Science

"The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him.  But that is not our science.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson

November-December Newsletter

While on my way to writing the November-December Newsletter for the DSW web-site I was asked to write some words to two inquirers.  One was a friend from my old Georgetown days when we were doing Centering Prayer meditation groups, and Joel Goldsmith study groups.  The other was from a scientist friend who sent me a couple of pages from a book by a scientist trying to present an opposing view to the "global warming" excitement, but who has been shouted down in scientific and political circles.  My response to the first friend is being edited and is 12 pages.  The second response is seven pages and is on the DSW web-site.  You might find it interesting.  It's where the Nov.-Dec. Newsletter was going to be.

Miracle Max Wisdom

Miracle Max:    "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."

"Rabbi - what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"Not long ago Rabbi Gittleson wrote in the Saturday Review: 'We live at a time when knowledge is increasing with frightening rapidity...we must therefore rethink our ideas of God in a context that includes at once the biological discoveries of Darwin, the physical insight of Einstein, the psychological imperatives of Freud and who knows what new comprehension tomorrow.  This does not mean we have outgrown God or are abandoning Him.  Quite the contrary; it is those who insist on constraining God within a conceptual framework that is rapidly becoming meaningless, whom history will adjudge as abandoning Him.'"
-Christian Science Re-Explored (1965), pg. 20 - Margaret Laird

Re-explore

"You are ill: your natural instinct is to be well.  As we shall say many times in this book, you have this desire because Health, Wholeness is the Nature of Being.  In the recognition that if you are sick you are well, the wellness aspect of you will appear.  Sickness and wellness are not really contradictory states of being but are the Reality, Health, simultaneously being and not-being in the man-image. The natural instinct of the seed is to be the flower.  It has this instinct because the flower is its seed.  The self-concept, because the Self or I-ness is its existence, instinctively builds itself up and tears itself down.  As we cease to work against what we call evil or error, and work from the standpoint of the infinitude of Good, we shall find the Good to be the All of all."  - Margaret Laird, Christian Science Re-Explored, pg 6

from "Living Consciously: The Science of Self" -Dorsey/Seegers

"From the works of men who have studied human individuality, notably those of Freud, we have evolved for ourselves the following hypothesis which we have been subjecting to every conceivable test for its particular applicability: Everyone is grieviously ill on acccount of his limited self-appreciation and can become well only by extending the scope of his self-tolerance with self-love.  This hyposthesis passes every test.  It works.  It does not work only where it is not tried.  Its practicality and utility for everyday living is demonstrable in every instance of its application.  It is offered as the chief desideratum of a world constantly troubled by hot, or cold, warfare.  In the opposite direction, efforts at self-ignoration would reverse the life order and are helpfully signalized by inharmonious living, which leads to the misprision of life itself.  In view of its being a common addiction, self-disesteem is rated as being natural or healthy, but as anyone grows a fuller view of his wonderful creative power his life's all-precious worth becomes constantly self-evident."

Meanwhile

As you may see the October Newsletter is soon to be re-named the November newsletter.  Names, just names.  Anyway, if you're chomping at the bit, here's something to chomp on in the meantime.  An old friend e-mailed me and asked if I was teaching.  My first response was koan: "I teach only myself."  Which, of course is verifiable fact.  I do not learn from teaching, but as if teaching confronts me with the necessity to teach myself.  Experience is my only teacher.  But as if teaching asks me questions I may wish to block from my awareness.  So being the product of my own learning, I decided a more amplified response was warranted and so I wrote the expanded response.  You will find it on my website where the October Newsletter was intended to be.

The October Divine Science Today Newsletter is on the way...

... but is not quite ready.  I hope to have it available by the third week in October.  Rob

IMS Newsletter

I was invited by Bruce Manuel, the editor of the Newsletter of the Institute of Metaphysical Science (Oct-Dec 2009) to submit an article on the topic of Truth.  If you don't subscribe to the IMS you will find my article printed on the Divine Science Website in early October.

Pooh!

I'm reading Pooh and The Philosophers by John Tyerman Williams, "in which it is shown that all of Western Philosophy is merely a preamble to Winnie-the-Pooh."  Alfred N. Whitehead said once that the European philosophical tradition "consists in a series of footnotes to Plato."  The Pooh Perplex (1979) by Frederick C. Crew and The Tao of Pooh (1982) by Benjamin Hoff all challenge their readers to bring new meaning to their reading. You will remember that we read, not to discover what the writer is thinking, but what we are thinking.  Are you a stoic?  A rationalist or empiricist?  An existentialist?  You might see yourself in the Pooh stories or someone you know in the characters of Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, or Pooh.  It's a fun, informative read.

