A Christian Science perspective: A deeper understanding of Mind brings peace to the disturbed mentality. By Deborah Huebsch
In these times of global stir, greater mental stability is certainly something we all would like to experience. A slight variation on a famous saying about peace might relate, “Let there be stability in the world and let it begin with me.” Surely mental equilibrium, an unshakable peace that can withstand turbulent events that occur, is a necessity.
There was a time in my life when I had to think deeply about this subject. A history of severe emotional problems affected both sides of my family. When I started to experience signs of a mental breakdown similar to those other family members had, I was terrified.
In this short podcast John talks about how he learned to love himself – to recognise that he had his own unique ‘light’ to shine – and he describes the positive effect this had.
A short poem by Peter J. Henniker-Heaton … food for thought:
A millstoneor a milestone, Which shall it be? Shall I hang it heavy around my neck And drag it along with me, Or stand it up by the roadside To mark one more victory?
There is immense wisdom in the old proverb, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty.” …
We should remember that the world is wide; that there are a thousand million different human wills, opinions, ambitions, tastes, and loves; that each person has a different history, constitution, culture, character, from all the rest; that human life is the work, the play, the ceaseless action and reaction upon each other of these different atoms. Then, we should go forth into life with the smallest expectations, but with the largest patience; with a keen relish for and appreciation of everything beautiful, great, and good, but with a temper so genial that the friction of the world shall not wear upon our sensibilities; with an equanimity so settled that no passing breath nor accidental disturbance shall agitate or ruffle it; with a charity broad enough to cover the whole world’s evil, and sweet enough to neutralize what is bitter in it, — determined not to be offended when no wrong is meant, nor even when it is, unless the offense be against God.
These words are taken from an article titled, Taking Offense, by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. They were published in her book, Miscellaneous Writings 1883-18896 pp223-224.
An article from the Christian Science Sentinel by Diane Marrapodi
Recently a chorus of women around the world lifted their voices on social media to raise public awareness of sexual harassment and assault. Under the hashtag #MeToo, millions have posted their stories of being mistreated because of their sex.
Shining a light on this dark corner of human injustice is an important step toward solving the problem. But for victims who struggle with aftereffects of abuse, is it possible to go beyond #MeToo to find freedom and peace? My experience shows that a Christianly scientific understanding of God and man can bring complete healing and liberation.
In this article Diane shares her experience and details her path out of the mental turmoil and shame that seemed to envelope her afterwards. Click here to read or listen to the full article.
Like the weather, some changes in life are unpredictable. They can be surprising, unforeseen – like suddenly being promoted at work, or becoming a parent for the first time. While a life-changing event can be exciting, others can be hard to cope with – especially if they’re unexpectedly thrust upon you. One way to deal with stormy life-changing events, is to change up one’s thinking, take positive action and embrace life changes! Doing so is good for your health.
EMBRACE CHANGE
When something you’ve loved is snatched away, feelings of hurt and disappointment can rain down upon you. You wonder how to carry on. When this happens, it’s time to use the umbrella of spiritual-type thinking to shelter your heart, restore peace of mind and move you forward to happiness and healing.
TIPS:
– Rather than standing under the grey clouds of disappointment and discouragement, lift up your thinking. Have courage. Embrace the change. Open your heart and welcome the good that lies ahead.
– Don’t begrudge the experience of a life change. Instead, focus on what you’ve gained, rather than what you’ve been forced to give up.
– Remember with thankfulness all that you’ve achieved, and what you can still do, and be.
– Realize that change doesn’t end things. Look past any unhappiness to the new opportunities that lie ahead. Change can be a stepping-stone to fresh prospects.
– Weather a stormy life-change. Be brave. Work on, and await the outcome. You can “steer safely amid the storm”. Mary Baker Eddy – Science and Health p.67
– Be encouraged, strengthened and reassured. You have within you the spiritual qualities of buoyancy, adaptability, and resilience. You will bounce back. You’ve been created to be mentally and emotionally strong. You can handle changed circumstances with grace and poise, and be triumphant.
– Let this poem comfort and help you embrace life changes. You’ll find it’s good for your health.
“In heavenly Love abiding, No change my heart shall fear; And safe is such confiding, For nothing changes here. The storm may roar without me, My heart may low be laid; But God [divine Love] is round about me, And can I be dismayed?
