fit in with yours?

This world, this universe we live in has huge amounts of all kinds of energies all over the place, and we only consciously sense a tiny fraction of them. When we are unwell, it is because our energies are out af alignment. Anything we do in God-Consciousness, or simply with an altruistic and loving motive is in line and in harmony with those forces unseen, and so it helps bring about a re-alignment, and so heal the illness.

In meditation, I can feel when my energies are aligned with God's Energy, or Universal Love Energy if you like. It's like a purification process for my Self, Spirit, Soul (choose your preference) and fills my spiritual energy "tanks" for the day ahead. When that love is showered on me, I want to shower it on others, since Universal Love is for giving. Giving full measures to all and without exclusion.

Love to you

Brother Bob

P.S. I've had some difficulty cutting and pasting from Word documents. Have you had any problems with that?

Hello Brother Bob!

How lovely to see you here again! I was getting a bit lonely on this forum…..

What a beautiful post – thank you! You are I always think in such a similar way, though some of the terms might be different. As I read your post these words of Mary Baker Eddy’s came straight to thought:

The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love. (Science & Health 201)

and in similar vein:

A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by emptying his thought of the false stimulus and reaction of will-power and filling it with the divine energies of Truth. (S&H 186)

And that patient of course, is ourselves first and foremost!

The word "mort" comes from the Latin for death. The collective world belief or thinking (perhaps that would describe some of the energies you talk of) that we are made of matter, that mind is contained in this matter and that life has beginning and end (and can be pretty miserable in between) is actually the counterfeit of what we really are – spiritual, perfect, at one with God, Spirit, divine Mind, The Source, The Light (whatever term is most comfortable).

As I understand it Brother Bob, there is only ONE energy and that is the divine energy of Spirit. (Eddy describes it as the "invincible and infinite energies of Truth and Love,") And that energy is not just all over the place, but is filling ALL space. It is that understanding – the Christ consciousness, that destroys the belief in a power opposed to God, good. Just like the sunshine burns off the fog which distorts the appearance of the landscape, though it never actually becomes part of the landscape.

You are so right – un-Godlike thinking is like the fog – it distorts our view of ourselves into struggling mortals, revolving in a sphere of our own, at the whim of forces beyond our control, instead of us realising that actually, we are the very image and likeness of Spirit, Truth and Love. It makes us believe that we are separated from God, good – and that is simply not true! We have authority and dominion over every single belief that is opposed to God, good – now isn’t that just wonderful to know? If only we would all accept it!

Love and peace,

Judy

I was just thinking about the healings above. Apart from when I helped Rachel (and it was very clear then that it really had nothing to do with me) all of them took place without any outside "help" – apart from omnipotent Spirit!

They to me illustrate three things:

1) That God is omnipresent and omnipotent – the great physician, our immediate help in danger, who is with us 24 hours a day, no matter where we are or how isolated (humanly) we seem to be. No case is too serious. No case is hopeless. No case needs a lengthy recuperation period.

2) Healings like this cannot happen through human will power. It is not any power of the human mind that beings these sorts of results. Also, they show that we don’t need any sort of medium – either a person or material treatment to connect with our real identity as an idea of God, Mind, who only knows Its own perfection.

3) That they illustrate that the healings and examples of protection all through the Bible are not just "fairy stories" like some cynics would like us to believe but actual accounts of wonderful things that happened to men and women just like us, proving the availability and superiority of spiritual over material so-called "laws". The promises in the Bible are not just beautiful words – they are actual spiritual laws, just as practical and effective as the laws of mathematics or music.

For instance, while reading the first healing of the snakebite, it reminded me that the apostle Paul, after surviving shipwreck on the island of Malta had a similar experience. The islanders showed the survivors great kindness. It was cold, so they built a fire

And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand.

And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.

And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god. (Acts 28)

Now let’s go to another Bible story, this time from the Old Testament.

Three devout young Hebrews were thrown into a furnace in punishment for refusing to worship a golden idol. These young men had complete faith and assurance in God’s power to deliver them, even though the furnace had been heated seven times hotter than normal and the men who took the three prisoners down to it were killed by the heat!

"..our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king."

The king in question, Nebuchadnezzar was guilt-ridden and had a sleepless night. In the morning he went down to the furnace and to his utter amazement he saw, not only the three young Hebrews, but:

Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God."

"Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire. And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellers, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them." (Daniel 3)

Commenting on that experience, Mary Baker Eddy writes:

"You say, "I have burned my finger." This is an exact statement, more exact than you suppose; for mortal mind, and not matter, burns it. Holy inspiration has created states of mind which have been able to nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous combustion." Science and Health p 161)

With that in mind, let’s go to another wonderful proof of God’s power and presence. This took place during WWII.