Newsletter is ready

The September Newsletter is now available on the Divine Science Today web-site. Hope you enjoy it. Rob

September Newsletter

Friends -- as you may know I have revamped the Divine Science website to reflect recent influx in my reading and a shift in my thinking. The Website was renamed: Divine Science Today. As I returned to reading the work of Margaret Laird, via the Laird Letters I was struck by the value to today in the Margaret Laird, John M. Dorsey collaboration. It was as if two currents of high voltage thought-energy connected and lights went on for me. Dr. Dorsey was Dean of the Department of Psychiatry, Wayne State University, Detroit. As a medical doctor and psychiatrist he evolved a conceptual view of individuality that is very refreshing. Margaret Laird was (in my opinion) the clearest articulator of Christian Science or scientific metaphysics of our day. Her paraphrase of the writings of Mary Baker Eddy is very valuable. A friend introduced Mrs. Laird to the book, Living Consciously: The Science of Self, co-authored by Dr. Dorsey and Dr. Walter Seegers, Dean of the Department of Physiology, Wayne State and on reading it Mrs. Laird felt they were voicing the same idea, each in their own language. She sent him a copy of her book, Christian Science Re-Explored and thus began a long and fruitful association between a Christian Science teacher and a medical doctor educator. You might find the words of Dr. Dorsey describing his discovery of Christian Science, which I have reprinted on the front page of the website, astonishing.

As I came to appreciate what this association means, I felt it spoke to "today." I am at work writing a newsletter for the website for September, entitled "Today." My plan is to write an October newsletter on "Science" and a November newsletter on "Divine." This will amplify the new name: Divine Science Today. I hope you will read these and share comments.

The Circle of Life

In the Disney movie, "The Lion King", there comes the song by Elton John "The Circle of Life." One line goes: "Some say 'eat or be eaten', some say 'live and let live'.

What say you? Your view of Life (Mind) will determine your will, which in turn will determine your life. My friend Margaret Laird says, "If we knew better, we would do better." We can't do better than we know. This is a principle of any enlightened view of Life and Mindful living.

Now all of these words you are reading just now can have only the meaning you are giving them to give to yourself. If your vision expands so does your view, just like a telescope, or a zoom lens on your camera. Consciousness is such that it can and does expand and contract just like the iris of your eyeball does and just like you eyeball, consciousness is by nature flexible, adaptable, creative, original and free to the one who has it. Good news! You have it. If you KNOW how it works, it works FOR you and you do better. Doing is always in proportion to knowing. If you don't know how it works, it seems to work against you -- it doesn't really, but it seems to. When you start up self-learning (infancy? pre-natal?) it expands. Training, which socialization requires tends to contract it. Training and self-learning are not synonyms in the context of Science understanding today. When you lay aside self-learning for the "goods" of your training (conditioned thinking), these "goods" (gods) that are not the Good, are the devils of your own making which hide the Good-being you are being. If on top of this ignorance (immaturity of view) you believe that your devils are coming from outside you, from someone else, and you aren't yet prepared to be self-responsible for all of your self-creations, you set for yourself an impossible task in living. The task of trying to get rid of "them" or trying to avoid "them" is impossible because there's one of you and 3 billion of "them." "To agree with your adversary," writes Margaret Laird, using the old quotation from the Gospels, "means to not be one."

If we understand the scientific metaphysical distinction between Reality and our views of Reality, we are free to expand our Awareness infinitely. If we telescope our zoom-lens attentiveness to our personal view of Reality at this moment and try to resist its changing, this "dis-ease" will make trouble for us beyond our concept, though we are always the maker of our own experience and always free to free ourselves.

Once you are free of mistaking your view of Realitly for Reality as it is, and in Science living this comes from practicing the "discernment of the FACTS of being," there comes an ability to appreciate ALL points of view as nothing but views with no Truth in them, no matter how "gross" or "wicked" your old Sunday School teacher trained your judgment to react. "Try it out, dude!"

