Christian Science Part II
Part I, here - “Someone Told Me Not To Tell Anyone I Was Reading This Book”
I dug into Christian Science with some vehemence for 3-4 weeks, trying as I might to enter in open-minded and without attempting to tear down the thing I was seeking to understand and embrace it in order to gauge its value to me.
Christian Science is sort of magic, in that it says that pain and illness will disappear when you understand yourself as a spiritual being, not a material one, and for the most part I argued for the points they were making in Part I, linked above.
Over the weeks I found myself increasingly irritated at the amount of “Mary Baker Eddy”’s that were said across testimonials from practitioners. Meaning, they couldn’t go four sentences without saying her whole fucking name, in a way that makes me suspicious of hostage-takers and cults and golden calves. Mary Baker Eddy wrote what I’m just gonna call the Christian Science Bible, though apparently there’s evidence she got her ideas from another spiritual leader, as I heard on a critical podcast I listened to later on. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is a book I still have nearby and haven’t given up completely yet. CS’s use the Bible and Science and Health side by side.
I tried to ignore that rather petty irritant and continued to work to absorb the understanding as fully as I could that I was a spiritual being, and to read more of Science and Health to see what would happen from it. Much of it was enjoyable and thought-provoking and overall I enjoyed flipping to intuitively-led pages. I’ve probably read 1/4-1/3 of it somewhat randomly.
I then discovered that the Christian Science website has a 24-hour recording going of people reading Science and Health, and I thought to meself, “Self, what if we just saw what going to sleep listening to this will do? Perhaps I’ll wake up with a new subliminally-guided understanding of God and scripture.”
Instead what happened was —
I woke up several times in the night, discovering that it’s not the SAME person reading the whole book but people recorded for long stretches. I don’t think it was the change of voice that jarred me, but the words that they were reading.
The very unexpected result by morning was that I HATED Mary Baker Stupid Eddy.
I hated her stupid voice she wrote in and her stupid declarations and her stupid weird confidence that she was right that also somehow seemed whiny.
By morning, the thought of opening the book I had been listening to all night absolutely disgusted me. I put it ouside on the (covered) balcony off the apartment and glared at it once in a while. After about ten days of disgust and turn-off, I finally opened it again and read a few things without as much vitriol.
What a weird sequence.
I still see many parallels with formats I’ve agreed with and derive value from.
Christian Science, Shaman Durek, and German New Medicine all lead in the direction that thought and our perceptions are both the problem and the solution.
As I dug into CS, I kept thinking about Shaman Durek’s death experience, where while temporarily dead in the hospital he asked his guide all sorts of questions about why terrible things happen in the world and she repeatedly replied, “Error in thinking.” (At least that’s what I think I remember from the story.) It may be “wrong thinking.” That is close to the idea that CS promotes that “error is nothing” so you just have to stop believing in something that is nothing, like pain or suffering, and come to Truth. Truth in itself is healing, and there may be a Truth that is so worthy of a capital-T that it eviscerates discomfort, pain, and evil all at once. It’s synonym is Love, that which does not demand that which is not best for you.
I’ve experienced and helped others experience coming into a sense of truth that stabilized them, for sure. Perhaps those are a series of mini-miracle cures.
When you sit down with a problem, and you write, or you sit still and let things pass through you, eventually you will get to a feeling of resolution. This is absolutely the case. It’s also why it helps not to argue with or even feed into someone who is talking about a problem that they’re having. If they’re moving energy it’s on the way out.
Intervention will be like throwing rocks in the pond that’s slowly dissolving its ripples, if you’d just let it.
And that sounds an awful like faith, now doesn’t it? Faith in that you have the capacity to solve your own problems, and so do I.
What I’ve experienced the most in these past three months is the beauty that comes from others helping me to sort myself out. By giving me direction and space, I’ve been more motivated to try ideas on for size and see the way they affected my being. Doing things in even an online community has been a wonderful asset to a restoration of myself. I’m in a small coaching group, and would find it hard to join a large one again where I’m likely to be one of the masses without much personal attention. The support of being adjacent to people that are on a similar path of self-growth provides a satisfaction to my soul. The fact that those people are cool with me crying and venting and being honest on the way to being my better future self is honestly the best I could ask for.
I’ll be offering a similar, but shorter container in Listen Up 2 starting April 13 and going for 4 weekly sessions through May 4. That’s every Saturday from 7pm EST/4pm PST in the US and I hope you’ll join us. It will max out at 8 people and there’s a discount if you register by my birthday, March 24. For one person it’s $120 for all 4 sessions and for 2 people it’s $200, so find a friend or loved one to tag along that you really wish would see you at your most you and just witness it. In my experience this is the type of thing that makes people who are good for each other really fall in love. It’s a revealing intimacy to just say what’s true, and that’s what we’re doing together as a group.
Writing, reading, and listening. We are going to be great listeners. Join us April 13-May 4. I’ll love to see you there. (Oh, it’s online on Zoom).