How do you see yourself?

I work daily to see myself as the perfect spiritual man.  He’s not the guy I see in the mirror.  He’s amorphous.  He is me, but having nothing to do with my body.  He is definitely the best of me.  He has little to do with my personality, but everything to do with my individuality.  He is spirit.  If your definition of God is pure goodness, then he is the perfect reflection of God.

That’s who I am.  That’s who I truly am.  Sometimes I pretend to be someone else.  I get confused.  I become the image and likeness of body, not the image and likeness of God.  When I’m living my idea of the image and likeness of God, I find that I’m happy, productive, and successful.  My life is filled with abundance and I live a life of integrity.

When I get confused, I see myself differently.  I see myself as body, as human, as mortal, as flawed, as lacking, with all the etceteras that you can think of.

And so, when I’m in that confused state, when I finally recognize it because it has a habit of sneaking up on me and capturing my imagination before I know it, when I finally recognize it, I consider the words of this song, a song from Julia Wade’s forthcoming CD, Solos.  The words are thoughts I’ve studied all my life and come from Mary Baker Eddy’s book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

The sculptor turns
from the marble to his model
in order to perfect his conception.
We are all sculptors,
working at various forms,
moulding and chiseling thought.

What an idea!  To mold and chisel thought …

I am reminded of Michelangelo who is purported to have said that creating the perfect sculpture was simply a matter of chipping away at the stone until you rid the stone of that which did not resemble the perfect idea – or words to that effect.

If my model is my perfect spiritual man, then I just need to rid myself of any thought that does not resemble that idea.

What is the model before mortal mind?
Is it imperfection,
joy, sorrow,
sin, suffering?
Have you accepted the mortal model?
Are you reproducing it?

Do we accept our own confusions as the reality.  Unfortunately all too often.  Do we look upon the wrong models as we sculpt our lives?

Is there a better design to behold?  Does the sculptor spend a small fortune on a great piece of marble and then spend countless hours chipping away at the stone without first having the perfect image of the idea he’s trying to uncover planted firmly in his mind?  Does an architect try to build a house without a blueprint?  What is the blueprint — the design — that we hold in mind for our own lives?

If the design is flawed, then the work will model the design.  Why build with a flawed design.  See the perfect man and reproduce it.

The sculptor turns
from the marble to his model
in order to perfect his conception.
We must first turn our gaze
in the right direction,
and then walk that way.

How do you find your way home when you’re lost?  First step: Figure out which direction is home.  Mentally retrace your steps, follow the stars, climb a tree, but first make sure you’re headed in the right direction.  Otherwise you’ll just get more and more lost.  Don’t run around in a panic; rather, stop, pause, center your thought, consider all alternatives, choose the right direction, and then walk that way.

We need to get good at this.  We need to consider this perfect work of art every day and hold the image in our imagination.  We need to constantly check that we are building our lives from this perfect design.  Otherwise we’ll get lost and wander unhappily through our own mortality.

We must form perfect models in thought
and look at them continually,
or we shall never carve them out
in grand and noble lives.

Can you see yourself as grand and noble?  Think about it.

Don’t allow yourself to scoff at that idea.  If there was anything in you that did so, remove it immediately from your design.  It’s simply a thought from a failed design.  Perfect your design and stick to it.  Chip away everything that doesn’t belong.  There’s no purpose to the chips.  Throw them away.  They have nothing to do with the sculpture.

We are all sculptors,
moulding and chiseling thought.

Now how do you see others?