My dog Nya

I love my dog Nya.

Nya is so radiant with joy. She is always happy. She also expresses the spiritual qualities of readiness and alertness. And she is so energetic.

She is ready to go whenever I say, and she always watches me to see if she is needed to respond.

She is a true child of God in this way.  May we all be as vigil in our spiritual devoutness; keeping our eyes on our Father-Mother God at all times; joyfully waiting for God’s call, expectant and ready.

She is so pure and innocent. She never has a malicious motive or purpose. Her purity is a wonder to me.

We all have the spiritual innocence and purity that we see express in these friends in our lives.  It reminds me of  an excerpt from Mary Baker Eddy’s address at the National Convention in Chicago on June 13, 1888.

“Beloved children, the world has need of you, — and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that you preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through contact with the world. What grander ambition is there than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to know that your example, more than words, makes morals for mankind!”

She is referencing Jesus’ love for children in this excerpt. When human reasoning tempted Jesus’ disciples and they asked the question, “Who will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus responded by calling a little child over, and he said: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Let’s claim the innocence, purity, joy – the childlikeness – we see around us as our own. And keep our lives, our thought, untainted from the world.

Bringing God into the minutiae of your day

“Spiritual sense is the constant, conscious capacity to know and understand God.”

“…spiritual sense lifts human consciousness into eternal Truth.”

“Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality.”

Unknown: “That which spiritual sense alone comprehends , and which is unknown to the material senses.”

We all have a spiritual sense. Spiritual sense is the means through which Spirit/God, divine intelligence, guides us. This spiritual sense is something that we all have but it must be cultivated. We have to practice using it so we don’t get rusty.

Try going through each day using your spiritual sense. Sometimes we may think there are things too small to be guided about. But God is always governing his children, always guiding them, caring for them even in the minutiae of our every day. Cultivating this conscious, constant communion with God shows us that we are never alone. We always have our Best Friend, our Father, Mother, God with us.

Our Father-Mother is governing each day perfectly. We are part of an interconnected orchestration of being. This interconnectedness is in perfect harmony and is like God’s great song, a beautiful melody.

But in order to hear this orchestration of being, we have to be still and listen. The “still, small voice” talked about in the Bible is governing our everyday affairs. It requires obedience, receptivity, and flexibility to follow it.

Let me give you one example:

I was out doing some errands on my bike. I felt strongly impelled that I should only go to the first stop on my list. However, after the first stop I protested against this spiritual intuition with “human reason”. When would I get the other things done? Why shouldn’t I go? What is the reason? The human mind has a hard time with the “unknown”.

So I went to the next stop. When I got to this place, I discovered they didn’t have what I needed. The trip to this place was totally unnecessary. Part of God’s Principle of harmony is that nothing is in excess and nothing is deficient. There is just the right, needed amount of everything. Our days are ordered by this Principle so there is just the right amount of time needed to do everything. There isn’t too much time or too little time. When we governed by this divine Mind, everything in our day flows together perfectly.

However, my attempt at “human reasoning” to try to solve the problems of the day had really been a lack of trust or faith in God. I didn’t trust that the all-knowing, all-seeing Mind might know more about what was going on than I did.

I learned my lesson, and I am practicing listening to the still, small voice no matter what self-validation the human mind tries to pull.

This Principle of harmony tells us where to go, when to go, tells us what we should purchase, what we don’t need to purchase, shows us what we can give, and who we should call. This spiritual intuition gives us peace, stability, and health. And by listening and obeying it we are ready, we have the tools, for anything that might come into our day.

The quotes in this post are from the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

Is there really a void?

Recently, I was feeling an inner void.

Or so I thought I was!

This feeling reminded me of a deep inner void that I used to feel when I was in my teens and early twenties. During this time, I would look to the world to fill this void, but to no avail. Because I’ve been studying Christian Science consistently for the past several years, I felt I could handle this feeling of “void” in a more productive way.

In my prayers, I find it’s important to ‘identity the problem’. If we think we are feeling lust, anger, addiction or depression instead of realizing we are really feeling a void then we will often be distracted by these ‘symptoms’ and not address the root of the problem.

In my prayers I could see that there really is no void since God/Spirit fills all space. God/Spirit is beautiful and perfect, and made man and woman in the image and likeness of the loveliness, wholeness and completeness of Spirit.  So, where is this void? Spiritual understanding told me that in reality there was no void.

Who or what feels this void? Mortal man. Mortal man is a term that is synonymous with mortal ego. Mary Baker Eddy, the discover of Christian Science wrote, “Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 86)  This YouTube video explains this ego and it’s self-deception:

So, I could see that only mortal man, or the mortal ego, was believing in a void. Was I going to let this mortal ego boss me around by telling me lies about myself and how I was feeling? No! I then felt completely free of the feeling of depression that had been lingering around me for a few days. I needed to see that this feeling or emotion was outside of me, meaning not a part of me, and this brought about freedom and healing.

I’m so grateful that God has given us spiritual understanding, so that we don’t have to believe the lies of the ego anymore.