Have you ever wondered why you are not getting the healing that is needed?

Well—maybe you’ve fallen into the “But I already know that!” trap!

What do I mean?

Let me explain.

When I was a professional composer and pianist, I had two categories of students—those who followed instructions and those who didn’t.  These categories had nothing to do with whether they were already professional musicians, were striving to attain that level, or were amateurs simply studying piano for their own enjoyment.

I taught all of them a particular methodology for making their practice sessions and their subsequent performances at lessons or in public fruitful.  These practice techniques were based on principles of mental clarity.  Many students obediently followed these and saw the strong results of doing so.  But others pursued the more common practice approach of what can only be described as hours of mindless repetition in which they hoped to achieve the same results by sheer dint of that repetitive effort.  The term for the latter is “muscle-memory training,” and it’s an approach that I refuse to give any credence to since muscles simply have no memory.

When it came time for this latter group of students to perform—a situation that can very easily be stressful—their belief in muscle-memory quickly fled them and they would make mistakes on the very passages that they had spent so much time practicing.  Aghast at their errors, they would afterward assure me that they really did know the material and couldn’t understand why they had failed. They would then immediately attempt to convince me of their assertion by diving right into repetitively playing the passage in question and proceed to hit the same proverbial “stone wall” over and over again.

What did I do?

I stopped them in their tracks and made them mentally examine every detail of the music—pitches, rhythms, fingerings, etc.  I then required them to voice aloud these elements in a steady tempo.  Invariably, the error in their thinking—the specific stumbling block—would be exposed.  Once corrected mentally—once they really understood what the music was requiring of them, and without any intervening practice—they would immediately play the passage flawlessly.

So what happened here?

Mental clarity is what took place and once achieved, their fingers could do nothing else but reproduce the correct ideas that the music demanded.

Are you beginning to see a connection to Christian Science healing?

I’ve had dear, dedicated Christian Scientists tell me immediately after my sharing with them an important metaphysical healing truth from the Bible or from Mary Baker Eddy’s writings, that they already knew it.  And some of them actually completed the quotation before I’d finished saying it!  Yet these same folks were not achieving a healing.  Why would this have happened?

It seems to me that just like those errant piano students, they’d fallen into a trap of error—a gaping hole which had deluded them into thinking that understanding the truth is static.  Such a delusion would try to convince them that because they were once healed by grasping a particular spiritual idea, they no longer needed to delve even more deeply into it to gain an understanding of greater profundity.  An understanding that would in fact free them of whatever lie was attempting to engulf their experience.

Isn’t this type of thinking—of clinging to the surface and unthinkingly repeating an idea—similar to reciting a mantra over and over again and expecting that doing so will bring healing and spiritual progress?  How can this be anything short of self-hypnosis—of mesmerism—which is inherently detrimental, and indeed, opposed to spiritual progress, health, and well-being?

Just like those piano students who gained a deeper understanding of the music and demonstrated it by their successful performances, doesn’t our ongoing demonstration of healing prove the evolving depth of our understanding of the Allness of God and of the present perfection of His image and likeness, man?

Mrs. Eddy wrote (Science and Health, p. 313):

Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.

As followers of Jesus and as Christian Scientists, can we really expect that anything less is required of us?

So, whether it’s a tune or the truth, less repetition and more understanding always brings blessings!  Remember, the first page of Science and Health states:

The time for thinkers has come.