How do we know what is real?

Peck, peck, peck: A junco was darting outside our house with tremendous energy. This small gray and white bird seemed to have great determination as he pecked relentlessly at our windows. He was apparently seeing his reflection as a competitor – a threat against which he dutifully guarded.

We might say the bird was well-meaning, but uninformed. He was taking action against an unreal competitor.

The junco’s actions alerted me to watch my own assumptions about what I see in the world. How often are our actions based on our misperceptions? How do we know what is illusion and what is real?

Christian Science helps us see beyond a limited, human view of the world and gain a larger understanding of what is real. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, showed throughout her writings that the divine Mind, or Spirit, not the physical world, is our true source of being. She declared in “the scientific statement of being” in the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all,” and, “Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material; he is spiritual” (p. 468).

When I was 10 or 11 years old, I was quickly healed through Christian Science by these truths. I was cutting food in the kitchen with my mother, and I cut my finger. I immediately declared and accepted that idea – which I had learned in my Christian Science Sunday School class – that man is not material but spiritual. I saw myself not as a material person cutting myself, but as Spirit’s, infinite Mind’s, reflection. I felt loved and completely safe. I looked down and saw that the cut was instantly gone. My mother, who witnessed this event, rejoiced with me.

This healing was something new in my experience and gave me a hunger to know more about spiritual reality. This spiritual reality is greater than what we can perceive with the physical senses.

The Lord’s Prayer, which Christ Jesus gave us, concludes with the affirmation, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever” (Matthew 6:13). God owns the universe, and that universe is Godlike – spiritual, good, powerful, loving, intelligent, and glorious – and is so forever. There are no gaps in “for ever” where the opposite can take over.

This kingdom seems to be contradicted by what’s perceived through the material senses. But God’s kingdom, the power and glory of divine Love, is the only power. In reality, God’s kingdom is the only permanent place there is, and it is perceived through spiritual sense.

In the experience with my finger, I glimpsed that eternal Spirit is true, that I reflect Spirit, and that my life is therefore spiritual and eternal. As spiritual ideas of God, we have a substantial existence. An eternal idea cannot be cut, removed, or distorted. Looking back, I can see that the cut finger was like what the junco saw in the window: an unreal picture of what was going on. When I declared that I reflect divine Mind, my understanding of reality changed, and so did my experience, all in an instant. I felt blessed, at one with Love.

“Love” is one of the ways that God can be described, as well as Mind, Principle, Life, Soul, Truth, and Spirit. Divine Spirit is not trapped in a material world; God is not an anthropomorphic being sitting on a cloud dishing out good and evil. All these synonyms for God point to an eternal, omnipotent, ever-present goodness.

As we come to know God, Spirit, better, this leads us into understanding the true, spiritual identity of ourselves and everyone as expressive of God. As God’s reflection, we live in Spirit, expressing Love in harmony, perfect health, and soundness of mind.

We need not peck at illusions. Mrs. Eddy writes, “We must reverse our feeble flutterings – our efforts to find life and truth in matter – and rise above the testimony of the material senses, above the mortal to the immortal idea of God” (Science and Health, p. 262). We must challenge our human conceptions, be they little or big – reflections in windows, cut fingers, or a broken world.

An understanding of God, omniscient Mind, leads us to grander, more uplifting views, ideas, and experiences. Understanding God, we get a clearer idea of what is real.

Adapted from an article published in the June 10, 2019, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.