Sweet Adversity

"Thou art right, immortal Shakespeare, great poet of humanity: "Sweet are the uses of adversity; which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head." Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff, a broken reed, which pierces the heart. We do not half remember this in the sunshine of joy and prosperity. Sorrow is salutary. Through great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are proof of God's care. Spiritual development germinates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes, but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of Divine Goodness and Love." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 66, Lines 1-16

"We must understand that God is Infinite in Its Individuality. Because that is true, you can say, 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,' or 'I and my Father are One'... anything that will give you this sense of 'I' in the midst of you, and that will, at the same time, subordinate human selfhood, not glorify or gratify it." -- Joel Goldsmith

Because words are symbols of symbols, and have no objective reality, they are tricky. Writing about what is Eternal and Unchanging with symbols that shift and change according to who's writing and who's reading means that only a few will ever see and hear the inner meaning. Mary Baker Eddy knew that. Joel Goldsmith knew that. And this means that our egos will always hear what they want to hear in any given passage, given half a chance. This is why Joel said to seek the state of mind that dwells in the awareness of God within, yet that does not gratify or glorify the human sense of selfhood. And why Mary Baker Eddy wrote that adversity is sweet... it does not gratify the human sense, nor does it glorify it. It humbles our human selves at every turn, burning away false desires and illusions of every description, leaving only what is Real and Eternal and True.

Both Joel Goldsmith and Mary Baker Eddy eschewed organization. Yes, they both left behind active organizations, but both took whatever steps they could to limit them. Why? Not because organizations are good or bad... they are neither. They do, however, take on a life of their own; once that happens, all the energy of any entity will go into the preservation of self, not the knowing of Self.

We can use this wisdom in our own lives. We can welcome whatever asks us to step out of our human sense of self, to move beyond the perceived limitations of our personal self. We can welcome the challenges and problems as sweet adversity, with the jewel of Self-Realization as the only purpose for all of it. And we can practice self-awareness, noticing when defensiveness and defendedness signal the posturing of the illusory personal.

In the human story, we are always looking for answers to problems. From an Awakened perspective, there are no problems. God is All. So every imagined problem is our best friend, our ticket to see what lies behind the illusion. What fun! As A Course in Miracles puts it, "Your life is not as you imagine it." The very problems and challenges we avoid and run from are simply veils that hide the face of The Beloved... they are to be welcomed and known fully as Goodness ItSelf. There is not one problem or situation, no matter how seemingly painful, that will not simply melt to reveal the Truth when you no longer judge and resist. Forgiveness gives us the Peace of Mind to be able to rest in and welcome whatever is in our face, today and every day.

Sweet are the uses of adversity, indeed. Don't be fooled by old judgements about problematic situations... they are the ego vying for attention and reality that it can never have in Reality. When we argue for our limitations and problems, insisting on fighting them and thus pretending they are real, we are simply arguing for the illusory self. This is what Mary Baker Eddy calls 'evil,' missing the mark. Our problems are no problem at all. For behind the veil of every encounter there is revealed the Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient Presence of God... All Good, Always Available, and Always Our True Self.

"Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of Truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the Omnipotent and Omnipresent. Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil. Evil is self-assertive. It says, "I am a real entity, over-mastering good." This falsehood should strip evil of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It can never destroy one iota of Good." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 186, Lines 11-20