How do we see ourselves?

Many years ago I was part of a team assigned to survey some building interiors. We were each working on a different building, so I was alone as I planned out my very full day. The morning’s work went well, but around midday I began to feel a headache that very quickly became an obstacle to my ability to complete my work.

My thought became filled with concerns about not completing my tasks and letting my team down. On top of this, I felt trapped and unable to properly care for myself. Not only was I in an environment lacking a place to even sit down, but I had been dropped off at the building, so I had no transportation of my own.

As these thoughts swirled and my worry increased, I felt helpless. Then I suddenly realized that I could look at the situation differently. I did have a way to handle this and I did have a way out.

All my thoughts up to that point had been based on the premise that we are mortal – struggling, limited, helpless in the face of disease and discord, vulnerable to whatever the material senses throw at us, and doomed to suffer. But this premise is false.

If existence were material, then it would be logical to conclude that we have a material body vulnerable to illness. But the Bible says, speaking of the Word of God, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). It also says that “God is Spirit” (John 4:24, New King James Version). So if Spirit made all, then all must be spiritual, and our true nature must be spiritual, not material.

It follows, then, that our source is God, who imparts health, freedom, and harmony, and we cannot possibly possess anything that does not come from God. “God could never impart an element of evil, and man possesses nothing which he has not derived from God,” says “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 539). So illness, discord, and vulnerability do not identify us. As children of God, Spirit, we are capable, unlimited, wholly spiritual, and unaffected by material circumstances.

If we identify ourselves as mortals, then we’re not seeing the real us. What we think we’re seeing must be a lie, a false representation rather than an accurate depiction of man made by God. Mrs. Eddy explains, “That which is born of the flesh is not man’s eternal identity. Spiritual and immortal man alone is God’s likeness, and that which is mortal is not man in a spiritually scientific sense. A material, sinful mortal is but the counterfeit of immortal man” (“No and Yes,” p. 25).

Back at the building I was surveying, it occurred to me that the material premise I had been accepting had led to a material conclusion: discomfort, fear, and uncertainty. With joy, I changed my premise to the truth that Spirit and its expression are the only reality. I reminded myself that I was in fact a creation of Spirit, God, and therefore could experience only what originates in God.

Within minutes, the symptoms disappeared, and I easily and comfortably completed my day’s tasks.

Jesus knew spiritual reality. Science and Health says, “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” (pp. 476-477). When we are conscious of man’s innate spiritual perfection, we see evidence of that perfection in our experience.

So was I choosing between two realities that day? Between being a mortal and being an immortal? Of course there can be but one reality. So what was the choice to be made? I could either accept a false picture of myself and suffer the consequences or accept the true picture of myself and be healed.

Seeing ourselves correctly is the natural, joyous choice. So how can you see yourself? The way we all can – as wholly spiritual, the limitless child of God.

Adapted from an article published in the May 5, 2025, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.