The healing of confusion

WE may have pictured our consciousness as a sort of catchall for every piece of information to come along, whether correct or incorrect; for every stimulus, whether good or bad. Yet we have a genuine, scientific basis for viewing consciousness in a different way--as that which proceeds from God, divine Mind. And what a wonderful difference this better viewpoint makes! As the Bible clearly indicates, there is one perfect, ever-present, all-wise God. And the true selfhood of each of us - God's man--is His perfect expression. God, the one divine Mind, bestows on us the pure, uncluttered consciousness of good, of harmony, of well-being. And God makes this bestowal unceasingly to each of us. It's not contingent on age, upbringing, or education. The clamorous, contradictory elements of thought that would sometimes clog consciousness do not come from God. The Bible says simply, ``God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.'' 1 And elsewhere, in a familiar passage that amplifies this theme: ``God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.'' 2 All this is good news, indeed. It is also a call to action. We have a part to play in the silencing of confusion. It is true that confusion has no genuine source or author. It is true we haven't been given the spirit of fear (a frequent ingredient in confused thinking). And it is true we are promised soundness of mind. Because these are all spiritual facts, they are ours to prove humanly. It's a question of partaking of what divine Mind bestows and rejecting the catchall kind of thinking --thinking we could characterize as materially based. Too often, what the material senses report is credited as being accurate, and the spiritual senses are either unheard of or disregarded as useless, even nonexistent. Actually, our spiritual senses are what accurately guide us, freeing us from any deceptive mishmash coming through the material senses. The material senses are mistaken in their assessment of reality, just as they're mistaken when they tell us of railroad tracks connecting in the distance. The spiritual senses convey to us that special inner assurance we all have felt at times that there really is a God, a divine source of intelligence. Ever been on the beach when you were in easy earshot of three or four radios tuned to different stations? That's what materially based thinking tends toward! Fortunately, as we partake through prayer of that consciousness which God bestows, we're exercising spiritual sense, and we have the capacity to turn off the intruding ``broadcasts'' that would have us believe friction or fear or other elements of confusion are inevitable. With those falsities silenced, the stage is set for us to hear a message of a very different order--we hear the Christ. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes, ``Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness.'' 3 What better message could we possibly partake of? As we shut out materially based thinking through prayer and daily practice, and let ``the divine message from God to men'' speak to our consciousness, we find greater clarity, assurance, and direction in our thinking. We partake of the pure, uncluttered consciousness of good. Our decisions have a sounder basis, our reasoning a more consistent texture. And confusion, like a radio carried down the beach and far away from us, fades out of our experience. 1 I Corinthians 14:33. 2 II Timothy 1:7. 3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332.