What's the next step?

Are you at one of those points in life when the need for a change -- e.g., in career -- is apparent, but just what to do about it isn't? Don't be dismayed. Infinite good -- a descriptive phrase for God --is all around, and this can be an opportunity to feel its presence. But you can't do this through material sense: the false sense that says good isn'tm infinite and that limitation is real. The change you actually need is a transition from reliance on material sense to reliance on spiritual sense. Only as we give priority to spiritual sense do we come to see and experience more of what infinite good has already given to the real man: absolute perfection.

Through spiritual sense we hear God talking to us, guiding us into an expanding awareness of His infinity. It was spiritual sense that told Moses: "Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount. . . . Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and possess it, . . . fear not, neither be discouraged." n1 In a sense, we'll always be getting the same message as Moses -- to move upm to a better comprehension of God's allness and man's pure expression of God; to recognize and act upon the realization that limitation isn't in Him and therefore isn't real.

n1 Deuteronomy 1:6, 21.

Material sense would convince us that we need to move on only because our present position isn't good. It would persuade us that good is a phenomenon of chance, a possibility only to be encountered by plowing at great risk through mortality's fearsome and discouraging limitations. But material sense is fundamentally a mental darkness that dissipates as the light of spiritual sense is lifted up in consciousness. Where we are now, good is. And because of its spiritual and infinite nature, good gets better (to a growing understanding of its ever-presence) all the time.

"The objects of time and sense," writes Mary Baker Eddy, n2 "disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded. This unfolding is God's day, and 'there shall be no night there.'" n3

n2 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.

n3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 584.m

Once we feel the impulsion to move on, the requirement is always to "go up" in consciousness, to lift up in thought the permanent qualities of good that belong to spiritual reality. What are these qualities? The same ones lifted up by Christ Jesus when he destroyed the dark visions of sin, sickness, and death.

Joy -- for the good already sensed and experienced; gratitude -- for good's uninterruptible continuance; authority -- over the false claims of material sense; fearless dominion -- through the active expression of Mind's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.

Lifted up -- exalted -- in consciousness, these qualities bring us into possession of the land set before us: the knowledge that God is supreme and that man reflects that supremacy. Then "the objects of time and sense" -- when we move forward to encounter them -- will not be able to overshadow the good that unfolds. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight: for the Lord will go before you. Isaiah 52:12