A primary demand of metaphysical healing is to acknowledge that discord is
always in the realm of belief, never a reality. Human ills are mentally
entrenched beliefs outwardly manifested. When we begin to understand more
of the nature of God, Spirit, as the Bible and Christian Science reveal Him,
and gain more spiritual views of His universe, including His man, these
beliefs are exposed as false, erroneous concepts that need to be rejected and
replaced with the truth of being.

If we are willing to apply prayerfully the absolute truth we are learning to the
problems at hand, our consciousness is increasingly purified, spiritualized,
through the action of Christ, Truth, and our human experience becomes more
harmonious. This, very briefly, is the metaphysical method of Christian
Science healing.

Integral to the divine metaphysics of healing is the moral demand to see the
total unreality of error or evil. By denouncing with our very heart and soul
every error that confronts us, no matter how fixed it may appear, and
attributing all power and glory to God, we fulfill the first commandment.
This brings evidence of Truth's inevitable victory over error.

In the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy explains this fundamental point: "Until the fact
concerning error -- namely, its nothingness -- appears, the moral demand will
not be met, and the ability to make nothing of error will be wanting."
(S&H, p. 92)

Seeing the nothingness of error, of course, is a constant challenge. It is one
thing to say an error is nothing, but quite another to realize the fact of its
nothingness and thereby make it evident. So, how can we reach this healing
realization?

One way is scientific mental argument -- denying the specific false belief and
affirming the specific spiritual fact. If we bruise a finger, for instance, we
can refuse to believe in painful material substance and insist with spiritual
conviction that substance is Spirit, God, therefore spiritual and painless. If
the fear is destroyed, we will banish the pain from our thought and therefore
from the finger.

But what if the pain does not yield immediately? Does that prove that painful
material substance is real, and painless spiritual substance is unreal? No!
We persist on the side of Truth until our consciousness becomes so filled
with the fact of harmonious being that we are no longer mesmerized by the
belief of pain. In fact, many can attest that they have become so caught up in
the joyous sense of God's allness that they have forgotten about the pain, the
injury, and even the treatment -- only to discover they're healed!

Instant recognition of evil's unreality -- through the understanding of good's,
God's, allness -- is a springboard to instantaneous healing. Such recognition
only comes through practice. Every healing we experience strengthens our
understanding of error's unreality. If we remain steadfast in our study and
demonstration of Christian Science, there will be times when no argument
will be needed to bring about a healing. The purity of our consciousness will
instinctively reject the error before it can take hold in thought. This is a
glorious blessing awaiting every metaphysical healer.

Surely this points to what Christ Jesus meant when he declared, "If ye
continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8: 31,32)

How do we free ourselves from that which fosters a painful sense of life? If
human discord is error, we're obligated to face up to the false beliefs
underlying the discord. It helps to recognize that the basic error behind all
human troubles is the universal belief that man is a mortal dwelling in a
material body. This, we learn in Christian Science, is a misconception about
man, for the only man God has made is His immortal, spiritual idea. This
man abides in the divine consciousness, untouched by evil and unfettered by
matter. Clinging to a belief of a material birth or mortal ancestry, holding on
to false personality traits or an inordinate concern for a material body -- rather
than giving up such beliefs -- we may unintentionally postpone knowing the
freedom and joy inherent in our spiritual selfhood.

"When false human beliefs learn even a little of their own falsity," the
textbook tells us, "they begin to disappear. A knowledge of error and of its
operations must precede that understanding of Truth which destroys error,
until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears, and the eternal
verity, man created by and of Spirit, is understood and recognized as the true
likeness of his Maker." (S&H, p. 252)

Evil's nothingness can be seen more readily when we learn that the mental
phenomenon we believe to be mortal and material existence is really a state
of mesmerism. Why is this essential to know? Because mesmerism suggests
that a lie is true, error real, and evil as powerful as good. It suggests that
believers are so hypnotized over the effects of the error that they suppose it
impossible for them to break the mesmerism. Christian Science shows us,
nevertheless, that no matter what evil is claiming to be and do, it can be
removed from our experience. The pure, absolute truth of God's creation can
illumine our consciousness sufficiently for us to behold the unreality of evil's
claims.

In the practice of metaphysical healing, the practitioner handles, negates, the
belief or beliefs that claim to be mesmerizing his patient. The practitioner
separates in thought the error from perfect, spiritual man, which is the true
state of his patient. In genuine scientific healing work, false beliefs are
prayerfully exposed and denied, and so proved to be unreal.

Metaphysical healers need to examine thought ceaselessly to make certain
they're not accepting as true the false beliefs that come to them for extinction.
For instance, do we attach certain errors to our loved ones, neighbors, church
members, all the while saying that we're grateful that we "know" the errors
are unreal? Far better to nullify them totally, realizing that they are invalid
because God never made them. When the nothingness of evil appears, we
have met the moral demand.

When we study the ministry of the Master, Christ Jesus, we see how boldly
he exposed sin, disease, even death, as false beliefs which mankind
ignorantly accepted and still accepts as real. Through his healing and
teaching, Jesus proved that human errors were not God-sent or God-willed,
but mortal inventions. This explains his command "Repent: for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand." (Matthew 4:17)

There may be those who have "tried" Christian Science but experienced no
healing results from what they may have considered to be their most
dedicated efforts. Perhaps they have unwittingly clung to the belief that the
error was real while they were also trying to destroy its effects. But healing
demands giving up -- that is, actually repenting of -- belief in a power apart
from God. As Science and Health explains, "Only those, who repent of sin
and forsake the unreal, can fully understand the unreality of evil."
(S&H, p. 339)

The more alert we become to the moral demand of seeing the nothingness of
evil, the more effective our healing work will be. Not only will this bless us;
it will allow us to help others break through the world's mesmerism of
mortality and realize the spirit of Christ, Truth, which heals.



[This article is from the May 1984 issue of The Christian Science Journal]