The Ultimate Wild Goose Chase

By Anthony J. Whitehouse, CS

There is one stunt that error pulls which is wonderfully devious and distracting. It presents one with a challenge and then insists that there must be a cause to the problem, so that one then goes cause hunting.

And therein lies the rub ( to quote Shakespeare). Error does not actually have cause but error pretends that is does so that it can engross you in the hunt.

The reason error does not have a cause is that it just a misstatement of truth. If you are presented with the argument that 2+2=5 there is no actual cause behind the error . It is simply a misstatement of the truth that 2+2=4. There is no point in trying to figure out the reason for the misstatement. And yet error compounds the mesmerism of illness by maintaining that it must have a cause ... and one ends up on the wild goose chase. Especially when one cannot actually find a cause.

When confronted with deafness or blindness, the human solution lies in figuring out the cause so it can be corrected. The divine response is to maintain the truth of being in which there is no loss or deterioration of faculties.

When the disciples confronted Jesus, as reported in John:

as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
(John 9:1–4)

When you correct the punctuation in the last verse you can understand the point being made
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents. But that the works of God should be made manifest in him, I must work the works of him that sent me.

Jesus absolutely refuses to get into attributing cause but rather says “Attribute all power to God” and that Truth is then manifest.

So healing follows the refusal to figure out cause, but by knowing the Truth which the error is trying to hide or negate.

One of the great obfuscations is that error must have a cause. Proverbs 26 refutes this

2 As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

Mary Baker Eddy adds in Christian Healing:

Contending for the reality of what should disappear is like furnishing fuel for the flames. Is it a duty for any one to believe that “the curse causeless cannot come”? Then it is a higher duty to know that God never cursed man, His own image and likeness. God never made a wicked man; and man made by God had not a faculty or power underived from his Maker wherewith to make himself wicked.

Anthony J. Whitehouse, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Coppet, Switzerland. Connect with Anthony»

 

Treatment ideas for September 28, 2019

By Julio C. Rivas

. . . We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. (KJ, Eph. 4: 14)

Prayer/Healing: My (our) eternal self is a revealing of the perfect All, the infinite Ego-Principle. This ever-active-demonstrable Perfectness-Reality centers me, shelters me, empowers me, and drives me. I am eviscerating the clever, yet impotent, charades of flesh-fooled thinking.

Julio C. Rivas, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Los Angeles, California. Connect with Julio»

Treatment ideas for September 25, 2019

By Julio C. Rivas, CS

“Like a thundering river, the riches will come down. Like a toddler, you’ll be held, carried, nourished, and comforted. 13 As a mother soothes her child, so I will comfort you.” (V, Is. 66: 12-13)

Realization/Healing: "Omnipotent Love-Munificence, Your all-encompassing womb of goodness is sheltering, soothing, nourishing and developing me. You are clearing away afflictions, and compounding my wellbeing, love-relationships, and victories.

Julio C. Rivas, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Los Angeles, California. Connect with Julio»

A Prayer For This Week (September 23 - 29, 2018)

By Prayerful Living

Divine Spirit, glory be to Your holy city, the divine consciousness.

Yours is the reality I seek: wholly spiritual, limitless, the only substance.

Help me to realize Your “New Jerusalem,” Your kingdom of heaven.

Everlasting Father, You are the eternal builder to the Life

which mortal sense cannot impair nor mortal belief destroy.

Divine Mind, only through your pure thoughts can I grasp

the beauty, sublimity, and light of the holy city, Your reality.

I long for a state of mind where there is no consciousness of materiality,

no material sense, no belief in a worldly existence,

and where a pure spiritual sense of existence is discerned to be the only reality.

Understanding Your spiritual reality brings me great peace.

Thank you Father-Mother - through Your perfect model, the city foursquare,

I am conscious of Your infinite, eternal, perfect universe.

And so it is, Amen.

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Treatment Ideas for September 21, 2019

By Julio C. Rivas CS

Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. — KJ, Ps. 143: 10

Understanding/Healing: All-commandeering Harmony-Potency, You are the maximum determiner — the generator of perfection, life, love, beauty and riches. Therefore, we are Your outstanding outcome. This understanding syncs us with Your perfect will, goodness, power, and triumph, and this process beautifies our experience.

Julio C. Rivas, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Los Angeles, California. Connect with Julio»

In the Spirit: It's time to take wing

By Gail Miller

People of all faiths and traditions cherish spirituality. I’ve been learning through my study of Christian Science that spirituality includes the ability to see the spiritual idea of something in God’s creation — right where it appears to be a merely material thing.

For instance, mountains represent the idea of stability and grandeur. A lion symbolizes strength. A home represents safety, a sense of being surrounded by love.

