Correcting the tendency to forget
Some people have difficulty remembering names, places, events. Often this characteristic seems related to advancing years. But the tendency to forget or the inability to recall, at any age, is not an uncorrectable impediment. It can be rectified through prayer.
Underlying effective prayer is the spiritual fact that God is the one Supreme Being, almighty and omnipresent, who has created all and has made it very good. Because God is Spirit, as the Bible teaches, His creation, including man made in His image, is actually spiritual, indestructible. Because God is infinite intelligence - the one omniscient Mind - man, the reflection of Mind, expresses faultless intelligence. Though not apparent to human eyes, this is the fact about man right now, a fact that needs to be understood to correct loss of memory.
Why does a person forget? Because he has accepted a limiting lie about himself. This lie claims that he is a mere mortal, whose ability to think and remember resides in a material brain that in some way can fail to function properly. But is a brain - a mass of matter - really the source of thought? It may seem to be. If, however, God is our creator, and the one infinite Mind, He alone is the true source of intelligence and of every faculty. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, states: ''If delusion says, 'I have lost my memory,' contradict it. No faculty of Mind is lost.'' n1
n1 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 407.
If man is God's expression, he cannot cease expressing the all-knowing Mind, and thus can never forget. Man knows, without lapse or interruption, because God knows. This isn't an abstraction; it's a spiritual fact, a fact that frees in accordance with Christ Jesus' promise ''Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'' n2
n2 John 8:32.
If our memory handicap appears to be related to passing years, this needs to be vigorously refuted. God doesn't grow old; He is eternal, and so is man made in His likeness, which is the true identity of each one of us. Growing old is the result of mankind's acquiescence to the mortal beliefm that life is in a material body and is subject to deterioration.
The spiritual fact, transcending the evidence of materiality, is that God is eternal Mind and man can do no less than manifest this Mind ceaselessly and eternally. Discerning this truth, feeling it as the actual reality of our being, we can expect that the tendency to forget because of aging will disappear.
The more we know of God, divine Mind, and of man as Mind's outcome, the more readily we discern the truth that man forever expresses divine intelligence and hence cannot forget. But gaining this understanding requires prayer and dedicated study of the Bible. Study of Mrs. Eddy's writings is also invaluable in this work. Such efforts enable us to cultivate a spiritual sense of life and being, a perception of the truth that makes free.
God ism the one and only Mind, the one source of intelligence, and no supposition of declining faculties can truly supplant the one Mind. Understanding this truth, as well as asserting it with conviction, constitutes effective prayer, and we can expect with confidence that it will bring healing. DAILY BIBLE VERSE God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. II Timothy 1:17