Do you know where the phrases "eat or be eaten," "live and let live" and "know better, do better" probably originated? These are all old views of Reality still in popular use as mottos. You can check your real view of things by your emotional reaction to suggestions offered in words. What you say your view is, may not actually be so. This is good practice, since discovering your old childish emotional training secretly influencing your thinking in work-situations or love-situations is bound to be unhappiness-making for everyone.

Let's start with the easy one, "Live and let live." Do a Google. I did and this came up as the first "hit." Which amazed me.

abufares said...the world according to a tartoussi
"A man walking alone on a deserted beach, brandishing a lantern in his outstretched hand might be a fool. But, for a ship that went astray on a stormy night, the same man is a savior."
Saturday, March 07, 2009

Live and Let Live
In response to the latest bigoted outcry on the Syrian Blogsphere against Homosexuality.

Next - "If we knew better, we would do better" goes back to Socrates and Aristotle, Greek philosophers in the 3rd century B.C. Socrates, a most brilliant self-learner, in fact the first in Western thought to declare himself so, did not know Aristotle. Aristotle hadn't been born when Socrates died. Please notice the operative words "know" and "would". Aristotle did know Socrates from reading Plato and others and being a most brilliant self-learner himself, Aristotle decided that Socrates theory of will-weakness ("When I say "no" I feel guilty) indicated a lack of knowledge or enlightenment. Agnosia or mental blindness as cause, is will-weakness (vice -lack of skill in one's living) as the effect. But Aristotle rejected Socrate's view of Self-reality and emphasized instead "weakness of will" as the cause and ignorance or stupidity as the effect. This debate goes on today. When a metaphysical scientist says: "Know better, do better," they are advocating enlightement, or self-discovery, self-learning in the tradition of Socrates, the first "non-Aristotelian" thought-systemer.

And now for the fun one. "Eat or be eaten." This did not start with business strategists. Accoring to the book, "Ideas That Changed The World, " by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, the very fist recorded IDEA THAT CHANGED THE WORLD WAS -- drum-roll --"We can eat each other!" The idea of cannibalism indicates the first "thinking" animals -- homo sapiens. He says: "Some of the earliest evidence of human thought lies among the detrius (feces) of a cannibal feast eaten nearly half a million years ago. (Isn't science fun?)..."We have trained ourselves to recoil from cannibalism and to see it as treason against our species: a form of sub-human savagery. The evidence, however, suggests the opposite: cannibalism is typically -- you might almost say peculiarly -- human and cultural." No other mammals snap in two the bones of their prey, he says, and dig out the marrow to eat. All others tend to avoid any practice of cannibalism except in extreme circumstances and feasts and rituals are not extreme circumstances. "Which suggests that it did not come "naturally" to our ancestors, they had to THINK about it." (italics mine).

Now to complete the thought if you are a student of modern metaphysical science, it did not come "naturally" "humanly" it came "divinely." Human nature is human, because it is divinely Natural and not human for the same reason. Inspiration! Love meeting the human need for -- food and food for thinking. What an interesting view of the "two roads diverged in a wood, and I..." and how it does shoot to hell the two old creation stories of Genesis of how man becomes man in the eyes of himself and God. Science has a different view of everything (the universe).

If there was no divinity of HUMANITY, there would be no feasts, no rituals, animals would be animals. But the time came because the IDEA came, the inspiration came to be divine, to be immortal -- which 500,000 years ago meant living to tomorrow, maybe next week, depending on the food supply -- Hey! I've got a great idea! Let's eat people! And the human race was born, born in inspiration and a new idea. Fortunately for you and me, the unfolding God-idea pushing itself out from the depths within us, pressuring us to identify it more clearly and correctly had more than that one old 500,000 year old idea up its sleeve.

Reality is demanding us to give up the old concepts of the God-idea as fast as we can. Or -- we might just have to eat you.

Silly

You might be interested to hear that my article on Love was accepted and published by the IMS in their latest newsletter. The title is "Silly" and so is the article. You will find it on my web-site.

I was snipped

Hanging by a very thin thread, I was maintaining a connection with the officialdom calling itself "Divine Science." This last little bit of old hope in me manifested as my web-site address included in a list on the Wikipedia page entitled: Divine Science. I had inserted it into the wiki page in the hope that it might catch some recognition and prove to be a door into association with others of like mind. Recent inspirations led me to revise my web-site and so I thought I should update my link with Wikipedia. But I found I had been edited out. My thread had been snipped. My link was removed by some editor. You wil notice that I've changed the headings on this blog and on my web-site. "Divine Science Today" -- what do these words mean? This is the inspiration, the idea revising my web-site and the writing I am looking forward to doing. Divine Science, the Omniscience of the one Mind, Truth is infinite and continuously demands "new paraphrase from the world of letters." Since Truth, Science is infinite it can't possibly be confined to an organization with a history and a dogma. Mistaking an old organization with the Science of one Ego is ended and I'm thrilled that my last thread of attachment to the old organization is snipped. It frees me to write about Divine Science Today.