For me, one of the clearest symbols in God’s creation is a bird. I love birds. Not as a bird-watcher who is knowledgeable about the distinct colors, songs and characteristics of birds (I wish!), but as a spiritual seeker who finds in these winged creatures a symbol for what might be called “winged” thoughts.

Winged thoughts! – thoughts that are uplifted, inspired, expectant, grateful – are a pathway to healing.

Birds can teach us how to deal with the challenges of daily life. Because, what do they do? They constantly fly above earth! They rise up. They soar. And sing!

“The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven,” writes Mary Baker Eddy, “correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love.” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Page 511)
Birds symbolize thoughts moving from the terrestrial (earthly limitations) into the celestial (heavenly, infinite possibilities). And experience teaches us that this elevated thought is what is so needed to win our way from sorrow, illness and daily troubles into freedom and joy.

It’s lifting our consciousness away from the body and trials into the contemplation of Spirit, God, that leads to healing.

I’ve been noticing in the Bible how often Christ Jesus, when he healed someone, began with such words as “rise up,” “arise.” He said to the lame man at the pool of Bethesda: “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” (John 5:8.)

This account shows us that we don’t have to do this lifting of thought all by ourselves. It’s the Christ power that comes right to us – not personal will and determination – that lifts up our thought and experience.

Many people of all faiths practice in various ways this yielding to a higher power. They turn from fear and frustration, and like the birds, turn their gaze upward. They spread their wings of courage and trust in God.

From this higher standpoint, one is better able to see how to help others. Or where to roll up one’s sleeves and take the needed steps to progress.

It is a time of many tragedies and sorrows in the world. But one thing that is also evident in the news is that disaster situations bring out a deep capacity in people to rise up out of hopelessness in order to buoy and help one another.

As God’s children, his image and likeness, we naturally have built within us spiritual inspiration. We have the spiritual capacity to have hope in trying times. This hymn verse puts it this way:
My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation…
… It finds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?
(Christian Science Hymnal, Hymn 533)

Gail Miller is a member of First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
This article was originally published in The Daily News,  Newburyport, MA.

Treatment Ideas for September 18, 2019

By Julio C. Rivas CS

He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” -- KJ, Mark 5: 34

Vision/Healing: Harmony-Truth amplifies our understanding of its comprehensiveness and dominance, and our oneness with it. We become more deeply entwined with supernal wholeness, and this washes away our sufferings.

Julio C. Rivas, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Los Angeles, California. Connect with Julio»

Message received...

By Danielle Williams

His glory to me may have seemed invisible at the time, but this now solidifies God's ever presence...

Have you ever had a day of many feelings or insights? A day where you were convinced, if you had played the lottery today, it would have been your day... Only to be followed by the longest moment of ugly crying in the shower. Where your worn and tattered self can do nothing... but let the salty tears leave your eyes and make their great escape.

In those moments, I usually reach deep, ask why, I beg to be healed and for my chipped heart to be mended. Ultimately, hoping for it to be pieced back together... Then and only then, to wonder why it hadn’t gone as planed.... Why my prayers had gone unanswered.

Well... tonight was a little different. This moment fell into my thoughts, like a whisper finding a warm ear to canvas. This time, I took my gracious 2 steps back, I fell to knees, and I simply said thank you.. I decided to let my heart ache for this time, for surely it would pass ~as it always does, and I began listing off all the learning I had done and the gifts I have received, through the pain I had endured. I decided to Let. It. Go. To give it to God, and surrendered for the sake of healing, growth, reflection and love.

Today’s moment of humbled weakness, shook my soul awake. And my little piece of momentous proof, is in the foggiest of mirrors with the clearest of messages revealed and received... A Smile!.. Life will be as it should... Because there is NO ERROR with God, especially when your children draw happiness through the mist, because of their innocence.

His glory to me may have seemed invisible at the time, but this now solidifies God's ever presence...
Always present, even when all is well, but extra present when needed, even when faint.
Thank you

A Prayer For This Week (September 16 - 22)

By Prayerful Living

Father-Mother God, I know You are the only true God.

Daily I strive not to make idols of material things.

Help me to maintain a prayerful watchfulness in my thought.

My faith is in You, divine Presence, not in matter.

Your reality is wholly spiritual and I reside as Your idea, God.

Divine Mind, You are the only cause, the only power.

Knowing this, I work to place no power in things material.

My Soul-sense points to You, divine Life, as my only life.

I reject any sense of a mortal, material “I” separate from the one I AM, God.

Divine Truth, I bow only to You, not to things temporal.

Thank you Spirit, my spiritual understanding grows clear and brighter each day.

I pray these words from a grateful heart.

And so it is, Amen.

