What does it mean to manifest good?
Glimpsing that God’s creation is ever complete and whole brings healing and satisfaction to our lives.
Today, the practice of “manifesting” is widespread. The term as it grew out of New Age/New Thought, suggests that we can create for ourselves a mind-set that attracts wealth, health, success, and sometimes spiritual understanding by presenting to the universe what we wish then working to make it a reality.
The desire to find fulfillment is natural, but it’s worthwhile to explore how the term “manifestation” is used in Christian Science, where what’s manifested is divine goodness, which doesn’t involve human manipulation or even start with us.
It starts with God and God’s spiritual manifestation – already and always present and perfect. What bases this divine manifestation of goodness is the omnipotence of the one God, the one Mind. So this isn’t mind over matter, positive thinking, or visualization, but the divine Mind’s tender knowing and loving of each of us and our forever-established place in the divine creation. This constitutes our true nature and substance.
Jesus’ teachings, grounded in the truth of a God’s-eye view of all, and his healing practice make clear how God’s grace enables us to see divine goodness expressed more consistently in our lives.
St. Paul, a follower of Jesus, told the Corinthian Church that “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (I Corinthians 12:7, New Revised Standard Version). So, true manifestation does not result from human effort, and it doesn’t just lead to personal gain. It comes from yielding and awakening to the understanding of the spiritual as not “out there” but ever present, here and now, for all.
The manifestation of divine Love is the gifted glory of each of us as the image and likeness of God that the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible indicates. We are not bringing out our own truth. Instead, we can honestly discover what we are as the manifestation of divine Truth.
Jesus’ proofs of Truth were not miraculous interruptions of reality but a revealing of what is real. By following Jesus’ life and teachings, Mary Baker Eddy found spiritual healing manifested in her experience, revealing the living Christ and the understanding of Spirit. It is here, in that understanding, that God’s goodness is tangibly found in everyday life. She discovered the Science behind this manifestation of God, a divine Science that reveals the indestructible, eternal nature of each of us.
Mrs. Eddy’s understanding of “Christ” from her Bible study can be summarized as the manifestation of the Divine made known in our present experience, reconciling us to our original and only selfhood, of which God is the only creator. Christ enables us to let go of matter-based premises and conclusions that limit the ability to understand and demonstrate life in God.
I have seen the evidence of God in my own life through spiritual healing. An example was while my son and I were hiking a mountain in Alaska. He went on ahead because we both thought we were almost at the peak. After a while, I began to have trouble breathing and was barely able to pray. I had little cellphone service, and my son didn’t answer my call.
Surrendering to God’s love, I phoned my husband, who was driving around the park, and got right through to him. He reminded me that God, Life, is all there is – that God, Spirit, is as close as the air we breathe, and is alone the source of all that we are.
I quickly became able to pray, getting a clearer sense that Life is not in me, but that I dwell in Life, God. Within minutes, I stopped gasping for breath and was breathing normally again. My son rejoined me shortly after; we had no issues getting down the mountain, and I have never had this experience again.
What brought healing in this instance was recognizing that everything comes from God and that the manifestation of the divine Life is the true substance of all life – right now, and forever. Nothing good is absent because God, the source of all good, is here always.
As Mrs. Eddy writes in “the scientific statement of being,” “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 468). This is not individual minds trying to manifest the divine, but the one God, one Mind, one Spirit, wholly good, infinitely manifesting His own.
We can face head-on the belief that we could ever fall away from God’s goodness governing all. We have all the power and truth of God behind us.
Adapted from an article published in the Oct. 16, 2023, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.