Margaret Laird and John Dorsey

From my research into Scientific Metaphysics I have learned that Margaret Laird became acquainted with John Dorsey through a mutual friend. Their collaboration over many years evolved some interesting material. In my current view, Margaret Laird is the clearest voice of teaching the Science of metaphysics as the psychology of Spirit and John Dorsey represents to me a clear voice of psychology which evolved into profound spirituality. As I read them together, I keep finding in both of their work what Dorsey calls in his introduction to Illness or Allness: a "deep reverence for individuality." I think that is the premise of practice for today as it was in their day.

Greater Works

Lillian DeWaters writing in 1946 published a book entitled, Greater Works. The title refers to John 14:12 which has Jesus saying to his disciples:

"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. "

Those of you who know Greek know the English word "I" translates the Greek word "ego." Lillian speaks in her later writings of the fact that many of her correspondents were experiencing the "law of diminishing returns" on their investments of time and energy in "treatment" work. The law of diminishing returns is "the tendency for a continuing application of effort or skill toward a particular project or goal to decline in effectiveness after a certain level of result has been achieved." (Answers.com) It seems that when one has devoted considerable time and energy to the study and practice of metaphysics there comes a growing sense of recycling "healings". It is understandable to take the healing principles out of context, isolate them and magnify them and unmindfully make them the All-in-all. And this impasse in the growth and progress of the practitioner is seen as patients coming for healings until the practitioner finds him or herself in the "empty space" Love provides for the discovery of "nothing to heal and no one to do healing." Lillian indicates that this is a transition into the "greater works" demanded of Truth's conscious identity (Man) and asks what could be a greater miracle than all of Jesus' miracles including his resurrection?

Margaret Laird in her Laird Letter of Jan./Feb1980 answers: "Divine Intelligence is the unthinkable thought-force that intuitively becomes the perception of each individual in the knowledge that whatever is happening is happening perfectly. The Science that I am as conscious identity disposes of the intellectual perception of being something I am not. In this process the "conscientious me" full of re-volution, likes and dislikes,---becomes the "conscious I" with no complaints --- rejoicing always in the divinity of humanity. ..What disappears in the context of being Mind, in love with everything and everyone, is not the disappearance of anything but the appearance of everything as it is. In being my Self consciously, with no externality to dull vision, the sick, complaining, unhappy individual that I am not disappears."

This is the miracle of today.

Truly it is a greater work than all the miracles of Jesus even his resurrection.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans. --Woody Allen

My wife Laura and I moved to the mountains. Here we are in 3 feet of Spring snow. Down in the left hand corner of this picture is our dog, Maddie. The day after we took this picture, Maddie died. She was 12 years old and had been the mascot of our blended family. Observing grief is interesting experience. I had been reading Lillian DeWater's book God is All (1928) in which she relates how she healed her dying canary by receiving illumination and inspiration. I wanted to do the same for my dog. With three feet of snow, I had lots of tiime for reflection and reading. Since I'm reading all of Lillian DeWaters writings, I found that she changed her position somewhere about 1940. She wrote "Light" (1950) as a companion to "God is All." Here she says: "The answer to the world's problems is not to be found in the healing of diseases or in the overcoming of wars. The deep significance of this hour is that we turn ou hearts from all else to God for direct light, vision and revelation." "To be at all we must be this One." "Spiirit -- the One I Am - the I or Identity of all---is Here and Now always the same - invincible, unchangeable, absolute."

Maddie the dog was more than appeared to human eyes. She was the result of work I did with Joel Goldsmith. I had a "mortal" fear of dogs since paperboy days. And reading Joel's message one cannot escape his theme of "there are not two powers, good and evil. Good is the one power." Gradually I overcame my fear of dogs and Maddie was my first dog. She introduced me to the wonderful world of love appearing as animals.

We decided to plant trees on our new property in her memory.