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THE ESSENCE OF THE DIVINE MIND IS PERPETUAL FREEDOM

By Anthony J. Whitehouse, CS

...but human existence claims that we are always subject to constraints, that joy and happiness can be curtailed. Human existence is a sense of absent freedom, a sense of being fettered.

In that one statement we see the whole of our practice is to realise that perpetual freedom from all sickness and limitation must be the status quo precisely because God's nature is perpetually free of all constraint. The Divine Mind is devoid of any sense of restraint, compromise or curtailment. It always operates unchained.

If we do not taste our own perpetual freedom it is because we neither understand God as the nature of perpetual freedom nor do we understand that that freedom is ours by way of reflection. We are what HE is, unfettered being.

We must not indulge sin because it curtails our freedom.

We are ALWAYS free as a matter of divine law since the Divine Mind is always free. That freedom is a function of the nature of the Divine Mind , not a function of our own reasoning.

Now look at the cost of not understanding the freedom inherent in the Divine Mind, as given to us by Mrs Eddy:

Jesus did his work, and left his glorious career for our example. On the shore of Gennesaret he tersely reminded his students of their worldly policy. They had suffered, and seen their error. This experience caused them to remember the reiterated warning of their Master and cast their nets on the right side. When they were fit to be blest, they received the blessing. The ultimatum of their human sense of ways and means ought to silence ours. One step away from the direct line of divine Science cost them — what? A speedy return under the reign of difficulties, darkness, and unrequited toil.

— Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy p.212:6

The direct line of divine Science is perpetual freedom inherent in Mind.

The human so-called experience is only the fruit of the false belief that Mind can lose its sense of freedom. How can God demonstrate state His unfettered being to a mind which feels fettered and constrained ? That is the whole problem for mortal man. He needs to loose his belief in FETTERDOM in order to experience the unfettered nature or healing inherent in the Divine Mind.Mortal mind is perpetually plying us with scenarios which evidence fetterdom and lack. But these things can be set aside if only we drop the belief in fetterdom. Look what Moses achieved before the Red Sea when he refused to accommodate the belief in entrapment or lack of freedom. You are ALWAYS free.

Anthony J. Whitehouse, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Coppet, Switzerland. Connect with Anthony»

AS A MATTER OR LAW : THERE IS NOTHING BEYOND GOD

By Anthony Whitehouse, CS

This may seem like a terrible truism but I realized recently that ignoring this truth is endemic to the human mind. The human mind is obsessed with the idea both that there IS something beyond God i.e. outside of His remit and beyond as in the sense of outside of or further than. Surely there can be nothing further or beyond the infinite?

Let me set out the toxic nature of the thoughts this belief it engenders:

• The situation in Syria is beyond the capacities of God to do anything about it
• The state of our church and its members is beyond recovery. 
• We are not going to survive
• The chronic illness I have is beyond the power of God
• Such is the behavior of my children that they seem beyond redemption
• My old age and poverty seems totally beyond God’s salvation
• Healing blindness and deafness is beyond God.

In all these thoughts where is the real problem? It is in the belief that there is something beyond God when of course this just cannot be the case.

And now the interesting and deceptive facet of the human mind comes into play. We have to realize that the only reason these apparent “unsolvable issues” exist is precisely because of the human belief in a “beyond. As hard as it may seem, we and others are simply the victim of a belief in the “beyond” because if we did not believe in a “beyond” then the evidence of that belief would not appear. Evil and error are the product of this belief.

Destroy the belief in a “beyond” and immediately thought sees the impossibility of anything standing in the face of an all-inclusive and immediate God who is omni-present. Instinctively you will start to sense the enormity of God’s infinite nature and His inclusiveness to the point that nothing can be outside of Mind. Everything must be included in Mind because God is Mind and there can be nothing BEYOND Mind.Error will still hold out the myth of “ beyondness” but that is all it can ever be. When we conceptually understand ( and we have to start with the conceptual construct ) that there is no “ out there” but only the ever-present here our sense of being is transformed because it is a sense of being which includes everything and excludes nothing. And although we may not fully appreciate how that sense of inclusiveness destroys the myth and evidence of “beyond” we should not hold back from applying the truth in question. Mankind needs to see our demonstration of inclusiveness in operation.We encounter one of the problems inherent in “beyondness “in the appearance of disease.

We are happily going about our daily routine only to find a large lump growing on our body. Our first reaction is “Where did that come from? “ And “How could that have happened “. The origin of the problem is shrouded in mystery. There seems to be no rational reason for its appearance. It seems “beyond” our understanding. This is where evil has effectively unfolded its own lie. It (the human mind) basically admits that the situation is beyond reason and cause i.e. God. The problem has appeared out of the great unknown or the “beyond “ and in admitting that to itself it allows the enlightened Christ consciousness to consign it straight back there with the understand that there is no “ beyond”.