The writer, Bud Trick, was a young sailor at the time. He accidentally grabbed a hot steam line with both hands, mistaking it for the ship’s rails. His shipmate standing next to him asked "Do you smell something burning, like leather?" He quickly took his hands off the pipe, saying "No" to his friend but made his way back to his bunk, hands tightly closed, in extreme pain. He did not look at his hands. (In Christian Science healing, we pray from the standpoint of absolute perfection – of being God’s reflection and expression, now and forever. We turn away from contemplating what the material senses are screaming at us, to what God is knowing and being.)

Up to then, whenever Bud had needed healing, he had an experienced Christian Science practitioner to pray for him, but this time he knew he was alone (alone with God that is!). He thought about the story of the three Hebrews and their deliverance from the furnace and he started asking himself
"If this Bible story is true, could it be true for me now; if the three men were protected like that, couldn’t I also be protected; if they came out of that furnace without the ‘smell of smoke" on them, couldn’t I be free from any effects of grabbing that pipe?"

A second thought also came to him – a statement from Science and Health: "Mind (God) is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action." p.283

About 15 or 20 minutes after he’d started praying in this manner, Bud was called for watch duty. These are his words:
"I can still remember opening my hands for the first time. I rubbed them together, and onto my white navy blanket fell all the black burned skin. I collected it up and threw it in the closest trash basket. There was no sign of a burn on either hand, and no scars. I was not disabled in any manner. I was immediately able to use my hands normally."

Charles "Bud" Trick: Christian Science Sentinel Feb. 4th 2002

Love and peace,

Judy

This experience shows how our perceptions of others need to be brought into line with the divine and how a changed state of consciousness through spiritual discernment brings dramatic improvement to the whole situation.

The writer was living in a country in the Near East where she found the poverty quite overwhelming. It was everywhere and the suffering and hopelessness of the situation seemed so immense that she felt humanly helpless, even though she tried to assist in her own way.

There was a young boy who often followed her on the streets. He had lovely brown eyes and a quick warm smile, but he presented a picture of lack and indescribable dirtiness. In his few words of English he would keep asking her “Houseboy?” but she was unable to respond in his language and to tell him that in his condition no one would give him work.

One day, as she gave him a few coins, “aware of their inadequacy to touch his real need”, these lines from Science and Health came into her thought:

“Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.”(S&H p 476)

It came to her that Jesus must have come across many people much like this young lad (after all, this was the same area of the world) She began to consider what Jesus would have done about this situation, how he would have thought.

“Surely he did not stand helpless, offering a few coins, mentally listing the human things that needed correction and searching for a means of communicating the truth. Instead, he turned completely from the picture before him and spiritually beheld man as he is, in all his beauty and cleanliness and health............”

“And suddenly there was light. There was nothing but light - the light of spiritual reality."

So bright was the light that she was no longer aware of the boy or the place; she was not aware of saying goodbye or walking away from him. She was aware only of God's presence and of His spiritual, perfect universe.”

For a few days, she forgot all about the lad and then, when she next saw him, she was amazed. The sores that had been on his face were gone and everything looked new and clean. Clean clothes, body, teeth, hair.

“In her delight she exclaimed excitedly over his changed appearance and pointed to his clothes. “New!”
“No new,” he said. “Wash.”
The words came out: “Who? Who told you to do these things?” It took him a moment to answer: “No man. No man tell.” Then, still searching for words, he looked upward, his gaze slowly following a great semicircle above. Then suddenly, joyously, he explained, “I” - and he pointed , not to himself, but upward - “I! I tell me.”

The young lad had been touched by the woman’s changed perspective and the Christ-consciousness communed directly with him too. He had then found dignity and value right where he was. Shortly after that, he found work with a French family and afterwards always appeared healthy and radiantly happy, even becoming a man of possession and acquiring a bicycle! This experience also helped the writer who discovered that she had a changed attitude towards the entire country she was living in. Instead of looking out on a scene of hopelessness, she kept her thought firmly fixed on the spiritual reality. She writes:

Habakkuk says of God (1:13), “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” Since God cannot behold evil, can the man of God do so? We must see what God sees and not be overwhelmed by the apparent human situation. We should no more take our lists of human problems to God for correction than we would take a list of the dark corners of a room to the electric power. Light knows only light. All we need to do to the darkened room is to turn on the electric light. What we need to do to the darkened consciousness is to make apparent the light of Truth. All we need to ask for is spiritual discernment. Through spiritual discernment we behold the perfect man and perfect creation. And this beholding appears outwardly as healing.”
(From “Spiritual Discernment” by V L Ingraham Christian Science Journal Jan 1954)