Across the Unknown

I took a couple of weeks off to read S.I. Hayakawa’s book, Language in Thought and Action. I think this is a very important book. My brother asked me once, “Don’t you ever read books newer than 1950?” Being a product of 1950’s to 1970’s American education when I read the pioneering works on scientific metaphysics I feel as though there’s a huge gap in my learning. Much of my research has been reading old books to fill that gap. One such book was Across the Unknown, by Stewart Edward White. According to Amazon, Stewart Edward White was a beloved author of Western adventure stories who devoted the last 30 years of his life to writing accounts of his wife's mediumistic explorations of the inner dimensions of life. His books are rightly regarded as classics in the field of spiritual growth.
When I read a book, only a few ideas really stick with me. Here is one from White’s book:
“The struggle of each generation is the interpretation of the whispered allotment of wisdom into the current vernacular. You are at a turning point of a great tide. Who is there to offer guidance in the age-proven technique of living, and yet point ahead to the regions we are appointed to explore? We arraign your generation for its failure to establish faith in the proven laws of living.” - The Invisibles

The Attenuation of Truth

Sunday, we went to a New Thought church service in a town near our new home, mainly out of curiosity since it was historical. The congregation was very small like its building and very old, like its building. We were easy to spot as “new” folks. They were very cordial. During the message from the minister my mind wandered to a question: How is it that the American Amish hit on 18th century Pennsylvania and their peculiar way of living as the true Way (orthodoxy)? Standing still in time, resistant to all social change surrounding them, their religious tradition's ideas, language and habits have given their community members an impervious and permanent sense of inner stability, of timeless personality. Preserving their religious beliefs they hand down their way of life from generation to generation and so from a scientific view fulfill the first law of nature --- self-preservation. Their way of life seems peaceful, happy and productive, especially in contrast to the paroxysms of social upheaval surrounding them. In fact, according to Wikipedia the Amish church membership is growing because mothers are having more children! The word tradition, incidentally, means in its original meaning: “handing down.” From the point of view of the majority of American society the Amish tradition has succeeded only in making the Amish themselves an “anachronism.”
As the "scientific Christian" minister went on with her talk, I wondered if I was witnessing the same phenomenon going on here. The congregation was “primarily for old women and their mothers” as my preaching professor had tagged a Presbyterian congregation near our seminar once. I wondered what my daughter, a bright, sensitive and caring career woman would find helpful in the old “scientific Christian” organizations. Are the ideas in these teachings helpful for her and of value to hand down to her daughters and is the goal of making them impervious to time, change and social upheaval what the pioneers of New Thought called the immunity of Spirit? Is that Divine Science? It seemed that the minister was answering questions that no one is asking.

The questions coming at my daughter arise from her environment which is highly production oriented. Her inner instinct urging her too see perfection within her is Truth, her divinity (Spirit) laying its claim on her, demanding a permanent perspective from which to view her now world, to discover "she is the world she walks through." Truth is no longer a "still small voice" as it was in the times of her great-grandmothers whispering to them when they went into their closets. When she goes into her closet it is to find the fortification needed to stand as a woman in her world. I wondered, is the public language the attenuation of Truth? Attenuation, not a word she would recognize, means the gradual weakening and disappearance of the catalytic agent in a homeopathic medicine. Is Truth, the catalyst, buried in today's indifference as the philosophers of today's language are claiming? If so, is meaninglessness inevitable?

But suppose the reverse is true and it is Truth attenuating the public language? Then what if "anachronism" means one who stands squarely in the now of today, but with vision coming out of the wide-open future and the Gospel of Truth today is science fiction instead of sentimental journey? What if the relics and artifacts of Truth are born into our environment as our children's children bringing with them the question of "Who Am I NOW?" "Who will live Me NOW?" "Who will hear Me NOW?" demanding that we answer them. Will my daughter hear her daughter's daughter giving her grandmother the eternal words of Truth out of the pure heartedness of her Spirit to speak to her daughter the Science of Oneness, the Circle of All before she is "born" so that her granddaughter's friends will exclaim, "Wow! Your grandmother was way ahead of her times."

Today, the word "sin" in the popular language means little more than eating something chocolate when one is on a diet. The religious organizations which perpetuate "sin" are crumbling away. Truth's attentuating power has reduced the concept of sin to near absurdity, an old trivial mistake, a primitive attempt to state a profound spiritual fact. Soon the meanings "sickness" and "death" will also be as silly because my daughter listening within herself, hearing her heart only, will hear her granddaughter laughing within at beliefs like sickness and death.

