The awakening that heals
An openness to the idea that reality isn’t necessarily what it seems to be – is spiritual, not material – brings a spiritual awareness that restores health.
When I was about four years old, a very hard-hit baseball struck the bridge of my nose. Right away my parents wrapped me up in their arms and comforted me. My family had experienced the effectiveness of prayer before, so one of my parents turned to God in prayer while the other took me to a hospital, feeling that that was best at the time.
At the hospital, a doctor took an X-ray of my head and explained that there were a number of broken bone fragments. He insisted on an operation the following morning to rearrange them properly for healing. Because the surgery wasn’t scheduled until the morning, one of my parents asked a Christian Science practitioner to provide treatment through prayer.
By the next morning, through Christian Science treatment alone, I’d been completely healed. When my parents brought me back to the hospital, the same doctor took another X-ray to see if the pieces had shifted overnight. He and another doctor studied both X-rays and told my parents that they couldn’t explain it, but there was nothing there that they needed to operate on – my skull was now perfectly whole, with no signs that there had ever been any breakage.
In the years since, I’ve thought deeply about that healing, which came about overnight without any physical treatment or surgery. How was that possible?
It has made me think of a nighttime dream I once had, in which I had a severely broken arm and felt fearful and desperate. But then I experienced immediate and total relief – not by resetting bones, but simply by waking up. Although the dream-breakage had seemed very real, it wasn’t, and the “problem” and fear vanished instantly with that realization.
This has been a useful analogy as I think more deeply about how Christian Science heals. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, wrote, “Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the dream we have in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of mind” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 188).
This has helped me see that there is something deeper and truer than the picture of mortal existence. That something is the spiritual reality. On that basis, one can experience healing by approaching a problem as a dream, or a misperception of spiritual reality – from which one can wake up.
At the heart of that awakening are the foundational truths that God is not material, but is infinite Spirit; that God is not limited in any way, but is infinitely and eternally good and all-powerful; that God is the sole divine Mind; and that God’s creation must then consist of ideas that reflect His nature. Anything less could not be true about the all-powerful, infinite God and His creation – which includes each of us as His child. Everything God creates must be entirely spiritual, perfect, and eternal.
Where, then, does that leave sickness, injury, etc.? Those opposites of God, good, simply cannot exist in God’s realm. Certainly, they can seem very real to us – as sleeping dreams can seem real even though they are not. But such discord’s claim to legitimacy doesn’t come from the divine Mind, God, but from the counterfeit of Mind, which the Bible calls the carnal mind. This so-called mind is the dreamer, but its thoughts are never truly our thinking.
Through prayer – whether our own or that of someone else praying for us – thought is awakened to the spiritual reality of existence. As Mrs. Eddy wrote, “... awakening from this mortal dream, or illusion, will bring us into health, holiness, and immortality” (Science and Health, p. 230).
That this awakening leads to such transformation is supported by Jesus’ healing works as recorded in the Bible. Some of those healings took place instantly and without any physical contact with, or even close proximity to, the person being healed. There is a divine Science behind such healing – a Science that can be applied to any situation, by anyone. Jesus affirmed that when he said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” (John 14:12).
There are thousands of verified accounts of metaphysical healing published in Christian Science literature, including this column. These testimonies are accounts by people describing how they were healed of various ailments through study of the Bible and Science and Health and the prayer-based treatment taught in these Christian Science textbooks.
Christian Science prayer is indeed effective in addressing the dreamlike suggestion of sin, sickness, and death – but what’s being done is metaphysical, spiritual, divine – not physical. As I experienced after that ball hit my face and have experienced many times since, this divine Science is reliable and practical – and it’s here for anyone who wishes to apply it for themselves!