The compass of true selfhood

“If you’re not clear where you’re going and how to get there, other people or circumstances will decide for you,” a friend cautioned me years ago.

Unwittingly, I often entrusted my priorities to others. Rather than pausing to think through what was important to me, I frequently defaulted to letting other people make decisions for me or take precedence over my own priorities.

Hypersensitive to the interests of people around me, I was pulled in many directions and felt confused, frustrated, and unsettled. I was lost – and my friend was right. I needed a compass for my life to provide a basis for making good decisions.

How could I gain a clear sense of direction? I’ve found the life and teachings of Christ Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, to be relevant and practical. So, this is where I looked for help.

A beacon of light and hope appeared in this statement from Jesus: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). It got me really thinking, What matters most to me?

Jesus described his life purpose this way: “For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth” (John 18:37). The “truth” Jesus was committed to seeing evidence of wasn’t a limited personal or physical assessment of things. Jesus brought a spiritual perspective to every situation. You might say he was able to see everything and everyone from the viewpoint of each one’s relation to God, divine Mind.

I realized that I could strive to do the same. The underlying limiting belief Jesus confronted – and rejected – was the theory that each person has their own material mind separate from God, the one infinite Mind, and that we each need to scramble and compete for resources or to try to control circumstances through matter.

Jesus’ life illustrated that the all-inclusive divine Mind, or God, the one true Ego, is without an equal. This boundless Mind is the divine Parent of everyone, maintaining everyone’s individual identity as God’s spiritual offspring and supplying us with ideas that lead to constructive thinking and acting.

As the Bible brings out, each of us is created in God’s, Mind’s, image to manifest all the beneficial, indestructible qualities of the one divine Mind – such as intelligence, love, strength, and goodness. Through our inseparable relation to God, we are – and can feel – safe, satisfied, and secure. Jesus acted from the basis of this spiritual reality, with productive and healing results.

Sounds like a wonderful compass to me!

These ideas helped me see that there is a difference between what I or someone else might want from me and what God wants for me and all. My fundamental purpose and direction don’t come from conforming to human expectations (my own or other people’s), but from being true to how God forms and defines us.

Obeying this divine compass in thought and action, we can bear witness to the fact of an invariable true north: one God, one Mind, governing all. In my case, not only did my priorities become clearer, but moment-by-moment insights and decisions became more meaningful and consequential, too.

One day, after I’d been wrestling to sort out what honestly matters most to me, I was chatting with someone else. Suddenly I sensed our conversation could turn combative. So, I asked myself what was most important to me in my relationship with this person. The answer came, “This relationship – and this conversation – is not about me, or getting my opinion heard or making a point. Rather, it’s about witnessing – spiritually discerning and responding to – the truth of everyone’s divinely good nature.”

Keeping my inner eye glued to this purpose enabled me to let comments that in the past might have provoked me, slide over me like water off a duck’s back. My poise and expectation of good remained intact. And the conversation took a positive turn.

Each of us has the privilege to think for ourselves – to be clear about what we value. In her book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, writes, “Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take” (p. 392).

Learning more of the nature of the divine Mind and understanding what we are as the awesome expression of the Divine, we become clearer about our purpose and direction and how to be a true witness to our spiritual self!