Spiritual Insight
NONE of us wants to be thought of as insensitive to what's important in the hearts and minds of people, but is the analysis of the human mind and heart all there is to being insightful? Often, even when we think we see exactly what is going on, we miss a vital component of true insight -- spirituality. Real insight cuts through all the superficiality to God's constant, loving care of man. Insight based on this spiritual fact is not really an option in everyday living but an essential. It gets through the layers of thoughts, influences, drives, and so forth, to the one divine influence that governs man. It not only helps us understand ourselves or others but also promotes healing.
Notable incidents in Christ Jesus' life illustrate this double-barreled insight. His penetrating look into the lives of others carried the kind of deep spiritual love that could change lives instantly. It was this love, not an aloof, analytical process, which typified his insight. Remember the woman at the well, told about in the New Testament? Jesus had asked her for water. Yet doesn't his subsequent conversation show that he knew this woman needed the satisfaction of spirituality, of ``a well of water springing up into everlasting life,'' as Jesus put it? John records their conversation: ``Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband.''
That Christ Jesus' insight had penetrated this woman's life to the core did not offend her. Instead, it enabled her to discern Jesus' spiritual status, and she returned joyfully to her home, urging others to come see ``the Christ.'' This was real insight!
Christ Jesus, of course, is a unique individual in history. Because God creates man, and then governs him through the constant expression of His own wisdom and love, healing insight such as Jesus showed at the well is natural to man.
In her discovery the Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, perceived the spiritual system, or Science, underlying incidents like that at the well. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she says, ``The term Science, properly understood, refers only to the laws of God and to His government of the universe, inclusive of man.'' Later, in the same paragraph, she says, ``A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man.'' And she finishes, ``It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity.''
Delving into the morass of material motivations can bury us in the human picture so deeply that we may feel cut off from God, Spirit, the source of our insight. Our adoption of the Christly love typifying Jesus' insight doesn't grow when we bury ourselves in the workings of human thought. Instead, our capacity for insight grows as we work to know God better. Then, our own spiritual rebirth will unloose this natural spiritual capacity for healing insight.
Healing insight doesn't confront or fight with a mortal personality. Its way is to unearth in thought the perfect, spiritual man of God's creating. True, there may be layers and layers of the ``old man'' that Paul speaks of in Ephesians to see through, but the truth of man created in God's image gives strength to the spiritual insight needed to do this.
Since it's not based on the changeless truth of being, human insight can be badly mistaken. But the healing insight Christ Jesus showed us how to use looks through the superficial to the spiritual standard of man and is not mistaken. And best of all, it lifts us up and makes us feel loved.