You no longer have to accept the belief in a “beyond” either for yourself or others. If you don’t think that the destruction of this belief won’t have an impact you are in for a big surprise.

The principle that there is nothing beyond God is powerful because it has the nature of law. We know that Divine Law must have hegemony because it is His law and His laws necessarily impose themselves. When we know this as a matter of His law then we see the unfoldment, not because we understand how the law operates but because we know His law has dominion and does operate. I don’t know how the law of buoyancy operates but I know that it does operate. The same is true of the laws of God. There is nothing beyond His reign.

Anthony J. Whitehouse, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Coppet, Switzerland. Connect with Anthony»

WE NEED TO AVOID BEING BEMUSED

By Anthony J. Whitehouse, CS

It is our bemusement with error, our curiosity with whether eating the forbidden fruit is really that big a deal which gets us into trouble. Rather than being bemused with error we need to dwell on absolute Truth and the perfection of being because, absent such dwelling, error will keep us well occupied with various intriguing bemusements. An activity formally known as mesmerism within the movement.

If you start experiencing stomach pains, the unprepared mind is going to start looking for causes and figuring out solutions, even metaphysical solutions, rather than avoiding the bemusement the challenge represents. After all, if you are rummaging around in an illusion, you are not dwelling on truth and perfection of being. It may appear legitimate to ask “how I am going to deal with this" but it is actually just bemusement. It is the bemusement that needs avoiding.

The man by the pool of Bethesda spent 30 years bemused by the idea of getting into the pool first. Jesus disabused him of such bemusement and he took up his bed and walked. So rather than trying to resolve an issue, avoid the bemusement it represents.

The word bemuse is interesting:

bemuse (v.)
"to make utterly confused, put into muse or reverie, muddle, stupefy," from be- + muse (compare amuse); attested from 1735 but probably older, as Pope (1705) punned on it as "devoted utterly to the Muses."

But the verb muse is more relevant to my argument

muse (v.)
"to reflect, ponder, meditate; to be absorbed in thought," mid-14c., from Old French muser (12c.) "to ponder, dream, wonder; loiter, waste time," which is of uncertain origin; the explanation in Diez and Skeat is literally "to stand with one's nose in the air" (or, possibly, "to sniff about" like a dog who has lost the scent), from muse "muzzle," from Gallo-Roman *musa "snout," itself a word of unknown origin. The modern word probably has been influenced in sense by muse (n.). Related: Mused; musing.

Anthony J. Whitehouse, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Coppet, Switzerland. Connect with Anthony»

A Prayer For This Week (September 9 - 15, 2019)

By Prayerful Living

I am so grateful that I recognize You “in the midst” of my being, God.

Mother Love, each day I draw myself closer to You.

I gain spiritual confidence through Your unfaltering, sustaining Love.

Divine Mind, I reflect the consciousness of Your illimitable, substantial ideas.

These right ideas constitute my supply.

Because I am Your idea, my true substance is Spirit, never matter.

I am never separated from Your infinite and immeasurable substance.

The knowledge of this oneness brings about healing.

Your true substance is manifested in spiritual understanding and Christly living,

which come as a result of my prayer, study, and regeneration.

I dwell in the consciousness of peace, joy, and contentment.

This evidence of You, Father-Mother, gives me faith.

And so it is, Amen.

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Treatment Ideas for September 7, 2019

By Julio C. Rivas, CS

...holy, the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. — KJ, Is. 6: 3
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. ... 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. — KJ, Acts 1: 2, 4

Concord/Healing: All-Love-Power, You permeate all being with Your excellence. Hence, Pentecostal moments are those wherein we submit to our inward God-excellence. This releases such spiritual energy that our bodies, sentiments and behavior become Your utterance.

Julio C. Rivas, CS, is a Christian Science practitioner in Los Angeles, California. Connect with Julio»

A Prayer For This Week (September 2 - 8, 2019)

By Prayerful Living

Divine Spirit, You are my creator, the only source.

I give up the false picture of life in matter.

Through meekness and purity that pierce the Adam mist,

I awaken to my spiritual selfhood and behold the light of Truth.

As I gain an understanding that I am Your idea, the image of Love,

I wrestle with material belief until its unreality dawns on me.

Your angel messengers reveal my true nature.

I drop personal sense for Christlike thinking and living.

God, good, is my true heritage – not the laws of heredity.

Through You, divine Love, I have been spiritually reborn.

Thank You, Father-Mother for Your blessing of

radiant joy, eternal beauty, and immutable peace.

And so it is, Amen.

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