Saturday, 6 pm – 6:30 pm, Eastern Standard Time
Please join us by clicking link below for a Google Meet, at which a contemporary Christian Science Bible Lesson is read.
Have a great weekend everyone!
What’s Real?
Humanity may not have a hold on science or spirituality, but they have a hold on us. Genuine science and spirituality move with the ethical imperative to live in harmony.
The world may lack spirituality and people may not keep promises, but the people who practice self-evident truth and reformed attitudes are more likely to innovate, heal, and experience peace.
As with any reform, a transition period will be felt. Transitions are often unsettling and undesirable.
Songwriter Michael Franti sings, “You know it’s never been easy, Every day for everybody ain’t breezy…You know today would be a very good day just to have a good day.”[1]
To human sense, hope and hopelessness cycle faster near extinction. To our spiritual sense, hope and hopelessness surrender to the higher power and substance of infinite Spirit.
Christ said, “The truth will set you free.”[2]
It’s fair to admit that conventional science, religion, and traditions aren’t truth, not even sources of truth but only systems used to learn about truth and lies, the knowledge of good and evil. It’s fair to admit that these systems are imperfect and can wreak havoc on bodies, minds, and Earth.
It’s fair to say that unfair condemnation or denials of humanity and our systems add fuel to conflicting opinions that trash the body, mind, and environment.
The movement of mind and honest investigation neutralizes unfairness and escapes the box that confines mind to mayhem, science to symptomatic matter, or spirituality to organized religion.
As with any advancement, new terminology comes with it. The term, human mind defines the limited knowledge with which we must deal with on a daily basis. The term, infinite Mind defines the all-knowing Intelligence that inspires us with ideas that more intimately relate to a greater dimension of action and well-being. Infinite Mind is synonymous with divine Spirit, Live, Love. Spirit and spirituality give us spiritual senses, far superior to our physical senses which too often misinterpret evidence or can’t keep up with the new evidence.
We exercise our spiritual senses to discover the understanding that cools and purifies the atmosphere to invigorate mind, body, and our environment.
Spiritual exercise usually associates with prayer, meditation, or journaling gratitude but it’s also a mental treatment similar to medical treatments applied regularly and for specific reasons. We can give ourselves mental treatment using the medicine of infinite Mind.
Why would we mentally treat these statements: “The sun is rising,” “Let’s make love in bed,” or “I lost my keys.” Because they aren’t true. The sun is unmoving to a spinning Earth. Having sex makes babies, not love. We can’t lose that which always existed in Mind. The keys will be found or replaced or reconfigured.
Mental treatment guided by the law of infinite Spirit, reveals the possibility of divine reality, here and now, while at the same time revealing the impossibility of wearisome or fearful unrealities.
Think of a typical day. How much of that 24-hour period embodies and reacts to unreality? How often do we watch scripted performances, even with clumsy acting or cinematography? How often does blood pressure race when under a deadline? How often does attention engage hyperbole, white lies, or Botox smiles? How much time does the human mind spend intoxicated, robotically crazy busy, or dreaming away reality?
Science Journalist David McRaney suggested, “The world as you experience it, is a simulation running inside your skull, a waking dream.”[3]
Although using the metaphor of a computer simulation to explore reality is new to thinkers in the technological era, the symbol of a projected, illusive dream reality isn’t new.
Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) founded a faith 2,500 years ago, with more than 400 million followers today. Buddhists strive to “wake up,” by practicing inner peace, morality, meditation, and wisdom.
We must define unrealities as such and stop letting them control us. Spirit provides better things to do to witness to self-evident truth.
The fruit of matter or flesh is changeable beliefs and confusion; against such there are conflicting laws.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”[4]
Human logic or matter has no intrinsic law, cause or effect. As symptoms, they come and go but ultimately pass away as logic ties itself to the spiritual inspiration that escapes into the infinite. Infinite Mind, Spirit, Love, is the only cause and effect, expressing us in all its glory and sacred purpose.
[1] Franti, Michael (1966– ), singer, songwriter, activist. “Good Day for a Good Day” 2021
[2] John 8:32
[3] McRaney, David. How Mind’s Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. New York, NY, 2022.
[4] Galatians 5:22-23
Evidence of Fairness and Mental Might
Innovation, organic healing, and restoration actively practice these insights:
- Life goes on,
- Love conquers fear,
- Truth corrects blunders,
- Principle disrupts status quo,
- Soul inspires ethical and moral might,
- Mind replaces stupidity,
- Spirit sources our identities from spirituality not from materiality.
