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Absolute AttractionMortal mind suggests many attractions. "Being in sympathy with matter, the worldly man is at the beck and call of error, and will be attracted thitherward" (SH 21:25-27). The world's definition of attraction involves opposing forces and options; and, moment by moment, we make our choices and feel the consequences of those decisions. Spiritual attraction, however, has a completely different meaning and usage. Spiritual attraction is absolute: there is no influencer, no opposing force, no suggestion, and no decision to be made. "There is but one real attraction, that of Spirit." (SH 102:9). "Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle, and support the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, "Thus far and no farther" (SH 124:20). Spiritual equipoise is not a balance of opposing forces; it is the permanent equilibrium of divine Love ? the equanimity of seventh-day rest, the Mind defining the sea of glass. Divine Love is not magnetic. "God is Truth, and the forces of Truth are moral and spiritual, not physical" (Un. 35:16-18). The moral and spiritual attraction of Truth is its rightness. When we understand the true meaning of attraction, the likeness of what God sees will become apparent to us. The belief of substance in matter will be replaced by spiritual understanding. "As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible" (SH 264:13-15). These spiritually created objects become apparent when we stand in "the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence" (SH 597:17-19). "And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (II Kings 6:15, 17). The attractive quality of Spirit removed the fear that was causing the young man's blindness, and material existence with its trials and tempest fell away. Mary Baker Eddy's book, Christ and Christmas, illustrates spiritual consciousness symbolically. In the sixth plate, titled "Christian
Science Healing," we see a woman on the far left standing
in the vestibule where the veil of matter has been rent from
top to bottom. (The heavy drapes of material sense are separated
from mortal mind.) Her steadfast prayer enables her to behold
the central figure, a dominion woman clad with the mantle of
ascendancy, drawing mankind out of the false attraction of material
woe and into spiritual equipoise. This is not a physical apparition.
She stands for divine Science made visible when the veil of matter
gives up its pretense. The bedridden man finds himself drawn
back into the orbit of his original consciousness where only
Spirit abides ? where nothing is being pulled, repulsed, or sickened
by opposing forces. The vision of Mind's creating assures us
that we "shall go no more out" because infinite Love
is our forever-present attraction (Rev. 3:12). George Denninger © |
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