“I embraced the ever-present Life outside of matter as my life…”

The other day I was working in a Reading Room and it seemed empty.  I embraced the ever-present Life outside of matter as my life, through reflection, and acknowledged that everything I see and experience is God expressing himself, that the complete idea seemingly outside of me is generic man, the Christ. As I did a sense of well-being lifted me out of whatever lesser sense of Life I had been experiencing. The RR later had some wonderful visitors. One was an alcoholic homeless man that normally asks if he can just sit and warm up (since it’s been cold in our part of the country).  It came to ask if it were acceptable to him to put on a new “Sentinel Watch” about prayer. He agreed. Shortly after his head was in his hands. At first it appeared that he was resistant to what he was hearing and perhaps trying to block it out or sleep. When I passed nearby it became clear that was the opposite.  He was nodding and making a sound of agreement with a point the practitioner had made.  His head was in his hands as he was so tired by the life he was living and was so touched by what he heard.  As he left, he expressed a strong desire for something better in his experience. Wonderful addition: as I finished typing this he showed back up in the RR today.  He is showing more real joy than I had seen in a while, and a willingness and sense of waiting for a change, for good, for more good. I asked if he wanted to listen to another talk/CS-podcast. He agreed, but had to use the restroom first. I had the podcast set up for him. I didn't hear him come out and he started it on his own. Just two weeks ago he had stumbled in here and passed out drunk.  In less than two weeks, see what changes in a heart the Christ has wrought! Just the willingness and receptivity! Amen!

Embracing this same consciousness of one infinite idea, and it visible to me, also has been a turning point in my practice. In this case it happened I was working for a family member. They had been struggling with a long time sense of strain and stress over a life-situation, a pile of small health issues that seemed to be heaping up into one big one, and their home. I believe they also had things to do and were exhausted and unclear. I picked up the work by simply forgetting the long, long list of problems they had told me as their practitioner. I just realized that the spiritual idea couldn't be anything like that, that I didn’t have to address every problem item-by-item (it would have taken most of the day). I simply had to understand, to realize, what this individual is. It wasn’t an intellectual feat, though I intelligently considered the matter.  It was a realization of God and His idea, as ever-present, and as a law.  The individual had a good day and around that time told me they realized that they needed to get back to the Christian Science consciousness they had once held so dear, and just drop the more materialistic way of thinking.  They had a superior day.  I was so grateful.