The
Still
Waters
    
             Everlasting    
             
May 2003

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        "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." (II Corinthians 4: 18).

         In the mid-eighties, I was teaching sixth grade in a large classroom. The room was a luxury of sorts, double the size of the other classrooms; and the students could spread out clear to the end of the room. I really loved it. Still, it had a down side: I had to force myself to speak loudly enough to be heard in the back of the room.

         After the first week, I began to lose my voice. First it became gruff and croaky, then it began to cut out, like a defective stereo speaker. As one who had practiced spiritual healing for many years, I attempted to heal this quickly. Yet, every time I opened my mouth to shout instructions to the students in the back of the room, I felt I was straining my voice anew. Thus, my own healing efforts didn't seem very effective.

         At the time, I was also teaching Sunday School in a Christian Science church. In fact, these students were about the same age as my sixth graders. In Sunday School we were working on the practice of spiritual healing; specifically, how to do a spiritual 'treatment' for someone else. This involved seeing or realizing the invisible, spiritual truth about someone's condition or situation, instead of accepting what seemed to be their physical truth or circumstances.

         So, in a whisper, I told the Sunday School class about my voice and asked them to write out a spiritual healing treatment for me. When they were through thinking and writing, each one could read aloud what he or she had written. Now, to be honest, I didn't expect a dramatic healing. I just thought this was a good opportunity for them to have something to practice on, and it kept me from having to talk much.

         Well, I under-estimated the students that day! They did a much better job than I expected. Each one read spiritual truths about God's love and care that were applicable, lifting my thoughts above my acceptance of the problem--making me rise above the suggestions that 'nothing can be done' about the situation. They reminded me that God's presence is always 'something'. But the greatest impact came from one student who had written and read only three words: "Voice is everlasting."

         As I heard these words, I blinked. It was like one of those scenes in a movie where everything freezes and you seem suspended in time and space. The light dawned in consciousness, and I suddenly saw the main, spiritual truth I'd been missing: that everything about me was everlasting! God is divine Spirit, and I was Spirit's daughter; thus, I was a spiritual being, not really a physical identity in any way, shape, or form. In truth, there could be no loss or damage to any one made in the image and likeness of God. My voice was a spiritual thing, not a physical result of a material condition in the so-called 'voice box.' My physical form, and all its parts, were merely the symbols of my true, everlasting, invisible Self. Spirit's sons and daughters can't lose anything; for God, infinite Spirit, is the forever Source of our entire being. No part of me had ever truly been strained or damaged. In that frozen-in-time moment, the spiritual truth washed over me.

         Almost immediately my voice came back in full strength, even before leaving the Sunday School. I thanked the students for their help and clear sightedness, for they had brought about one of the quickest healings I'd ever experienced. On that same afternoon, another aid to the situation also came my way: When telling my daughter about the healing of voice I'd just experienced, she gave me a tip for the future. She informed me that, as a cheer-leader, she'd been taught to lower her voice a couple of tones below its normal speaking range when yelling out the cheers. This somehow increases the volume of one's voice, without so much strain. I accepted this information as part of the total healing from the divine Intelligence, showing me how to avoid putting unnecessary strain, again, on the human concept of voice. I went on to teach that entire year without so much as a quiver in my voice.

         Everlastingness isn't an easy thing to accept about ourselves. From our earliest memories on this physical plane of consciousness, nothing seems to last. The temporary, externalized world of form changes constantly. Yet, over two thousand years ago, Christ Jesus entered this plane of existence to tell us about the invisible kingdom of God, which is always present, right where the universe of material form seems to be our reality. The man, Jesus, showed those who followed him, that the temporal universe of form can be changed from destruction back to wholeness, by a thing called spiritual healing.

         Jesus never gave a cause to disease, because he knew that disease has no real cause. God's creation or universe is spiritual, not physical, and there's no destructive causation in the real universe. In a creation without destructive elements, everything and every identity is everlasting.

         When people came to Jesus and told him they were diseased, injured, maimed, crippled, deaf, dumb and blind, he showed them they were not. By bringing forth their innate wholeness, untouched by the material world and laws they believed in so strongly, he proved what their true state of being was. He showed them their invisible, real selves--their spiritual or Christ identities--which were everlastingly whole. He showed them a glimpse of what it means to be God's sons and daughters, and tried to get them to learn more of it, so they wouldn't accept any belief in evil any more; otherwise, they'd just conjure up sickness again. For only by learning of the true kingdom of God, invisibly present everywhere, would they begin to see their own place in it, and their true, eternal selfhood, free of all destructions.

         When people came to Jesus and told him they were poor and hungry, he told them they were not. Then, from the invisible kingdom, he multiplied the loaves and fishes until all were fed. He preached of God's abundance to them, and their true inheritance of divine Intelligence, the divine presence, which makes it impossible to be poor in God's kingdom--for infinite Intelligence supplies every need. Even when the tax person came to collect a tax from Jesus, the all-knowing, all-seeing Intelligence within showed him where to find the money, which filled his need, in the mouth of a fish.

         When friends of Lazarus came to Jesus to say that Lazarus was dying, Jesus waited four days. He waited until the belief in death overtook his friend, so that he could prove another spiritual point: man cannot die, for man is spiritual in substance, body, consciousness and being. Spirit doesn't die. So from Lazarus's own belief that he was material and dead, Jesus told him he was not. And Lazarus got up, in his spiritual life, and walked away from that belief in physical life and death.

         Now, I know some of you are thinking…'well, Jesus was a holy man…a prophet…the son of God, for Pete's sake! He might be able to do things like that, but we can't.' Yet, hear the master's own words on this point: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." (John 14: 12)

         My interpretation of the above quotation is that whoever believes the spiritual truth Jesus taught concerning spiritual being (that we're all the sons and daughters of God) will conquer the ills of fleshly belief. Whoever believes the truth Jesus taught about the ever-presence of the kingdom of God within our divine consciousness, will grow into the ability to assert these truths, in consciousness, enough to bring healing to the other sufferings that occur on this physical plane of consciousness. You see, no one gets off the hook here. Each one is responsible for his and her own spiritual awakening to one's true, Christ identity--our spiritual identity. The ability to heal spiritually is a natural outcome of spiritual growth. It grows with every success.

         In the invisible kingdom of God, (which we will one day see quite clearly) every concept, every idea, every identity is loving and harmless to everything else. There's no 'other side' to God. Infinite goodness has no evil side. Evil is an invention of material thinking. It's the outcome of believing in a material universe and self, separate and apart from God, where we seem left to our own devices. It's a state of self-deception and false perception, from which we awaken by degrees. When in distress, every spiritual truth we see and assert leads to the healing of something, whether it be loss of voice, loss of health, or loss of anything else. Healing occurs because our everlasting self knows no loss.

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