THE WAY TO HEALTH
PAUL said, “Be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind.” (Rom. 12:2) In renewing the mind and bringing it into accord with Divine Mind, in which we all have individual consciousness, one needs to understand the character of the one Mind and the Truth of being as the Creator has established it. Then it is well to understand where one has been making mistakes, judging by appearances, accepting illusions, working contrary to Principle, using the faculties in ways not intended by the Creator. These mistakes and misuses of one’s God-given faculties are what we term the causes of human inharmonies. The change of causes also changes the effects.
When the individual keeps his mind in tune with God-Mind, he knows constant harmony, and order, and success, and health. By following the teaching of Jesus Christ and seeking guidance of the Most High he does not leave room for a negative thought to enter. Health, or harmony, is the one presence and the one power in the universe.
The Creator is continually doing His work of restoration throughout His creation, especially in every man and in every woman, for He put all His children into the world to manifest His wisdom, harmony, joy, health, perfection—all that He is.
When we learn how to co-operate with this all-powerful Spirit of restoration, nothing can stand in the way of our manifesting the health that belongs to us by divine right.
During periods of communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit, it is possible for the individual to know the way of peace and prosperity and freedom from all condemnation or anxiety or injustice, and the way of health and continued strength and youth. Study of Truth, prayer for greater realization of Truth, brings one into this divine order described above. This is the rebirth spoken of in Scriptures, and is the way into the kingdom.
All this may seem at first glance to be a roundabout way to health, but it is really the most direct way to health and all other good. We as individuals lose health, or peace of mind, or other desirable states by our failure to know how to identify ourselves with God the Father, and to use His gifts to us, and to let Spirit express through all our faculties and powers.
First of all, in seeking a way to health we need to see clearly that God is omnipresent, as omni-present as the very life in which we live and move and have our being; as the very substance out of which our body is formed and nourished; as the very intelligence that is within us, in every nerve and brain cell and structure of the body; as the very love that draws together and holds in perfect harmony (if we will only allow it) all the elements of our being; as the very light that radiates through us to bless and help others, the light that enables us to understand ourselves and others and all God’s creation, so that we may always think the Truth, the true state of all the creation.
Whenever we have an experience of sickness it is evidence that we have been letting go of our hold on the gifts of God. We have ceased eagerly to appropriate and analyze and assimilate and make use of the life of Spirit through our thoughts, our words, our acts, our living habits.
We need to stir up and quicken our senses and give them the baptism of the new life in Christ Jesus. Our organism has been asleep from disuse and lack of real vital interest in living—not merely in eating and drinking and sleeping and being entertained—but in the vital issues that have to do with bringing ourselves into the full-rounded Jesus Christ expression of life.
In seeking the way to health we are to pray for an understanding of our oneness with God, to claim it. We are to study this relationship so that we may know how to lay hold of the abundant life and intelligence and substance and love of God, and build these into our soul and our body, that we may perfect our expression.
The eyes are the physical organs that are the outpicturing of the capacity of the mind to discern, mentally, physically, spiritually, all that is. Seeing is a mental process; and the eyes are the instruments that register what the mind has been trained to think and to behold. When our mental processes are in perfectly harmonious accord with the ideas of Divine Mind, our sight is perfect and our eyes function properly, with nothing coming between to hinder.
The ears represent the instruments of the mind through which we receive instruction from God’s mind. Hearing is the receptive capacity of the mind, and only as a person is open and receptive to the voice from within and willing to be guided in all ways and at all times by this voice of wisdom, is his hearing sense lifted to the spiritual plane and being put to the use God ordained it should have. Listening within for the still small voice with a mind consecrated to obedience trains the ears to their true function.
The nose is the physical organ that is the out-picturing of the detective capacity of the mind. The sense of taste is also mental in reality, discriminating, appropriating. The senses are built to enable the mind to function in its capacity to find that which is good for the soul and body, and to direct the individual toward the appropriation of it. The mind that is in tune with the true being, the Christ self, is not interested in ferreting out evil, nor in dwelling upon the undesirable in any way.
With our feeling sense we are to feel for God, keep our attention on Him and train all our faculties, senses, emotions, feelings to comprehend His radiations, His qualities as they express in man’s consciousness and body and affairs. Then do we feel God, His presence of love, life, joy, wisdom, power, and the expressions of these God ideas so positively and so fully that we are quickened, and radiate the very things our mind holds so that our world too feels the presence of God.
The one who is truly seeking that which is of God is expressing the good and the true in thought. He does not think adverse thoughts, nor believe in impurity of any sort in the self or in others. And so this sense of smell and the sense of taste are powers of God-Mind, which is ever working to connect us with our good.
Baptizing the senses of seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting and feeling leads to natural intuition and spiritual insight and the power to identify ourselves with the absolute (God, the good). All the senses work in the realm of mind, but all have their physical side and use. We use what they tell us in our thought world. That which we think of ourselves or of others, or of the creation in general, we build up the belief in and begin to register in our own soul and body. That which we habitually see mentally, our eyes begin to visualize, and the cell structures of the organs themselves are affected and built according to the vibrations set up by the thoughts. This is true of the other senses and their organs. Our negative thoughts and emotions (feelings) react upon the parts of the body that have to do with phases of life that they touch.
The way to healing is first of all to re-educate the mind and to establish the Truth in all the faculties; then to see the reality of the body and its functions and to stamp every part with the perfect pattern, which is God-given and known as the Christ man, the out-picturing of the Christ ideas in individual consciousness; then to study the living habits and make them conform to the truth that good only is real and abiding and truly active.
Heretofore the individual may have gone to physicians and surgeons to receive their suggestions and treatment. He now goes to God-Mind, which the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus Christ makes known, He holds to the truth that his body is pure and alive and perfect in every part, because he wishes to use this perfect mental pattern to direct him in his treatment. He then looks into all his thought habits to see that they are prompted by faith and divine love and wisdom and life and joy and freedom. He looks into his living habits to see that he is really taking good care of the body and meeting the requirements of its many departments and functions. He acquaints himself with the different parts of the body, and learns what it is they are truly built for. He learns what each needs and delights in supplying these needs.
He formulates prayers based on the Truth of his being, and uses these prayers faithfully in order to feel them in the mental side of his body. He realizes that he is re-educating his mind and senses and that he is at the same time reforming the physical structures.
God not only has created the earth and us, but He is actually the very essence of all that we see about us and all that is within us. We are the free agents, who must learn to take and combine His ideas and the manifest materials into the soul and body we are to use. We are not sitting off here doing something by ourselves and occasionally asking God, outside of us, to help. In reality God is working out through His offspring that which He has conceived to be the ideal creation and life. But He has given us the power that He is, just as any wise father gives his son full freedom to become the son he feels sure that son will be. He gives him the best start he knows how to give and then leaves it with the son to use his heritage, to make his own way in life. And that is just what God is doing with us. When we ourselves make health, wholeness, holiness the dominant thought of our mind, reeducating all our physical senses to their true purpose, our body temple will be sure to manifest its God-given perfection, because our body is the fruit of our mind.
Thus we remake our consciousness so that it will correspond with God’s perfect idea of us. Our part is to consecrate all our senses to the Truth and train our thought children to express joy, love, faith, wisdom, life, health.
