As I became more aware of Love’s Paradigm, through my intense reading of Science and Health and also through my daily life, walking around and looking at everything with new eyes, I started to understand something about the senses with which I was perceiving.
I had given some thought, before, to the question of spiritual sense vs. material sense. Mrs. Eddy tells us that the material senses always lie, and that, if we want to see the truth, we must perceive things through spiritual sense. (See, for example, Science and Health p. 318). I had struggled with the meaning of this, to some satisfaction, in various earlier iterations. I knew that she wasn’t saying that everything we see with our eyes or hear with our ears, or touch, is material. After all, in another place, she says, “Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are eternal. They cannot be lost.” (Science and Health p. 486.) I had come to recognize that spiritual sense is seeing good, where material sense is seeing phenomena either as bad or without a sense of being good or bad. I recognized that we humans are not strangers to spiritual sense, since we certainly do see good in our lives, being hardwired, as it were, to seek it.
An analogy that helped me, then, was to consider a fountain — in particular one of those ones that shoots water straight up so it cascades in beautiful, ever-moving whiteness as it falls down. Was I seeing water? Yes, but I was also seeing the forces that propelled the water — the pressure sending it up, the gravity pulling it down. If I wanted to change the fountain, I couldn’t do it by trying to push at the water. And I couldn’t take a tub of water and form it into the shape of the fountain.
Similarly, if I look at a person, I may see arms and hands, a face, etc. But I can also see joy, grace, purpose. Just as the fountain is a reflection of the forces that make it, we are a reflection of the Spirit that motivates us. Spiritual sense is our ability to see that.
In this recent time, my understanding of spiritual sense took another leap. When I recognized that good is impartial, unconditional, I noticed how different this was from my usual way of seeing. I recognized that my default position had been to assume that things were good if conditions were right, and not so good if they weren’t. As I looked out from my eyes, I would assess the relative goodness of things. If they were good, well, great. Otherwise, I would be asking myself what needed to be done to make things better.
If good is unconditional, this way of looking at things becomes obsolete.
I need to say that again. If good is unconditional, this way of looking at things becomes obsolete.
This is huge.
This means a whole different way of looking at the world.
Not looking to assess relative goodness or harm. Not looking to make things better.
Celebrating the full goodness of everything, its unconditional blessing!
No need to try to fix anything, to make anything better.
I realized that I could consider material sense and spiritual sense as two different query systems — flow charts of questions and answers. And just as a query system can only return the results of the questions it asks, spiritual sense and material sense return very different results.
Material sense assumes that goodness results from the meeting of specific conditions. If the conditions are met, there is goodness; otherwise, there is not. Material sense looks out from the place of fear that the conditions for goodness might not be met. If I’m viewing things with material sense, I will feel vulnerable to harm. This will lead me to be critical, disappointed, angry, sad.
The corollary is that, if I am feeling critical, disappointed, angry, or sad, I have been using the query system of material sense. Somewhere in thought I have taken in its premise that goodness is conditional. If I want to see things good, see things as they are, I have to drop, completely, the material sense approach. I can’t be looking to fix things, on any plane. I can’t be starting from a critical sense and praying to make things get better. I need to turn to spiritual sense to make any true sense of things, and to bring about any healing.
Since spiritual sense is given to us from God, it always tells us about God, and goodness. It expects good everywhere, and always seeks to behold the particular exquisite unfolding of each expression of goodness. When I am seeing things with spiritual sense, I see God’s creation everywhere, and so feel very close to God. This is where I am striving to dwell, as much as ever I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment