What Are You Looking At?

Some people may be wondering why I keep telling you that I'm making progress in my journey of spiritual healing, but I'm not giving you any details about my physical improvement.

As I've told you before, a Christian Scientist works from the standpoint that man is the spiritual image and likeness of God, that all matter is an illusion, and that disease is an image of thought projected upon that illusion. So if I were to be describing changes in symptoms to you, I'd be painting a picture of symptoms in your thinking. Yes, they're improved symptoms. But if my goal is to eradicate the images of disease from my own thinking, then painting a mental picture of any symptoms for you would be counter-productive.

I had a Sunday School teacher who told me that the world believes “you are what you eat”, but to a Christian Scientist, “you are what you think”. That's not to say that you can become a millionaire by thinking that you're one. What he meant was, as I've said, your body is an image of your thinking. And you take into your thinking the things that you look at.

There's a popular quote among Christian Scientists; I don't know its origin. “Two men looked out from the selfsame bars. One saw mud, the other saw stars.” Are you looking down into the mud, or up to the stars?

In guarding my thinking I've had to revise my video viewing habits. I have about the largest DVD collection in my circle of friends. But now I can't watch movies that have dark images; ie. violence, cruelty, murder, etc. So my collection has been expanding. Suddenly I'm buying Disney, Sandra Dee, and Frankie and Annette movies.

Since immersing myself in the study of Christian Science, I don't watch movies unless I have visitors. When I'm alone I focus on study, prayer, and baseball (okay, only two out of three are healing activities). So far, when friends have come to visit I've only watched “Bagger Vance”, “Wimbledon”, “The Moon Spinners”, and “Gidget”.

If you haven't seen “Bagger Vance”, it's not a “golf movie” like most people think. It's a metaphysics movie where golf is a metaphor for life... “a game that can't be won, only played”.

“Wimbledon” is a tennis movie, but it's also a romantic comedy. It's not a well known film, but since getting the DVD last year in a “triple feature” pack it has become a favorite of mine.

“The Moon Spinners” is a Disney family film that tries to be a Hitchcock picture. This is the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater, when I was six years old. I enjoyed it as much now as I did then.

“Gidget” is a “coming of age” movie about a teenage girl in the early '60s who want's to learn to surf (a predominantly male activity). It stars Sandra Dee. If you were thinking Sally Field, that was the TV series that came later.

My friends understand my desire to keep my thought free of dark images. And they seem to be enjoying these films as much as I am.

Oh, one more thing... if you really want to laugh, check out the movie “Noises Off”.