On page 392 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy says “Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.”
That always seemed so daunting to me….every thought, I’m supposed to review every thought?
I did work with it effectively in the first years of my interest in Christian Science, but it was too much for me, and still feels too complicated for me to grasp, or to do in the flow of my life.
So many spiritual teachers advise the same vigilance to varying degrees. Some teachers are aware that it is an overwhelming goal for a lot of people, diminish it’s importance, and provide other ways to accomplish a similar result.
My experience of Christian Science, though, and it is classic and historically documented, is that cases that are not healed by doctors or other health practitioners, and turned as a last resort to Christian Science, are effectively and irreversibly healed.
I have been progressing in a comfortable way in healing, and informally studying Christian Science, but when my patient practitioner, Mark Swinney CSB, suggested I do a pie chart of my thoughts each day, I felt really challenged.
I have learned the importance of monitoring thoughts, feelings and intentions, because of the healing I have realized, so I really wanted to try to be more careful and aware. The catch for me is that I always seem to feel first, and then I have to make an effort to find the thought behind that feeling. Doing that in every moment of the day seems impossible.
As spiritual guidance I received the idea of approaching the assignment using color.
I decided to use blue to represent divine Will and Power, pink…Love, yellow…. Christ truth/wisdom, green…healing, violet…purification, and a gray/brown color to represent negative destructive thoughts.
I asked my higher self, and God, and my angels to alert me with a flash of gray/brown when I was sliding into negativity, and also when I was going beneath a desired percentage for the whole day.
Then, at the end of the day I can go back and ask to see the pie chart and to receive the percentages of each type of thought that I was thinking, with resulting feelings, during the day.
Different activities in a day can present more or less challenge to staying focused in God.
This exercise has helped me stop and realign myself in moments when I might not otherwise make the shift. With this alarm system in place, I can go back at my leisure, and trace the color and feeling to the specific thoughts behind them. Then, I can pray and work with adjusting that thought to the correct, health giving realization.