What are you seeing?
Waking up at sunrise in my bedroom one glorious summer morning, I saw the reflection of our iron bedstead with a 1940s hand-hooked rug hanging above it in our antique gold framed mirror. This was no surprise.
What was surprising was a beautiful sight I then saw as I looked out my window. It was an image of that same gold mirror reflected on the window, which seemed so real, even in color, that it looked as if it were outside the room, framing the ponderosa pines.
Experiences like this show us there is much to be said for challenging material perception. The founder of this news organization, Mary Baker Eddy, once said: “Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it” (“Unity of Good,” p. 8).
Often when I’m looking for solutions, I turn to ideas that Mrs. Eddy shares on reflection. In her primary work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” she writes: “Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection” (p. 515).
“Man,” mentioned in this quotation, refers to the true spiritual selfhood of all of us, made in God’s own image. And the mirror is not one purchased from a local store or online; it’s spiritual, too. It is divine Science, or the Science of the Christ. In this mirror, all creation is found reflecting its source, God.
Jesus looked into this mirror all the time. And so can anyone else. Many times, I have found my way through challenges, including health issues, by changing my view of the problem in a Christly manner – by striving to see as Jesus saw. 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).
If what we seem to be seeing doesn’t pass the test of divine Science, as discovered by Mrs. Eddy, we don’t have to accept what’s being presented before us. In other words, if our experience does not show forth the qualities that come from an all-loving, all-wise, harmonious, and eternal God, we can refuse to believe that it is our reality. This is not stubborn wishfulness. The perfection “Jesus beheld” in Science is the spiritual truth for all, and it’s provable in our lives.
About two years ago I began experiencing pains in my legs which increased until they occurred day and night. I had much difficulty doing the simplest chores. At one point, my husband had to wheel me through an airport for a connecting flight because I couldn’t make it on foot due to this trouble. I prayed and applied the rules and ideas found in Science and Health.
Although many fearful thoughts presented themselves, my underlying understanding never varied. I knew I did not have to believe this illusion about my real, spiritual nature, and understood that Christ enforces the divine laws of health and that I reflect the all-good God. This is exactly what I experienced – complete healing, and I have been well and active for over a year.
We can all challenge the false images presented to us, no matter how difficult our situation may seem. Looking to the mirror of divine Science, we can perceive what is true and harmonious, and find that demonstrated in our experience.
