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Self-conscious? Commune with God!

Instead of focusing on how others perceive us, we can find comfort and healing by getting to know ourselves the way God does. 

  • By Barbara Vining

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
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To human sense, to be self-conscious is to be preoccupied with our physical appearance and human personality and concerned about what other people think of us. I remember how self-conscious I felt as a teenager, which is not uncommon at such a pivotal time of development. We want to be popular – well-liked by our peers. We want to fit in.

In those teen years I went through a period when I overate and gained excessive weight. This made me even more conscious of how others saw me. But that negative way of thinking of myself, along with the excessive eating habit, was overcome for good after I began studying Christian Science.

In the summer before I started college, I obtained and began to study, along with my Bible, the textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy. In Science and Health, one gains a practical understanding of the teachings of Christ Jesus, and how to put those teachings into practice. This statement in Science and Health caught my attention: “Jesus was the offspring of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God” (pp. 29-30).

To commune with God is to become conscious of the true nature of God and man, the generic term for all of us. The Bible describes God, Spirit, as infinite and omnipotent and our true identity, our spiritual self, as God’s image and likeness, entirely spiritual and perfect. This is the self-consciousness that Mary experienced, which, in her unique case, led to the birth of Jesus.

Christ Jesus was ceaselessly conscious of God. Everything he taught and demonstrated sprang from this communion. He knew he was inseparable from God as God’s beloved Son, saying, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). And he knew his mission was to live and prove God’s, divine Love’s, power and thus show us that we, also, are loved sons and daughters of God.

Following Christ Jesus’ example in this way is practicing the divine Science of being. Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (Science and Health, pp. 476-477).

I began the practice of silently communing with God as my creator, which included consciously identifying myself as God’s spiritual image and likeness – pure and whole and perfect­ – instead of an imperfect material personality. And this true “self-conscious communion with God” enabled me to be alert to recognize and discard negative, self-defeating, material ways of identifying myself.

Praying in accord with this spiritually scientific understanding of God and man can free anyone from a limited view of themselves. As Christ Jesus himself promised, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

This kind of praying is a way of life. It is responding to our own and others’ needs in a healing way whenever those needs come to our attention, by seeing infinite Spirit as the only reality and each of us in God’s image, spiritual and perfect. When we understand and lovingly adhere to this truth, we find freedom from destructive views of ourselves, as well as healing. This understanding is available for everyone through the Holy Bible and Science and Health. What a blessing!

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