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Health & Fitness

Minding the Net of our Thinking

This week’s blog is by colleague, Ken Bemis, living in St. Louis, Missouri.

By Ken Bemis

report linking the possibility of Cristiano Ronaldo’s leg injury to a Ghanian witch doctor’s curse recently caught my attention.  The “curse” apparently was the witch doctor’s attempt to keep the world’s most iconic footballer out of competition against Ghana in the 2014 FIFA World Cup.  Witch Doctors? . . . Curse? . . .  Really?  Then I came across a story describing the media’s vigorous reporting about the highest pollen count in recent years, and the corresponding prediction of increased allergy and breathing related conditions this season.

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Both reports were predicting harm, yet the absurdity of the witch doctor story seemed a striking contrast to the apparent logic of the pollen story.  I began to wonder what it is that causes us to brush off the witch doctor story, yet believe the pollen story?  What if the pollen story, in fact, was just as illogical as the curse on Ronaldo?

This got me thinking about another account I recently read concerning someone who suffered from springtime allergies believed to be hereditary. Without much thought, this lady validated the blame for her condition on heredity, and for years, experienced the expected suffering.  It wasn’t until a decade later that this individual decided to challenge the validations of heredity she previously had made about her condition.  She did so through a spiritual logic that she began to embrace based on principles she had been studying through the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, a pioneer in challenging conventional validations about health.

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Over a century ago, Eddy studied homeopathy and was intrigued by the fact that, contrary to logic, some people seemed to actually achieve better health results even though they received significantly smaller quantities of a drug. She concluded that it was not the drug that was having the predominant effect on the health outcome, but the individual’s validation of the drug.  Eddy stated:

“When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which heals; and according to this faith will the effect be.”  (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 151)

The lady suffering from spring-time allergies found that by applying a logic that health was spiritual and God-created, rather than a function of physical circumstances outside her control, she was able to overturn prior validations that had served to weaken her health.  The result?  The allergy symptoms disappeared and never returned.

Is it possible to invalidate a health condition that appears to be logical?   More importantly, is it possible we can improve our health based on what we choose to validate?

It may not seem as easy to brush off the pollen report as we do the curse of the witch doctor.  But if the example of the lady no longer suffering from allergies is any indication, what we validate in our thinking matters, and can significantly impact our health.  So whether you are Ronaldo, hoping to compete in the World Cup, or a guy just like me out mowing your lawn, don’t just accept the problems the world believes you should have.  While many things are outside our control, we all have the ability to mind the net of our thinking, and control what we validate in our experience.  And with improved health the outcome, this is definitely a worthwhile “GGGGGOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!.

Ken Bemis is Christian Science practitioner, husband, father, sports nut, and aficionado of the great outdoors–even when just mowing his lawn in the spring-time.

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