The Gold Standard

At the gym this morning I was watching an informercial on "six-pack abs". Having been a personal trainer in a fitness center, I wondered: when did "six-pack abs" become the "gold standard of physical fitness? When I was a scrawny kid in elementary school the national gold standard was The Presidential Physical Fitness Award which I never won. But it was the local gold standard that mattered more to me since this was the prize in the eyes of my peers. This involved climbing ropes suspended from the gym ceiling, climbing up from the floor to the ceiling. I struggled all through elementary school to make this great achievement, watching other athletic kids scramble up and down while I just hung there trying to figure out how to make this rope climbing thing work. I can still hear the strains of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" in my mind. It wasn't until late in the 6th grade that I actually made it all the way to the top. But --- to my horror instead of proud satisfaction, I looked down from this unnatural and dizzying height wondering about the newly discovered "other side" of this "ropes" paradox: now, how do I get down?

Somehow I did. It didn't take me years, but only minutes. I decided then that there might be other gold standards I could aspire to, so I went into a life of Art instead of Sports. 25 years later I was a personal trainer in a fitness center training folks to climb "fourteeners".

Today, in science, the gold standard is not "results" like six-pack abs nor information in infomercials. (And besides, did it ever occur to you that those fitness models pictured in the ads had the abs BEFORE they had the program or device claiming it bestowed perfect abs on them?) The gold standard in science is the double-blind (placebo) peer-reviewed journal published experiment. In science, failure is as illuminating as is success. As many experiments are constructed in order to "disprove" an hypothesis as there are those designed to "prove" one. A genuine scientist does not go to television and its "results" for his or her best data but to the scientific community.
This all made me wonder, "What is the gold standard of Scientific Spirituality?" For me, the word "scientific" means that I cannot entirely discount the role of intellect or reason in the unfolding of my understanding. I read books. Reading is not just about awareness. My awareness alone doesn't read the book, reason is involved and acting. My trained intellect interprets the books I read as I read them, but I am aware that my reason is always overshadowed and foreshadowed by my intuition which is listening and watching and waiting to insert itself at unexpected and surprising moments. What is the genuine interpolation (insertion) of intuition and what is spurious? How is the spiritual fact discerned unless its meaning bestowing power enlightens reason which unfolds from "faith" (doubt) to "understanding." When an understanding unfolds, a doubt is put permanently behind me.

"Faith" is the rear guard of reason, that is, it is the commitment I myself make to the Truth of Being as my primary fact. It is also my goal of living to live freely the I am that I am. For my reason to become "correct" my intuition must be "clear". Science is a standard which includes both --clear AND correct. Divine Mind speaks the language, the dialect or dialectic of my own understanding; it is recognition and acknowledgement, insight and intellect functioning in unison (harmony). I cannot make sense of Reality or Truth in any other way. So "faith" is a promise I make to myself and I myself keep. Just like "six pack abs".

When I discover that I have been had by the infomercials and realize that my closet full of fgadgets, formulas, packages, programs, recipes, mantras, and rituals will never produce "results" unless I produce them, if I am not committed to myself, The Whole, then I will not see my way clearly enough to follow it. Becoming aware as God-- as Being fully aware of Itself alone I feel the built-in Reason for reason. This Insight or Light within me enables my reason to steer my own inner tendency of "projecting". When I am into a not possible project of becoming that which I can never be, giving all my energy to making it seem so, my intuition deserts me. I may gain the world but I forfeit the Soul. Suffering tells me I cannot get "there" without all of me --imagination or reason to make sense of my experience and intuition or insight - which alone satisfies reason. Considering a bird flying, which wing can it do without?

Talking the talk, walking the walk, are no longer standards of spirituality --- flying is.

