When we start with God as being good and all, then we define God’s thoughts as good and all, or perfect and eternal.

Let’s say I exchange the object called a hand for the thoughts it represents. You could say it represents usefulness, dexterity, beauty, holding, giving, strength, flexibility. These are all spiritual ideas, good. But you might also say that the hand could be injured, diseased, painful, weak, cut off. These are also thoughts at this point, but they are material thoughts, not what God creates or sends. Science and Health defines what God creates as reality and anything that is unlike God’s creation as unreality. This is not your standard definition of reality.

The true idea, the spiritual idea, the real idea or the right idea of anything is Christ. And this Christ is our true self–who we already, always are. Thus, we already have the real idea or thought of everything that concerns us. Experiences unfold these real ideas within us to our consciousness when the counterfeit gives place to the true. Thus, a need for healing is the opportunity to discover what the real or right idea is about God, our body, our life, our work or anything else that seems like a mix of good and bad.

In Christian Science, matter is defined as a human concept, a false premise, or even the qualities opposed to Spirit. All these are thoughts, but not God’s thoughts. As we stop thinking these kinds of thoughts and instead think God’s thoughts– goodness, purity, beauty, love– whatever seems material, like a body, becomes more harmonious.

I have found that seeking a healing can sometimes become “a bit of a wall” as wrestler comments. You find the wall looming up and even getting farther and farther and higher and higher as you try to scale it. That is when I find that I was trying to fix something real. If it is real, then God knows it and God made it. If I try to fix it, then I must be saying to myself that I have to be smarter, and more able than God. That is way beyond me. If, instead, I think of it as simply a quality opposed to Spirit and keep my focus on discovering what the right idea is, then the opposing qualities become clearly the counterfeit and no longer scary or powerful or worth my attention.

It is in seeking to understand reality, the true idea, or God, that healing results as a side effect, so to speak. But it is also the proof that these ideas are Truth or reality. Knowing that God is supreme even in the world that we might call material, always loving us, no matter what we think is real, always available and always pouring out the true idea to us is a big comfort to me.

I know someone who is dying. He’s given up and said he’s lived a good enough life here and is ready to go on to the next phase. It makes me so sad and frankly it brings up fears of death for myself. What can I do to support life without going against this person’s wishes?

This may not be the best analogy, but it is what came to mind after reading your questions:

One man at a job gets promoted and we don’t see him anymore. His work took him away to upper management. Another man at work was laid off because his work was not good enough. We liked both and we are angry because we don’t see them anymore.

Jesus, perhaps, we could say, was like the first worker. His putting to use his spiritual understanding enabled him to ascend above our position.

The second man is a friend that has passed away. We believe he/she has been terminated because they have not the sufficient ability to translate.

Sometimes, I believe, those who have spiritualized their thoughts also move to higher attainments as well despite the belief they leave behind a body (our belief of them) for us to contend with. Translation from the mortal sense of things would be very confusing in today’s world. (Missing persons reports/insurance claims/etc.)

However, we never can lose a friend. Both are still living. They always have lived in Mind. It is only our limited sense of life that does not allow us to see them. They have always been the eternal idea of Mind. We view them as mortals; therefore, we don’t see them. The more we see God’s creating to be spiritual, the more we lose the pain and anger associated with mortal thinking. Some day we will see them right where they are in Mind.

There’s a story about the Sun shinning one day, I find helpful. The Sun was enjoying the peace and quiet, when all of a sudden there was a commotion on earth. After a few minutes the noise grew louder and the Sun lowered himself. He saw a large number of animals all yelling about how they had found darkness in a cave.

The Sun being curious, asked, “What is darkness?” One of the bears blurted out, “You don’t know what darkness is?” A rabbit spoke up and yelled, “Follow me and I’ll show you.” And the rabbit ran towards the cave. When he reached the cave he dashed in, followed by the other animals, and with the Sun right behind them. When they all were crowded into the cave, do you know what they found? Light! Wherever the Sun looked, he saw light. The brightness of his own being was all that he could see.

Just as with the Sun in this story, everywhere God looks; God sees the brightness of His own being. And if I have humbled myself, I’m finding that my prayer allows me to exchange my limited reference frame of thought, to some degree, for God’s view of His present perfection.

At this point I’m convinced that consciousness, and not matter, is the basis of reality. It wasn’t just Christian Science (which I grew up with) but a wide variety of teachings that I have looked at, as well as several personal experiences, which have led me to this conclusion.

One book entitled “The Self Aware Universe” helped strengthen my conviction. The author is a University of Oregon physics professor named Amit Goswami. He argues that all of the paradoxes of quantum physics can be resolved if we only accept consciousness, and not matter, as the basis of reality.

Mr. Goswami tackles three competing views of matter and reality:

1. That matter is the foundation, and that consciousness is a byproduct of material forces. He calls this “Realism.” Like Mary Baker Eddy he notes the problems with unconscious matter creating awareness, and points out the problems of consciousness having the power to manipulate its own creator.

2. That body and mind (or matter and spirit) are two distinct and separate things that interact. Goswami calls this “Dualism.” He points out, however, that for consciousness to manipulate matter there would have to be a process for transferring energy from mind to matter for any physical act we perform. This, he says, would violate the physical principle of conservation of energy, which states that there is a constant amount of matter/energy (which are just different states of the same thing) in the universe.

3. That consciousness is the foundation of reality and that matter is a product of consciousness. Essentially objectified thought. He calls this theory “Idealism.” Though his arguments are complex and hard to follow, he makes a good case for this view, and even describes a process by which one universal consciousness might divide itself into an infinite number of individuals, such as you and me.

Like the person with so many questions about matter, I, too feel matter is “real” in some sense, but I don’t believe it is distinct from consciousness, or has the power to manipulate consciousness. Rather, consciousness defines matter.

Where I get hung up, though, is that I’m not entirely convinced that only “good” consciousness is “real” and that inharmonious thoughts (and their apparent “physical” ills) are “unreal.” From where I sit, thoughts are thoughts. We have good ones and we have bad ones, or at least awareness and lack of awareness, and our experience reflects whichever dominates at the moment. Somehow we all got into this experience of feeling separated from God, therefore one must conclude that it is not only possible but that God must have made such a condition possible, even if only as an illusion. That makes God at least partially responsible for our predicament, but that flies in the face of the statement God is Love. It makes my head spin.

Meanwhile, healing appears elusive right now, and the longer it takes the less I am convinced that Mind is entirely good. I’m open to any thoughts.