Critic of blind faith and religion, American Philosopher Sam Harris wrote in Waking Up, “The aims of spirituality are not exactly those of science, but neither are they unscientific.”[1]
In the spirit of scientific interests and sacred desires, it’s fair to admit that human life, science, and religion are imperfect and can wreak havoc on bodies, minds, and Earth. It’s fair to recognize that today’s sciences may perhaps be tomorrow’s pseudo-sciences. It’s fair to say that today’s science-fiction may be tomorrow’s science. It’s fair to say that humanity grows weary of utopian or apocalyptic promises broken by science or religion.
It’s fair to say that unfair denials of science or religion show stagnation, decline, fear.
Science and religion aren’t truth, not even sources of truth but only systems used for practice and discovery of human knowledge. While we welcome new knowledge to the end of old, we can’t buy into it or market it as true or real BC human knowledge is always limited and limiting. Human knowledge lacks principle, inspiration, and moral might.
An inspired writer quoted Christ as saying, “The truth will set you free.”[2]
[1] Harris, Sam. Waking Up. New York, NY, 2014.
[2] John 8:32
A Mindful Look at Digital AI Mindsets
Artificial Intelligence comes across as either utopian or apocalyptic.
As reported in the Boston Globe, prominent scientists and tech leaders signed a petition to call for a 6-month “pause” on further development of AI systems such as OpenAI’s, ChatGPT, GPT-4, because AI is getting out of control.
Basically, AI is becoming smarter than human beings and showing unpredictability.
While experts strive to advance a protocol for safety, what can we do?
We can look past the symptomatic material cause to discover and put into practice the spiritual cause. We can discern between genuine understanding and fractured or marketed information or knowledge claimed by human mind to be true or relevant.
How does understanding differ from knowledge or information?
Information relies on time, space, physical senses, and human minds for interpretation and realness. Because time and space shift and because physical senses and human minds are easily fooled or mistaken, information is unreliable. Information can be deleted or accumulated but more information is sometimes just more, not better.
Knowledge is tested information, but it depends on opposites for survival. Knowledge embodies matter, anti-matter; balance, imbalance; healing, deterioration; happiness, depression; light, darkness; push, pull; freedom, regulations; predictability, randomness; sinners, saints; smart, stupid; safety, danger; birth, death.
Time and again, the human mind mistakes knowledge for understanding and presents its inventions as either idealistic or annihilating. The invention of robots and AI can be viewed from many angles.
From atop the pile of material cause, the view of AI is exciting yet threatening. In other words, AI is the exact image and likeness of the very human mind that created it.
From angles of reason and inspiration, the view of AI demands ethics or moral might because a material-based invention intrinsically has no cause and effect, no spiritual cause.
To believe AI will save us is to believe it will destroy us. Same belief, same promise. No cause, no effect. The knowledge of good and evil counters itself to death.
But something, some greater power keeps life going despite human information or knowledge of good and evil. Call it Spirit.
From the position of spiritual cause, humanity struggles to discover and apply ethics, or the moral might that sustains pure intentions and motives—harmony.
How do we break the self-deceived human ego and advance sooner with spiritual cause? Reason and inspiration help.
Robots prove that spirits or souls aren’t necessary to create images that behave exactly like human beings. Treat yourself and others as the image and likeness of Spirit rather than a human spirit or soul trapped inside a material body.
AI proves that a brain-mind isn’t necessary to generate behavior that behaves exactly like human beings. Behold and treat yourself and others as the image and likeness of the Ego Mind, divine, pure, and powerfully beautiful and patient and healthily motivated by good-will.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”—Ps. 23:4
“Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding…She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.”—Proverbs 3:13, 18
Live Contemporary Christian Science Bible Sermon
Saturdays at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Live reading of a contemporary Christian Science Sermon from modern Bibles and 21st Century Science and Health, a modern version of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health
For link to Google Meet, email: 4CherylWrites(at)gmail(dot)com
God’s creatures
Genesis 1:24-26
“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”–ESV
Mind-Reading
Just as a mathematics teacher reads a student’s error on a test to correct it, Jesus read the minds of others, to correct their erroneous beliefs about God, Life, and themselves.
Christ Jesus said, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”
Successful mind-reading is done by first knowing original Mind, God. Any thought unlike the divine is an error. And even if we don’t learn to mind-read properly, technology forces us to start learning appropriately since millions of people believe they need to post online their every thought.
Read thoughts through the lens of Love, Truth.
“Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hatred. Life has no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and love are a law o f annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God, good. Science rules beliefs, errors, disease out of human mind and body.”–Cheryl Petersen, author of 21st Century Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: A modern version of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. And author of, from science & religion to God: A briefer narrative of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health.
Healing Science Today 