"Mind must have conscious identity to be Mind. This is the Reason for man and is the Principle by which he lives, moves, breathes. Originality, wit, humor, versatility, spontaneity, joy are characteristics of Mind. They are Mind Itself and not mere qualities. The substance of Mind is Spirit, and Spirit is Love and Love is Infinity—omnipresent perfection. “Being is infinity, freedom, harmony and boundless bliss. This is the Science and the Reason we say, “Be and by being heal the sick." --Bicknell Young

"You are radically relying on Truth when you believe only what you find within yourself as understanding. The night of dualism is far spent. We are learning to know ourselves and to demonstrate the human and divine coincidence as the individual perception of Truth. This is the reason for the writing, as well as the reading, of this book. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears. All doctrine and dogma for the identity of Truth are constantly being outmoded by Truth unfolding form the withinness of consciousness. The evolution of consciousness does make the dogma wrong for the identity of Truth in the age in which it appeared, but makes it obsolete for the succeeding age. Consciousness or conscious (37) being is Mind—a ceaseless disclosing of Reality. This is the Reason that I am. In an earlier age Meister Eckhart said it this way: “Everything that is has the fact of its being through being and from being.” Being is ceaseless awakening to Reality. It is the discovery that nothing exits external to our being, either to gain or lose.
Mrs. Eddy was not the first to identify Mind as the ordering Principle of the Universe, original and individual. Plato regarded Mind as including the forms, the universal ideas which are the Reality (structure) of all things. He, however, considered Mind transcendental, and its ideas as ideals separate from sense phenomena. What made Mrs. Eddy’s vision unique was her recognition of the indivisibility of consciousness and her identification of Mind as the all-pervading substance or energy which constitutes existence. “One infinite God (Mind, Good) unifies men and nations constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars;" --Margaret Laird

Today -- healing is no longer the gold standard of scientific metaphysics and mysticism. Stopping wars is.

I pulled a book off my shelf called, A Brief History of the Paradox, by Roy Sorensen who is professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College. In the frontispiece were these two quotes: "There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray: one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary, above all the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists to the discussion of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements
thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. The first perplexes almost all the human race; the other exercises philosophers only." --Gottfried Liebniz, Theodicy

"Here and elsewhere we shall not obtain the best insight into things until we actually see them growing from the beginning." ---Aristotle, Politics

In the unfolding understanding that we are, we find ourselves confronted by a series of paradoxes. Paradoxes are riddles seducing us into attempting to solve them. The oldest recorded paradox is presented by the Greek Philosopher Anaximander and is the riddle of origin. Most popular version: "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?"
Intellectually, the problem can be solved by taking one side or the other. Chickenism or Eggism, let's start a new movement, maybe an institute. While this may seem to be a solution to the problem and ends the impasse and we proceed, it is no solution, our understanding-level recycles itself behind intellect's back and reappears "in fairer form". Now we are confronted by The old Paradox in a new form. Paradoxes can be "dissolved."
Of course, Margaret Laird's presentation is: "The human is human because it is divine and not human." We are the Paradox living our own divinity unself-consciously as another as understanding unfolds to us that we are our own divinity self-consciously living our Self.

"Understanding is the Lord that takes care of everything. Let understanding—the Truth of being—your own divinity or God-self, deal with the problem and it becomes no problem. This understanding is the Lord building your world in complete command of every situation. The all-knowing Mind is the intelligence, the Love, that disposes of the need for a problem or catalyst. The name which conditioned thinking or ignorance gives to Reality, the Good, is the Reality in finite form. The attempt through human effort to make conditions better and mankind happier, proves abortive and frustrating since the human is human because it already is divine. Treat sickness with 'the right apprehension of the truth of being' and you treat it with Love, which evaluates it as a Health experience."

"We cannot imagine what life will be like as the idea comes into clearer focus that everything seen, heard, felt is functioning Intelligence—one’s own Self-fulfillment or actualization. In all destruction, construction is the destruction, in matter, Mind is the matter; in body, Soul is the body. These paradoxes state the Absolute or Science. Since the human is human because it is divine, my divinity makes all decisions for my humanity. The CSt, therefore, is unafraid even when what he calls himself and his world is threatened with destruction. He realizes that such appearance is simply not seeing clearly and that in reality a new world of peace and plenty is forever in the making. CS lived as Science, as discernment, translates matter into Mind and error into the language of Truth. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote “Matter and Spirit are two distinct aspects of one single cosmic stuff.” The truly religious man is the man whose daily living is his religion. Everything he does, he does by being conscious identity, and therefore everything he does, he enjoys and appreciates. He does not consider that going to church, praying, or reading a holy book are any more religious in nature than going to his office, doing housework, playing tennis or enjoying the theatre." - Margaret Laird, Christian Science Re-explored.

I would revise de Chardin's statement to read: "Matter and Spirit are and are not simultaneously two distinct aspects of one single cosmic stuff." When we think "we have it" we don't and it has us.

