Childlike Dominion

WHEN I was a boy I used to love riding my bicycle around the neighborhood. I felt as free as the wind, totally in control of my life. There weren't any nagging fears. There were no burdens of responsibility. Inevitably, though, I grew up and found that life wasn't a carefree bicycle ride. There was work to be done. There were challenges to overcome -- sometimes major struggles -- and a world in need.

Although childhood may have vanished, the freedom and dominion that we often associate with that time can't truly be lost. Our dominion may seem buried beneath layers of care and years of challenge. But in a very profound sense it is eternal.

When we look at the bulk of human experience, such a statement may sound naive. How can anything be eternal? While the human scene is characterized by change, what doesn't change is the truth that God, Spirit, created man spiritual. This truth is eternal, and when we begin to perceive this truth, we can also begin to feel something of our uninterrupted, uninvaded dominion.

The Bible tells us God gave man dominion. This is a fact of creation. It's the absolute reality of our being, an aspect of our genuine, spiritual selfhood as God's likeness. That's why our dominion is permanent and discoverable, however buried we may feel in the drudgery of day-to-day life.

Christ Jesus' words ``Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest''1 point clearly to the perpetual presence of the healing Christ, the divine influence that Jesus so fully embodied. Through humbly turning to God in prayer we can feel the uplifting, healing power of His Christ. We can glimpse our inherent innocence and freedom. We can actually experience more of the dominion that's rightfully ours.

While loss of dominion may seem to occur strictly as a result of this physical condition or that circumstance, in a very fundamental sense it results from a feeling of separation from the love and care of God. So it's important that we recognize our inseparability from Him and strive daily to keep our thoughts and actions in line with His divine law. Sinful thoughts, for example, foster the belief that we can be separated from divine Love. Such a belief would conceal our true nature and its inherent dominion.

Whatever our situation, we have a right to experience the spiritual freedom that God has given man. Man in God's likeness is blessed, not condemned, and it's on this basis that we can find true dominion.

I've been helped immeasurably by an understanding of God as the one Mind. And because man is the likeness of God, our true consciousness is the manifestation of divine Mind and is wholly good. And this spiritual truth of the one divine Mind and of our inseparability from it can lift our thoughts above false, burdensome fears to spiritual dominion. Our actual selfhood is spiritual and so remains untouched by accumulated evils. The childlike consciousness of dominion is inherently ours and can be felt through prayer and increasingly purified living.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, makes this powerful statement: ``Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God.''2 And she says elsewhere: ``All that is beautiful and good in your individual consciousness is permanent. That which is not so is illusive and fading.''3

Though a childlike feeling of dominion may sometimes elude us, it is not lost. We can find it through prayer to the one God.

1Matthew 11:28. 2Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 276. 3Unity of Good, p. 8.

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