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The practical fact is, nothing is better for the body than knowing what it really is — and what it’s not. In short, what’s best for the body is to divest ourselves of misunderstandings about it. Is the body simply an entity carrying our name through our decades on earth? We may think it’s us, our true identity. But that, from a spiritual point of view, is a mistake. The body is not the self. Our real self is the image, the reflection, of God; this selfhood has no physical attributes since God has none. As God’s man, our essential identity and individuality embodies only nonphysical characteristics. Not everyone would agree, of course. Those standing in a movie line with us might, if asked, describe the body as a parcel of organs, a blend of mind and matter, a package or a vehicle for the soul. But such opinions and their like are not on the right track. The universality of these views doesn’t validate them. A false concept of the body has negative byproducts. Living a life dominated by health concerns and anxieties, for one case, is no way to live. Dosing the body, reshaping it, overexercising it, vitaminizing it, are not fundamentally what’s best for it. They’re treatments of what is actually a false mental picture, manipulations of a deluded sense of identity. They’re bad for our higher concept of the body because they distract us from it, and delay our correct judgment of it. Whether human knowledge would call a physique healthy or unwell, young or old, damaged or sound, over- or undersized, it’s better not to focus our attention on corporeality. For more normal conditions, look away from it to something more perfect and enduring. Here’s a thought-nudging paradox: "If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain; for Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit, we find its opposite, matter." So what to do? "Now reverse this action. Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality" (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 260–261). Through a scientific and metaphysical understanding of what we really are — the embodiment of spiritual qualities derived from our Maker, God — that reversing action works for our better health and vitality. Fashion That we clothe our thought in a spiritual style can be our uppermost objective. The Bible speaks of Deity this way: "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness" (Isa. 61:10). In today’s terms this could suggest that we are empowered to dress up our mentality, so to speak, with integrity, rightness, refinement, the color of Soul-based consciousness, the elegance of scientific truth. Exercise View the body, and deal with it, as though it were a listener rather than a talker. It’s not what the body would try to say — that it’s tired or feverish, for example — but what we accept of its attempts to talk that is significant. The initiative to do the talking lies with us. That’s the key. "Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action," Science and Health tells us (p. 393). The more we ponder this advice — and apply it — the more we prove its soundness. The body will tend to express the views we hold of it, as surely as what is turning up on the screen of our word processor is what we’re telling it. Diet The wide (and probably age-old) fascination with physicality is exploited and magnified by contemporary media. This is not to advocate ignoring well-being and appearance as of no consequence. But "to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:8) is the healthiest, most attractive policy and the best basis for well-being. In sum, what’s good for the body is good thinking about it, and what’s bad is bad thinking about it. The good thinking sees further than sense images — they’re of no help in arriving at a better sense of body. The good thinking based on spiritual factors starts from, and finds, man’s true identity as unfleshly and unmaterial, flawless, healthy, and permanent. |
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