The intellectual world was rocked when natural scientist Charles Darwin published his book, The Origin of Species in 1859. In his biography of Darwin, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, author David Quammen, shares an intimate portrait of the man behind the scientist. Darwin was the wealthy son of a British aristocrat and attended Oxford, studying theology. Bored with and unconvinced by the natural theology of his day he entered biology instead of medicine as had his brother. As he developed his views of the origin of new species arising in response to the environments on isolated islands, his conflict with theology grew. His final break with theology came when his beloved little daughter died in agony. It was at this point that Darwin, like many sensitive thinkers, put the question of theodicy to himself and coming to no conclusion turned his back on the God-idea.
The question of theodicy was most clearly formulated by the philosopher Leibniz who introduced the term in his 1710 work "Theodicic Essays on the Benevolence of God, the Free Will of man, and the Origin of Evil". The problem of evil had been tossed around since Epicurus, who is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called "the Epicurean paradox" or "the riddle of Epicurus."
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?" — Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief .
What Darwin did for the intellectual community of his day was to demote theology's man-idea from its standing in its own eyes as just slightly below God and accountable for becoming perfect through sacramental religion, to a new man-idea just slightly above the higher primates. This demotion from angel to animal brought outrage then and can do so now. We are nothing more than a fancy animal with a slightly modified brain evolved under natural selection pressures determined by the local environment. The brain of a human is not much different than other animal brains, has more similarities with them than differences and may conceivably be replaceable one day with an artificial brain instead. Darwin's discovery of the mechanism (law) of natural selection did wonders for natural science, gave a new respect for animals, even microscopic ones, in the scientific community and opened the way for science to free itself from religion and to evolve into today's neurological and DNA investigations. The new view into the mechanics of the brain and body also gave rise to such science fiction predictions as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Orwell's, Animal Farm, and today's quest for higher forms of artificial intelligence (robots) which challenge our use of the word "human." What exactly does it signify? Where is the line between animal and human? Human and machine?
What Darwin didn't do was to see himself standing facing his greatest discovery presented in the devastation of his daughter's death. For this he had no vision and he turned away from it. Although he helped to liberate science from old theology, he was himself no giant of metaphysics, or of self-understanding, no profound listener to the Voice within us all. Quammen tells us that Darwin called his wife, "mommie" and would run and hide in her breasts when he was disturbed When confronted by the problem of evil so personally his brilliance did not speak to him but was silent.
What do you hear when the question of evil is put to you? As an academic exercise it is trivial and you may hear nothing. I travelled through seminary and 20 years of professional ministry and never really thought about the Epicurian Riddle, until the question was put to me so profoundly personally in several experiences in close sequence that brought me to the point where I imagine Darwin stood that day his little daughter died and drove me into the search for truth called metaphysics.
Scientific Metaphysics was emerging into its own mainstream discussion about the time of Darwin, taking as its premise and platform the opposite view of life, that life is Spirit and not matter. Metaphysical scientist Mary Baker Eddy in her textbook, Science and Health with Key to Scriptures wrote:

"Christian Science goes to the bottom of mental action, and reveals the theodicy which indicates the rightness of all divine action, as the emanation of divine Mind, and the consequent wrongness of the opposite so-called action,--evil...." S&H 104:13

Fifty years later metaphysician Margaret Laird wrote: "In the effort to overcome evil, as if there could be a false substance, the mind is kept in constant confusion and turmoil. Our problems and their solutions rest in ourselves. Certain it is that evil will remain with us just as long as we entertain the belief that there is evil."

In his book Up from Eden, Ken Wilber writes on transpersonal psychology. He makes mention of the fact that young children passing through the "typhonic" stage of evolving consciousness dream about animals. It occurred to me yesterday that maybe middle-aged adults also dream in "stage-appropriate" terms. Why is it that we can't just will ourselves to have happy, sexy, fun dreams at night, but instead seem to have mainly frustrating dreams of vain efforting to fulfill some impossible task? Is it that we are stuck in a stage of an evolving consciousness? What would the transition/transformation into the new, more expansive, more inclusive stage of consciousness involve? Would we see dreams representing and validating the fact that we had made the transition? Do dreams of frustration and despair arise only in one discrete stage and not in another, say self-consciousness but not Cosmic Consciousness? Do we play these night dreams out in our waking experiences of "living lives of quiet desperation"?