“I have been mesmerised into thinking that I haven’t progressed.”

When I was reading the testimony on the website called “Love is the Doorway to Healing,” I thought, “That’s a very good point—someone has some really good insights there.” It was only when I got into the third paragraph that I realised that I was reading my testimony! (I had been thinking, “Ha, someone else in Association has a video production company, that’s interesting.”)

It made me laugh then made me think.

As I read through it, it reminded me of the progress I had made last year. It also brought back insights that were so helpful. I had forgotten those insights and needed reminding.

I had been putting off responding to the wonderful collection of testimonies you sent because I hadn’t made the demonstrations I wanted to make over a few things that need healing. I definitely received an impetus from reading and re-reading the testimonies, but it seemed as though business and the world had crowded in so much that I had lost my way.

Reading my earlier testimony, I realised that I have been mesmerised into thinking that I haven’t progressed much in the last year. In fact I have, and I can see from what I wrote that I have had some fairly major breakthroughs since Association. I can see that writing down breakthroughs as they happen helps to remind us of what we have achieved—it breaks the mesmerism that says we’re useless, too small and hopeless in a difficult and antagonistic world, and that we can’t heal.

I am so pleased at the title of this year’s Association, “Where are you living now?” It is something that I have been thinking about more and more recently. When I spoke to you after Association a few years ago, you said, “We are actually living in the kingdom of heaven,” and I suddenly saw that this is genuinely true. It’s not just comforting words—it is the fact right here. I felt a lightness and happiness that lasted for some time.

My work has to be to live that real life, rather than being pulled into the atmosphere of the world’s thought. Recently I have been too much on the “hamster wheel” of work, so taken in by material beliefs and theories so that my sense of reality has become clouded. Far too often, God has seemed small and far away, and healing has seemed like a dream.

I was reminded of these statements from your Association address: “We can’t waste one day in living the mortal sense of life. Every day is essential for reflecting Mind and working on real Christian Science.” and “It’s when the human mind gives way to the allness of Mind that we have healing.” and “We’ve been guilty of faith-healing—trying to use our human sense of Christian Science to heal when we need to drop this totally and accept the all-Mind as practical now.”

I realise from the collection of testimonies that my daily and hourly work has to be to “magnify the Lord” continuously, because only that big, all-encompassing, and all-powerful sense of God can enable healing to happen. It’s what makes disease and other problems seem small and then disappear. Any effort to heal without this sense of God is just spinning one’s wheels. This is what I felt after Class, when everything in my life received a huge impetus from the huge sense of God I had gained in those two weeks.

I know I have to be a lot more disciplined about the amount of time that I allow work and daily stuff to take up. I’m not going to have this good stolen from me again!

Just as your friend said, over the last few decades we have been “lied to” about healing. I think we have also been lied to about what is first and biggest in reality—God, not man.