Green pastures are before me, Which yet I have not seen; Bright skies will soon be o’er me, Where darkest clouds have been. My hope I cannot measure, My path in life is free; My Father has my treasure, And He will walk with me.” Anna L. Waring – In heavenly love abiding.
ABOUT THE EXPERT:
Beverly Goldsmith writes on the connection between spirituality and health and is a Practitioner and Teacher of Christian Science healing. Twitter: @GoldsmithBev
The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community. Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists.
This article, Free from Anxiety, is by Jen who is a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. She describes how a change of thinking freed her from constant anxiety and gave her a sense of peace and harmony.
I love being a Christian Scientist, and diving deep into health, spirituality and identity, but it can be hard challenging ideas that are accepted as fact by the wider community. Spiritual healing is seen as impractical and ineffective, and it is rare that I tell people that I rely on prayer when I am ill or injured. This is because it is assumed that I pray to a God who would create me capable of being in pain and then sometimes decides to award me a miracle and heal me.
For me, God is a creative, spiritual force that is completely good. As Christian Scientists, we strive to look past sin, suffering and disease, and understand ourselves as primarily spiritual- as the representation of a higher creative power. In asserting our spiritual identities, and understanding a higher creation, we unburden ourselves of thoughts that limit us to be inherently flawed and suffering. As Mary Baker Eddy puts it, ‘Christian Science is the law of Truth, that heals the sick on the basis of the One Mind, Or God’ (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, page 482). Instead of accepting that there is something ‘wrong’ with me, I turn my mind to spiritual truths, namely that I am primarily spiritual and free from ideas of pain or suffering.
I was healed from anxiety this year, and have felt a lightness and freedom. I had accepted a very limited view of myself – I focused on the negatives in my life, and tried to physically control the environment around me to feel safe and secure in myself. This started with my tendency to hide parts of myself that I feared other people would reject, and did everything I could to meet the expectations of those around me in school, during my gap year and later at university. This obsession with control intensified when I lived in Indonesia, where I was constantly harassed by men in the streets and was actually assaulted at one point during my time there. I learned to prepare for the worst case scenario, and was uptight and fearful. This affected my personal life – I was scared that people would find out things about me that they might disapprove of, and I was very distrustful of new people, especially men.
I had a healing when I realised that the opposite of anxiety is to expect good. This did not mean putting my head in the sand and pretending that nothing was wrong, but rather turning away from a limited understanding of myself and the world and focusing on spiritual facts. A God that is all good could not create me fearful and vulnerable, and has not assigned me a future of fear and negativity in order to ‘test’ me. Slowly, I concentrated on correcting fearful thoughts with an expectation of good, and gauging whether ideas coming to me were affirming my identity as a spiritual being or sending me into a negative spiral. The strength I gained by trusting God has led me to be more open with friends and family, to forgive the men in Indonesia who seemed to threaten my safety, and to be relaxed in accepting opportunities that have opened up a whole new world for me. I am so grateful for my background in Christian Science, and have used it as a practical tool in gaining peace and harmony in my everyday life.
To read more testimonies of healing shared by members of the Christian Science Church in Canberra click on the archive headings on the left for May and June 2016.
The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community. Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists.
My name is Jen and I am a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. I love learning about other people’s religions – I hope that some of you will love learning about mine.
Although Christian Science is very much based on what Jesus taught us, I often describe it to atheist and agnostic friends as a blend of Buddhism and Quantum Physics. This is because it has a focus on overcoming a material view of the world, and understanding God as a spiritual life force. It also presents us with a set of rules that we can use to understand God and His relation to man: spiritual laws that are the basis of reality.
So what does this mean for me, as a Christian Scientist? It means that I work every day to bring spirituality into my experience, and have seen healing as a result. I lived in Indonesia for a year and attracted a lot of attention as a fair-haired, blue-eyed foreigner. I developed anxiety during my time there due to the constant staring, catcalling and sexual harassment. When I came home to Australia, I struggled to shake the anxiety, which made me incredibly tense, neurotic and irritable. It took me a couple of years of prayer to overcome my anxiety: it was clear that I was safe, but I was facing mental suggestions that I should hold onto fear to protect myself.
I had the choice of turning to a powerful God who created me free of fear, to a God who made me feel unsafe and fearful, or to no God at all. I chose the first, as praying to know that I am the spiritual creation of a loving God has brought me healing in the past. I had a major light-bulb moment in this case when I realized that the opposite of anxiety is expecting good. I replaced thoughts of fear and anxiety with thoughts of safety and optimism, knowing that an All-Powerful God would always protect His creation. This allowed me to free my thought from fear, and I have felt relaxed and protected ever since.
