Stop Living in the Past

Ever wonder why things are not going the way you think they should? Ever get tired of being spiritually minded and yet feel like you are walking around with a pebble in your shoe, reminding you of some unhealed situation? Yah, it stinks, but I’ve found, if what you are doing isn’t workin, quit doing it. Sure, I’ve had those amazingly uplifting indescribable moments of spiritual grandiose-ness, but they don’t cut the mustard. And, I can talk up a pretty inspirational picture but things in life straighten out only when my thinking straightens out. Let’s look at living in the past.

Take 19^th century spiritual leader, Mary Baker Eddy. She warned against living in the past, referring to it as a hypnotic state of mind that “entices its victim by unseen, silent arguments.” A mind in the past becomes suspicious, relies on that which they should avoid, or becomes confused. “Other minds are made dormant by it, and the victim is in a state of semi-individuality, with a mental haziness which admits of no intellectual culture or spiritual growth,” writes Eddy. (Miscellany) Living in the past misleads the religious practitioner to assume they are spiritually successful when in fact their mentality regurgitates long out-grown knowledge and produces evidence of a self-sabotaging behavior, all the while claiming to be following a religious leader.

Paul told the Corinthians, “When one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” Spirituality and its healing power increases as we follow God, Love, not Paul, Eddy, Joel Osteen, or Joyce Meyer.

Yes, we can be thankful to these religious leaders however living in the past is not gratitude, but idolization or obsession, leading to a huge let down. When I first considered revising Eddy’s book, Science and Health, the living in the past mentality reacted and troubled me until I carefully analyzed its arguments and found it had no credibility whatsoever. My book, 21^st Century Science and Health, epitomizes the seed within itself, an outgrowth of Eddy’s book explaining Christian Science. The book introduces new thoughts however future ages must hone and shape the ideas in order to make them understandable today.

The revision work dissolves the hypnotic state of living in the past and I not only share in today’s world an increase in unity and spiritual steadfastness but I also more so experience spiritual healing traceable to Christ, God with us.

“Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. (Deut. 8:1, NIV)