Correcting Thought

Some years back when my kids were small, I took great comfort in a group of friends whose kids were around the same ages. We would hang out in each other’s kitchens and family rooms, talking while our children played, picking up conversation threads dropped in the frequent interruptions. At one point one of them commented on a gesture I had - a kind of a short movement of my head from center a little to the right, mouth closed. She said it signified I wasn’t buying into something that had been said. I hadn’t been aware of the gesture, but my other friends recognized it, and also agreed about what they felt it meant.

As I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised to find I had such a gesture. After all, what was I going to say when discussion turned to things medical, or theories about behavior that I didn’t think were true? I had my own sense of what was true, and I had to hold to it. After all, a Christian Scientist is supposed to correct thought, right?

Lately I’ve come to think about this differently. A fundamental question is, how is thought corrected? If thought is theory, all that would be needed would be the construction of a system of explanation and support that is believable - that is, internally consistent. Correcting a theory would just be pointing out false premises or conclusions - examining evidence, considering possible interpretations, looking at things in new ways. This is the kind of thing I have long loved to do - I still find it interesting, exciting. But thought is more than theory. If thought comprises the total of our substance, then it includes everything that we are - what we call body, what we call spirit, what we call heart and soul. We’re told in Christian Science that correcting thought brings healing. But I’ve never found holding to a theory, however beautiful, to do anything to heal my body, or my heart.

So correcting thought must be something much deeper than developing a theoretical construct, a way to think about something that has a consistent story, putting my chosen protagonists in the right place. Any story, any way to choose to think about a set of people or circumstances, is just a story. It can do no more for me, in terms of healing, than (as Mrs. Eddy says) moonbeams can melt a river of ice. To correct thought in a way that would bring healing requires going beneath the story. Mrs. Eddy says, “Divine Love corrects and governs man.”

So the only way I can correct my own thought is by opening myself to divine Love - allowing my self to be lifted by the flood tides (as Mrs. Eddy says, “The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in Truth through flood tides of Love"). In a rising flood tide of Love, there is too much power for me to cling to the little rocks of my theories of right and wrong - too much moving force of goodness for me to account for how everyone’s behavior should be arranged. My egocentric sense of order is washed out, turned and tumbled, and made impossible to reference. I am compelled to allow myself to be floated up and held in the new order of Love.

As for correcting other people’s thoughts, there’s no correctness in telling people how I think they’re wrong and what I think they should do to think or do better. Thinking such thoughts at them without saying anything is even more ludicrous. The only way that I might correct thought is if there is some way I can reach to the underlying knot of fear and doubt about their worth, and somehow loosen it.

If I can correct a thought in myself or someone else, it won’t be to change a theoretical construct or a story. It won’t be to say that a certain thing is wrong and some other thing would be right. I will be successful if I have enough love to dissolve the thought that says we’re in this state of separation from the divine Mind, that makes us feel cut off, lonely, in need of improving ourselves. The only thing that can correct that thought is something deeper than the internal judge that tells me what’s wrong with myself or others. That deeper thing is the truth about our perfect being, the truth about how much we are loved.