This is a testimony of how I understand God and myself, and also of how I use Christian Science prayer in facing the challenges in my life. I use the laws that Jesus taught us to overcome limited views of myself, and rid myself of fear in living a peaceful life.
The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community. Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists.
This article, Peace of Mind Restored, is shared anonymously by a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. In it the writer tells of his triumph over a debilitating medically diagnosed mental health condition.
As with many others it has been a journey for me to find, accept and gain an understanding of Christian Science.
For almost ten years I have relied entirely on Christian Science to overcome all medical problems. No pills, medicines or drugs of any kind – purely and only Christian Science.
All my life prior to this period I had relied on traditional medicines and doctors. I had been diagnosed with manic depression and mild schizophrenia with associated suicidal thoughts and tendencies. General practitioners, psychiatrists and psychologists had been consulted. I had close to two decades of changing medications and altering dosages, and yet nothing really changed. Homeopathy and hypnosis had even been tried. I just thought this was the way it was and would continue to be.
After an attempted suicide (obviously unsuccessful) I had a stint in hospital and it was there that an event occurred that changed my life: The psychiatrist at the hospital told my wife, ‘there is nothing we can do to stop the suicide attempts; he will do it again; one day he will succeed’. This was the turning point in my life. I knew I had few options so I turned to Christian Science and found a firm fundamental premise upon which to expand my life.
Since turning to Christian Science and studying the text Science and Health with key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy I have been healthier both physically and mentally. My family report that I am calmer, happier and kinder. I can truly agree with Timothy in the Bible when he says: God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind (II Timothy 1: 7).
As I said previously: no medicines, formulas or pills for almost ten years. The constant in this time has been Christian Science and the text, Science and Health with key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. It was a journey to get to that point and the time was right for me.
The years between 15-25 are frequently a time of questioning and great discovery, but like many others I found them difficult. I had to deal with chronic disease, failure in my chosen career, a persistent lack of self-worth along with indecision about an alternative career path, and loneliness.
Although never diagnosed, a psychologist would probably have called me depressed.
However, along the rugged path to recovering my childhood inner contentment I found that spiritual activities like prayer, research into some of the world’s most meaningful spiritual writings and participating in church were keeping me sane, mentally motivated, and connected to others in a nurturing environment.
The refocus on unselfish activities gave me a feeling of self-worth again and also contributed to a hopefulness that things would get better. In time, it opened up previously unknown pathways to fulfillment.
Rather than restricting me or quashing my critical thinking, my adolescent research into the spiritual nature of mental and physical health made me realise that what I needed all along was to put into daily practice a growing understanding of my radically awesome relationship to the Divine Being.
To the degree that I acknowledged it, I found that I could actually experience divine Love expressing kindness and unselfishness in me; the divine Mind reflecting intelligence and wisdom in me; the divine Life demonstrating health and wellbeing in me; and so on (ideas from Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy).
Things started to go right for me again. You could say that I saw “the wilderness and desert begin to blossom as the rose”, an image so beautifully depicted in the Bible.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I ended up more consistently in the right head space with a much better view of myself – and was probably a lot more likeable, as well!
A 2008 study published in Australian Family Physician and written by Dr Craig Hassed, Faculty of Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, reported that “Spirituality is an important determinant of physical, emotional and social health…”
When commenting on escalating trends in youth mental illness his study suggests that “there may be too little attention being given to the ‘protective factors’ against mental illness, of which, particularly for adolescents, are connectedness and having a spiritual or religious dimension to one’s life” (Hassed, The role of spirituality in medicine, 2008).
It’s heartening to learn that spirituality is acknowledged as central to youth mental health by a growing number of psychologists.
It seems to me that clinicians need to speak to the community more about the benefits of spirituality in the treatment of anxiety and depression, and not just in young people, but for everyone.
A spiritual dimension to life will undoubtedly assist you, whether you’re young or old, as you seek (and find) a better, healthier and happier you. That would be the real you!
The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community. Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists. 
My name is Jen and I am a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. I love learning about other people’s religions – I hope that some of you will love learning about mine.
This article, Peace of Mind Restored, is shared anonymously by a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. In it the writer tells of his triumph over a debilitating medically diagnosed mental health condition.
Christian Science Canberra 