Spirituality: At the heart of healing

I grew up in an extended family that includes more than 30 doctors, but I gained a whole new perspective on preventative and curative therapeutics when I found Christian Science. Through understanding God as perfect, infinite, all-powerful Spirit, and man as God’s spiritual expression, I have come to see that spirituality is at the very heart of healing.

Inherent in our spirituality is spiritual sense, which the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” defines as “a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 209). Spiritual sense enables us to perceive what is real and true. It affirms the presence of God as Spirit and the power of God as supreme. It moves thought away from the objects of physical sense, which are transitory, to the ideas of Spirit, which are enduring, and this shift in consciousness reforms, rejuvenates, harmonizes, and heals.

Our spirituality is innate but not passive. As we actively exercise spiritual sense, the immutable goodness of God and man is illuminated. The natural outcome is a deeper understanding of reality and improved health, as I discovered a few years ago.

I was troubled by a constant sensation in my legs. The temptation to scratch was often overpowering, yet scratching didn’t abate the sensation. For several months I found myself in what seemed a futile cycle of scratching and praying. When it got to the point that I could not allow anything to touch my legs and had to wear shorts instead of long pants, I knew I needed to search deeper for my solution.

Most puzzling was that my legs showed no visible signs of having a problem. The thought occurred to “dig deep into realism.” I recognized that phrase as similar to a statement in Science and Health: “We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things” (p. 129). So I started digging more deeply into the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings to explore what they teach about reality. I knew that through prayer and a deeper understanding of my true, spiritual selfhood, I could break the cycle of scratching.

Christian Science reveals that matter is the subjective state of mortal mind – the false belief in a mind apart from God. This sentence from Science and Health resonated: “Any supposed information, coming from the body or from inert matter as if either were intelligent, is an illusion of mortal mind, – one of its dreams” (pp. 385-386). I reasoned that reality is spiritual, not material, and that I must address the disease as a phenomenon in my thought rather than a development in my body.

The Old Testament tells us that God once instructed Moses to cast his shepherd’s staff on the ground, where it turned into a snake; then He commanded the frightened Moses to grab the snake by its tail. When he did so, the snake turned back into a staff. Next, God told Moses to place his hand inside his cloak, and when he pulled it out again, the hand was leprous. When Moses followed God’s command to repeat the process, the leprosy disappeared (see Exodus 4:2-7). Thus Moses learned not to trust appearances. He also witnessed God’s supremacy, which gives man dominion over matter, disease, and fear.

The New Testament shows that Jesus didn’t concern himself with symptoms and never gave a physical diagnosis or prognosis. Instead, he turned to God and healed through his clear spiritual perception of the perfect, spiritual man of God’s creating. Mrs. Eddy, too, recognized that the five senses do not testify to God’s creation; only spiritual sense bears witness to God and good, so discord disappears in the wake of understanding that the only reality is spiritual.

I persisted in relying on spiritual sense. Spiritual perception became my foundation for understanding reality. My fear quieted as I learned more about God’s allness, power, and ever-presence. Then one day I realized that the disease was gone. The need to scratch had vanished and has never returned. Understanding my identity as the perfect reflection of Spirit, God, corrected the belief that I lived in a flawed, material body, and healing resulted.

Healing, as I joyfully discovered, is a natural outcome of turning away from matter and exercising our inherent spirituality.

Adapted from an article published in the Dec. 4, 2023, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.