While healing in its largest sense includes many different lines of realization, the term usually means realizing health of body. It is, today, interesting to watch the amount of attention that is being given to healing in the newspapers, magazines, and churches. This is encouraging, because it is indicative of the present trend of thinking. There is on all sides an awakening toward higher thinking.
There are now few churches that spurn healing. The limitations of tradition are fading in the light of this new freedom that the world of men is feeling. The healing of the nations is coming through the healing of the heart. Is there a best way to bring this about? It seems so to me, and I think I have found it. There are three kinds of metaphysical healing:
The first is mental healing. The purpose of this method is to develop the mentality of the individual, the personal will, in order that it may overcome personal ills. Mental science tells us that if we develop our will and are faithful, we shall have the power of suggestion to heal another. This method often brings outward harmony for a time but there are several mistakes here. The first is the exalting of the personal self, for if one does not remain very humble, he acquires the egotistical habit, and rides rough-shod over his fellow men, certain of the effect of strong will-power. Another difficulty is that an untrained mentality formulates without any basis for decision. We cannot trust the personal will; we can trust the Divine Will.
Perfection in every phase of life is God’s Will for us.
The second type is faith healing. In this method God is besought until he answers. However, since we have come to know God as Omnipresent Life, Health, and Good, we no longer beseech Him for any gift, for we know that He has already given us all Good.
The purpose of prayer is not to change God but ourselves.
God does not need changing; He is ever present health. His will is that we shall know this and rejoice in perfect harmony of body, circumstance, and relationship.
This realization comes to us through the third type of healing. Divine Science, true to its basis, the Omnipresence of God, declares that an ever present God means unchanging health for each one of us, and this we realize by using scientific treatment. Scientific treatment has two phases: The silent time when one affirms God’s Presence and denies what is unlike His Presence, until one feels the truth of what he is saying. Then one must go into the activities of the day with the consciousness of God’s Presence, making each thought and act true, loving, and powerful. This is the highest method of healing and brings the richest and most lasting results within and without, for it reveals the Perfect Whole.
What do I mean by The Perfect Whole--Universal Presence? Think of the air. We are all breathing it no matter whether we live in Africa or in America. Wherever our brother is on the face of the globe, we know that he is breathing the same air that we are. You see the analogy. Could there be any one who thinks that the same God is not manifesting in the very heart Africa? God is everywhere. Divine Science stands on the foundation of Omnipresence. Omnipresence is the blessed truth that we live, move, and have our Being in God, and that God acts by means of man. Infinite Being is the One Presence, the One Creator. All activity is the expression of this Power.
We can lay hold of the great law of the Cosmic Energy, and build true to it in our thinking and living.
From the bringing forth of a plant to the fitting of a joint in carpentry, there is evidence of One Creative Power and only One. This One brings forth without ceasing, and all that It brings forth is like Itself, very good. The image that It conceives is true to Principle. Since God, the Perfect One, is the only Creator, creation is Godlike. It is perfect, beautiful, whole. When we see God in Creation, we see that Creation is the perfect expression of Idea eternally unfolding as the visible world.
What is it, then, that makes us see inharmony? Emphasis laid on externals leads to misconception. We are seeing partially, hence imperfectly.
True seeing is healing. When we see the Truth of the Self, we are healed.
When we see rightly, the true creation of God is revealed. All inharmony disappears.
Well I remember my first experience of cosmic consciousness. I was sitting in a small, plainly furnished healing room in the first home of Divine Science in Denver. I see before me now the ordinary sofa and a equally commonplace chair. The walls are bare. In the work that had come that morning, I had realized God’s Presence and Power to an unusual degree. Suddenly as I sat meditating, I saw that a brightness, a veritable glory was filling the room. The walls radiated light; the sofa had changed as well as the simple chairs. I was seeing the true life of this room. It was alive with the Presence. There was nothing old. All things had become new. I was seeing with the inner vision. This Presence is aliveness, and within it we know there is no ugliness, no inharmony.
Divine Science teaches Infinite Power, and has as its highest realization, God, the Omnipotent Thinker, thinking forth creation.
In nature man is perfect--one with his Creator. Of myself I am nothing; I am all things in God. I claim for all men this same wholeness, completeness, and perfection.
What is the truth about healing? Leave the body with the Creator; in His sight it is perfect. Take a stand in the Omnipresence of health and power. Do not touch the body in thought: We do not have to recreate tissue or rebuild organs.
The secret of healing lies in directing thought toward the Creator, not toward the appearance.
We must work to change our mental outlook, not the body. Denials and affirmations are mental exercises. What shall we deny? Only the general things. For example say, “I will not admit this or that unreality to my thought. I deny fear. There is no fear. Human belief is tempting me to be afraid; but, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’.”
Fear has no place in our Divine make-up.
If we allow it to do so, fear can keep us in hell. Hence deny any belief opposite to God as the only Creator. Do not let evil weaken your realization of the Presence and Power of God. Take hold of the world from the God-side. God is the life and the blessedness of His world.
What is the best method of healing? That which gives the most general and far-reaching results; that which is most permanent and most preventive. The test of a method of healing is, “How deep does it reach? Does it reach the center of a man’s being?”
Healing must include the whole man--his body, his environment, his circumstances as well as his Spirit.
The only method that can do this is the one which sees man one with God--whole, complete, perfect. When we grasp this method, we find the preventive for all future disease and lack. We assert that monistic healing has the true basis, and that “All things are possible to them that believe.” Truth never fails; it is only our grasp of Truth that fails. Let us keep our grasp steadfast and our vision clear.
Nona L. Brooks Short Lessons in Divine Science
