Downsize with a spiritual upgrade
Evan Mehlenbacher | from the Christian Science Sentinel
Whether or not Disneyland’s attraction “It’s a small world” is actually being rebuilt to accommodate today’s larger patrons—a suggestion Disney reps deny—statistics claim obesity prevails globally. Among children as well as adults.
Yet obesity stats don’t tell the entire story. Considered along with the market glut of “get thin quick” remedies, promotion of foods without sugar or trans fats—and the focus on celebrities as the model to conform to—these statistics suggest a population identifying itself predominantly with physicality and body weight.
It’s helpful to begin to see how the encumbrance is not primarily physical but mental—the effect of an inner burden.
Many people struggle, even obsess, over their weight. Admittedly, most view it simply as excess physical pounds. But there’s another kind of heaviness that’s worth considering in the effort to address this issue. What about the drag of stress at work, personal crises, or health and financial worries? Even if the heaviness is external, it’s helpful to begin to see how the encumbrance is not primarily physical but mental—the effect of an inner burden.
This fact was strikingly illustrated to me last year during the second half of a tennis match. It was in a local tournament, and my opponent and I were about equal in skill, so our games went on with long rallies. Exhausted, I didn’t know how I was going to survive to the end, nor was I sure I wanted to. When I had a minute to sit down, I prayed for relief, seeking a spiritual perspective. I thought about myself as being God’s image. Then this question grabbed my attention: “Does God’s likeness feel heavy and tired?”
The query was prompted by a statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. “Man is not matter;” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, “he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God” (Science and Health, p. 475). I reasoned that as my own image in a mirror possesses no physical weight, so I, as God’s image, didn’t possess burdensome weight, either. I thought, too, about a hologram and how it could reproduce, in 3-D, the features and outlines of a person, but carry no poundage.
I decided to quit thinking of myself as a muscle-and-flesh-bound mortal with depleted strength, and dwell instead on what I was seeing as my weightless being in Spirit, forever energized as God’s image.
Inspired, I lit off the bench with renewed hope. As I played and prayed, the heaviness and physical strain lifted. I was filled with gratitude for the chance to play my opponent, and finished the match with vigor, strength, and a spring in my step—the leadenness gone. It was such a welcome turnaround!
A burdened thought—angry, disappointed, self-oriented—manifests itself as a burdened body.
This lesson of keeping my thinking on a higher elevation stayed with me. Most of us have experienced days where we find ourselves dragging around, weighted by worries. Then there are the days when we feel especially light, filled with cheer and joy. During my tennis game I realized that the difference was not in my physique, but in my attitude and outlook, which govern the body. A burdened thought—angry, disappointed, self-oriented—manifests itself as a burdened body. An enlightened thought—expressing joy, expectancy of good, and love—feels buoyant and inspired.
Once I heard a man complain about feeling heavy and despondent because of a business crisis he faced. But through prayer he found a solution to the crisis and later exulted, “I feel 20 years younger and 50 pounds lighter!” His body hadn’t changed, but his thinking had. The discouragement and fear were gone, and so was the sensation of heaviness.
Another time, I listened to a young woman fret about being hugely overweight. I frankly was stunned by her comment for she didn’t appear to me to be overweight at all. It wasn’t actual pounds that oppressed her, but the conviction that if she was not super-model fit, then she was obese. The weight she felt and feared was not in her body, but in her belief-system.
The antidote for this heaviness is spiritual mindedness.
Experiences such as the above reveal that feeling overloaded is not a function of pounds, gravity, or physical mass, but of mentality saddled with the heavy baggage of matter-based reasoning. The antidote for this heaviness is spiritual mindedness—and understanding identity in the image and likeness of God as the Bible states in Genesis (see Gen. 1:26).
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ act of walking on the water—followed by Peter’s failed attempt to do the same—provides a lesson in weight-free thinking (14:25–33). When Jesus stood on the lake, he demonstrated weightless being. In the past, when I’d tried to figure out how Jesus did that, I’d wonder: “What happened to the weight of his body? Did he neutralize gravity? Was he increasing the surface tension of the water itself?” Then I saw that I was asking the wrong questions. My queries started from the premise that the universe is physical—that matter was real, heavy, and possessed weight.
