Christian Science Canberra   Promoting Health, Wellbeing and Spiritual Healing in a Scientific World

The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community.  Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists. 

This article, Healing Like an Awakening, is by Christine who is a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra.  She shares how a deeper understanding of God as Principle helped to bring about the healing of a restricting physical condition.

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science has an interesting definition of this Science:  “To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science.”

My study and practice of this Science of Being has resulted in a deep sense of peace, joy and gratitude. I am learning how thought is vital to my everyday experience and keeping my consciousness in relation to the divine, is the key to an awareness of what is real.

Many times I experienced that what was first so real, so frightening, so painful was changed totally by a change of perception, a change of thought, the realization that we are not alien to the divine Principle, or law, but are truly one with the divine Life.

I would like to explain this further with a physical healing that happened some years ago.  I grew up with the practice of Christian Science Mind-healing and so it was very natural for me to turn to it in every need.  So when I became ill with symptoms that were never diagnosed (listlessness, sleeplessness and no appetite) I turned to God for a greater sense of wholeness and perfection.  I worked with a Christian Science healer but my condition did not change until I became quite frail.

My husband gave me an ultimatum one day and asked me to see a medical practitioner.  I could see that this was a reasonable request but it also somehow awakened me to expect healing and a change in my thought that I had been working on every day – a kind of transformation.  That night when I could not sleep, I got up and walked around our kitchen and thought of 7 synonyms or names for God that Mary Baker Eddy explains in her book Science & Health.  These are: Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.

I often ponder them when I want to get a clearer idea of what God means to me and I did this aloud at this time of great need. For example, I thought of how my life was an expression of the one big Life, Life that could never get limited, disharmonious.  There is Truth that always frees us from limitations and how Love is the one cause of all being. When I came to the concept of a divine Principle, or law, something suddenly cleared in my thinking.  I realized that I was connected to the law of Life, the law of being – everyone was.  I bathed in that thought and it became like a light and also something of substance I could lean on, something that had indeed great power.

During this prayerful time I became very calm and eventually I returned to bed and for the first time in weeks, slept peacefully. In the morning I was well, ate a big breakfast and although I had been quite weak, there was no need for recuperation. I quickly gained my normal weight and started living an energetic life once more. In fact just two days after the night time turn around, I saddled my horse and went for a long ride through the countryside with such a sense of unbounded freedom.  The healing suddenly felt so natural, as if all that had happened was that I had woken up and realized that all was well.