While I was in Boston with Heather, this concept of Love’s Paradigm emerged as a key point of growth. I felt like I made a huge paradigm shift in my thought, a shift away from the notion of struggling towards healing to a notion of Heather and I being the perfect ideas of our Creator, infinitely loved right where we were. I was astounded at how different this was from the way I usually saw all aspects of myself and my day. Very often, as Heather and I confronted some way of thinking about something, we would say oh, but that’s from the viewpoint of the partiality of good. What does Love see?
I can’t speak for sure of how Heather felt on the inside. For me, it was a completely different atmosphere inside my thought. I hadn’t reached yet the vast canyon of light I call The Allness, but I was approaching it. I felt much lighter inside, and much encouraged that continuing in this line would bring us the desired healing.
This revelation came in the midst of my very deep study of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, the textbook of Christian Science. I found all the sentences illuminated as I held in thought the distinction between the partiality of good and good’s allness. I found the call to this paradigm shift permeating the book, and as I held to Love’s paradigm, everything I read made more sense than it ever had.
Heather encouraged me to write an article about it for the Christian Science periodicals. I am trying, but haven’t found the right tone yet. Meanwhile, here is an attempt to describe some key concepts that got fundamentally changed as I made the shift:
Good
In the paradigm of the partiality of good, good is a thing that sometimes appears when material conditions are favorable. My goal, in this paradigm, is to assess how favorable or harmful the current conditions are, and then try to manipulate the conditions so they will bring me more good. So whether I’m thinking about my body, my character, my home and work conditions, or my larger environment, I feel subject to the material conditions which I believe determine the present amount of goodness or potential harm.
In Love’s paradigm, good is the ever present law. I start learning (as pointed out in Science & Health p. 206) that what blesses one blesses all. My goal, instead of assessing material conditions and trying to improve them, is to see good in every place, to behold the perfect man and the harmony of being, and to celebrate the unfolding of good.
Worth
In the paradigm of the partiality of good, I think of my worth as relative, arranged along a slope where there are always people better than me and (I hope) people worse; where I am always struggling to improve my worth. In this paradigm, I don’t think I ever feel good enough, and my constant struggle for self-worth doesn’t seem to get better as I fight my way up the slope. My job of assessing my relative position is fraught by turns with envy and an uncharitable feeling of superiority. On this slippery slope, it is hard to love myself or anyone else.
In Love’s paradigm, every idea of God has infinite absolute worth. I can rejoice daily in the certainty that I am well beloved of God, that I am enough, that my individual being naturally brings forth the glorious qualities of God. From this place of comfort, I automatically feel love for my fellow expressions of God’s glory. My goal is to participate in the grand harmony of Love’s ideas making great music together.
Gratitude and love
In Love’s paradigm, gratitude and love are the normal, natural state of being. In the partiality of good, love is rare and unexplained, a tippy and perilous brightness, which I’m always desiring but seldom find. I save my gratitude to be given only when material conditions are optimal. I also may think of gratitude as a negotiating chip, a measure of obligation to others that has both positive and negative consequences in my struggle for greater self-worth. It’s hard to understand the exhilarating nature of gratitude from the partiality of good, but in Love’s paradigm, I soar with it.
All these concepts — goodness, worth, gratitude, love — have representations in both paradigms. I realize that, if I want to view things from Love’s paradigm, I have to give up my old-paradigm notions about these fundamental points of value. I can’t reach Love’s paradigm by continually pushing up along the slope of partial goodness, relative self-worth, elusive love, and negotiating-chip gratitude. But I can get there by letting go of that painful effort and allowing the Christ to lift me to the unchanging truth that has always been present. I can stop trying to be good and recognize that I can’t be anything else, since God, good, made me. So I stop comparing myself to others to determine my relative worth, and can instead recognize the absolute and infinite worth of myself and everyone else. This opens out my ability to love my neighbor as myself, and to understand the vastness of the love of God. Thus I am received into the heavenly kingdom, thus I can’t help but fulfill the two great commandments. Thus I am lifted into the ever-joyous domain of Love’s paradigm.
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