RE: Healing through the Christ-consciousness
Hi Ivo and Beej,
Thanks for both your posts - it means a lot when people stop by and show appreciation.
Beej - great to see you on HP again. 🙂
Love and peace,
Judy
This past weekend, due to something going on in another thread, Ive had my head in two biographies about Mary Baker Eddy, the remarkable woman who re-discovered the method of original Christian healing in 1866. I came upon a wonderful description of how the healing that she describes as her falling apple* came about, which ties in so well with the ideas in this thread.
*My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so.
However, I think it would be helpful to give you a little history first:
Mary Baker Eddy had since childhood been able to help people (and animals) through prayer. She had had several unusual experiences, like when over the period of a year she heard a voice calling Mary three times, but each time she ran to her mother she was not believed, until a cousin heard the voice too and then, her mother read her the story of Samuel (see ISam 3) and she replied as he did, Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth and the voice never came again. You can read this in her autobiography. Here's the link: [url]Voices Not Our Own[/url]
However, though a deeply committed Christian, she was a semi-invalid for most of her childhood and adulthood, as well as suffering the bereavement of her first husband, brother and mother, the removal of her child as she was too ill to care for him, poverty and great unhappiness:
The author became a member of the orthodox Congregational Church in early years. Later she learned that her own prayers failed to heal her as did the prayers of her devout parents and the church; but when the spiritual sense of the creed was discerned in the Science of Christianity, this spiritual sense was a present help. It was the living, palpitating presence of Christ, Truth, which healed the sick. (Science and Health p 351)
The allopathic medicine of her day failed to heal her and so she tried many of the alternative therapies of her day, including hydropathy, electric treatment, homeopathy and hypnotism, (called mesmerism in her day) but though some had worked for a time, she discovered that when away from the (often) charismatic influence of the individual, the problems came back again. She had started through this and through her own practice of homeopathy to see the connection between our thinking and our bodies. Here's a link to an experiment while practising homeopathy: [url]Dropsy Cured without drugs[/url] She found wonderful (but only temporary) relief from one Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (isnt that an amazing name?) but it wasnt until a month after his death that she discovered the answer to what she had been searching for all her life. She wrote of Quimby:
.I tried him, as a healer, and because he seemed to help me for the time, and had a higher ideal than I had heard up to that time, I praised him to the skies, wrote him letters, I was enthusiastic, and couldnt say too much in praise of him; I actually loved him, I mean his high and noble character, .. but when I found that Quimbyism was too short, and would not answer the cry of the human heart for succor, for real aid, I went, being driven thence by my extremity, to the Bible, and there I discovered Christian Science. (Robert Peel: Mary Baker Eddy, Years Of Discovery p 183)
Here is part of a newspaper interview of that time:
In 1866, while living in Lynn, Mass., Mrs. Eddy met with a severe accident, and her case was pronounced hopeless by the physicians. There came a Sunday morning when her pastor came to bid her goodbye before proceeding to his morning service, as there was no probability that she would be alive at its close. During this time she suddenly became aware of a divine illumination and ministration. She requested those with her to withdraw, and reluctantly they did so, believing her delirious. Soon, to their bewilderment and fright, she walked into the adjoining room, "and they thought I had died, and that it was my apparition," she said.
From that hour dated her conviction of the Principle of divine healing, and that it is as true to-day as it was in the days when Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. "I felt that the divine Spirit had wrought a miracle," she said, in reference to this experience. "How, I could not tell, but later I found it to be in perfect scientific accord with the divine law." From 1866-'69 Mrs. Eddy withdrew from the world to meditate, to pray, to search the Scriptures.
"During this time," she said, in reply to my questions, "the Bible was my only textbook. It answered my questions as to the process by which I was restored to health; it came to me with a new meaning, and suddenly I apprehended the spiritual meaning of the teaching of Jesus and the Principle and the law involved in spiritual Science and metaphysical healing--in a word--Christian Science." (Daily Inter-Ocean, Chicago, December 31, 1894)
Let me share some of this healing in her own words:
St. Paul writes: "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." This knowledge came to me in an hour of great need; and I give it to you as death-bed testimony to the daystar that dawned on the night of material sense. This knowledge is practical, for it wrought my immediate recovery from an injury caused by an accident, and pronounced fatal by the physicians. On the third day thereafter, I called for my Bible, and opened it at Matthew ix. 2. As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before enjoyed. That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact that I have since tried to make plain to others, namely, Life in and of Spirit; this Life being the sole reality of existence. (Miscellaneous Writings p 24)
Now, this was what I was thrilled to read this weekend as it so beautifully links in with the ideas Im trying to share in this thread. (I know its been a long time coming down this page, but hope its worth it!)
This is from some reminiscences written down by her secretary, Alfred Farlow.
At that time it was not clear to Mrs Eddy by what process she had been instantaneously healed, but she knew that her thought had turned away from all else in contemplation of God, His omnipotence and everpresence, His infinite love and power. It eventually dawned upon her that this overwhelming consciousness of the divine presence had destroyed her fear and consciousness of disease exactly as the light dispels the darkness. She afterwards noticed that when she had entertained similar thoughts in connection with the ills of her neighbors they too were benefited and it was in this manner that she discovered how to give a mental treatment. (Robert Peel: Mary Baker Eddy, Years Of Discovery p 212)
Love and peace,
Judy
RE: Healing through the Christ-consciousness
You my students are God----- Mary Baker Eddy
RE: Healing through the Christ-consciousness
Hi , Well, that's an interesting quote, but it certainly isn't from Mary Baker Eddy!
I tried to read something about you, but got "Member chose not to disclose his profile."
Here are some of MBE's authenticated views on this subject:
Man is not God, and God is not man. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures p 480
There is but one Spirit. Man is never God, but spiritual man, made in God's likeness, reflects God. In this scientific reflection the Ego and the Father are inseparable.S&H 70
Man is not God, but like a ray of light which comes from the sun, man, the outcome of God, reflects God. S&H 250
Goodness is greatness, and the logic of events pushes onward the centuries; hence the Scripture, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me [man] free from the law of sin and death."
This predicate and ultimate of scientific being presents, however, no claim that man is equal to God, for the finite is not the altitude of the infinite. Miscellany 272
The Christian who believes in the First Commandment is a monotheist. Thus he virtually unites with the Jew's belief in one God, and recognizes that Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God. This declaration of Jesus, understood, conflicts not at all with another of his sayings: "I and my Father are one,"--that is, one in quality, not in quantity. As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being. The Scripture reads: "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being." Science and Health 361
If she saw that Jesus himself was not God, she most certainly would never think, let alone say that any of her students were!! I actually find this rather shocking and hope you will remove it.
Love and peace,
Judy
RE: Healing through the Christ-consciousness
In reply tothe quotation-" You my students are God" I wish to retract my statement as this is too absolute - nevertheless future generations shall declare it- God is cause man is effect- so God is not expressed "by" Man, but "as Man- I shall leave it for now- I wish not to bring division in this forum- IF I have offend anyone< my deepest apology is given- Love Meta