But to Jesus, Spirit, not matter, was the substance of the universe. He taught his followers to worship God as Spirit, to see their all in Spirit, not in a matter context. To Jesus, the substance of Spirit was the weight of reality, not flesh and bones. Spirit’s weight was measured in terms of the truth and love of God expressed, not by pounds and tons registered.
Jesus could stand on water in a material form because he understood himself to be an idea, which is weightless.
In thinking about this lighter-than-air-demonstration, it’s occurred to me that Jesus couldn’t think of himself as a weighty mortal atop an unsupportive surface. Rather, he must have known himself as God’s divine likeness, held in position (wherever he was) by spiritual power and might. Jesus could stand on water in a material form because he understood himself to be an idea, which is weightless even in the realm of physics. The gravitational pull of the earth (and mortal belief) had no effect on Jesus’ Spirit-based thinking.
Peter, on the other hand, was not as successful as Jesus. When he first ventured on the water, he stayed afloat, but soon lost his faith and spiritual focus. Peter saw the waves and evaluated his situation materially. His thinking rapidly descended from a glimpse of spiritual possibility to the constraints of physical belief, which dictated the impossibility of walking on water. Overcome by fear, he felt heavy and started to sink.
If not mentally guarded against, the weight of entertaining such emotions as despair, discouragement, hatred, anger, resentment, overindulgence, jealousy, envy, laziness, or discontentment can create sensations of heaviness, and cause one to sink into hopelessness. But like Jesus, we too can strive to maintain a spiritual outlook that sees God in control, not the conditions of sensuality and mortality.
Over 20 years ago, I felt heavy from extra weight and wanted to shed it. After months of prayer, I decided that the pounds I thought were weighing me down were actually unchallenged, false beliefs about my true identity. For example, the conviction that I was programmed by DNA to be big, that eating more than I needed was unavoidable, and that I was helpless to do anything about my chubby condition. I kept praying, however, assiduously pursuing a spiritual solution.
God would not project an image that looked overweight or out of shape.
Then one night I looked in a mirror and saw the overweight body I’d grown to detest, and with an unforgettable flash of inspiration proclaimed, “That is not me! I am a healthy, fit, and under-control image and likeness of God.” Right then I saw that God would not project an image that looked overweight or out of shape. The distorted outline I saw in the mirror was not me, and I needed to quit identifying with it. The false, adipose view was weighing me down. I’d glimpsed my weightless and properly adjusted being in Spirit.
The effect was profound and life transforming. I stopped thinking of myself as a hungry, unfulfilled, genetically misshapen mortal. I found contentment in knowing God made me perfect and kept me perfect—in the divine image where there is no excess, no lack, and no unsatisfied craving. I lost track of my body shape, didn’t focus on diet, and started sailing through my days feeling closer to God. Amazingly to me at the time, the heaviness and extra pounds melted away, and I’ve maintained a normal weight since then.
Every one of us has weightless being in Spirit.
The truth is, every one of us has weightless being in Spirit, and each of us can prove that fact in our experience. Mary Baker Eddy asked: “Have you never been so preoccupied in thought when moving your body, that you did this without consciousness of its weight? If never in your waking hours, you have been in your night-dreams; and these tend to elucidate your day-dream, or the mythical nature of matter, and the possibilities of mind when let loose from its own beliefs”(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 47).
Today’s media are filled with studies and opinions about the obesity epidemic sweeping the globe. Many accounts blame food, diet, and genes for the extra heft. From a spiritual perspective, however, there is a deeper weight that needs to be lifted off. Burden felt in the body is the effect of heaviness carried in one’s thinking. But that sense of burden has no more place or power to affect us than the physical weight we think we carry around each day. As I learned from my tennis match and my own weight loss, our identity as God’s image is independent of matter and free of troubled belief. Exercising this truth lightens the load we may feel and makes for a more buoyant everyday experience.
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