What are you watching? And does it matter?

True. Another video. And, alas, it may not be the last.

The video below hopes to alert drivers to be aware of bicyclers so that they will drive carefully and share the road. The ad plays upon the tendency of the human mind to be easily distracted to the point of not seeing people or activities right in front of us.

How true it is that we walk (literally and metaphorically) in the direction we are looking.

As an example, my husband with a grin tells the story of his sister's first time driving a motor scooter. When she turned her head to the right to look over her shoulder, the motor scooter veered sharply to the right, nearly taking her off the road. A moment's distraction unexpectedly and drastically changed her direction.

Life seems sometimes like a three-ring circus. As we watch the clowns in one ring, we miss the acrobats in the second ring, and the horses in the third. It seems like we are always going to be missing something. Yet we can take control of our worldview.

It's too easy to let worry, injustice, self-pity, or self-importance preoccupy our thoughts. But this inward-turning is a miniscule part of what's going on in the world at any given moment.

There is wondrous goodness and beauty, kindness and caring filling each day. While some distractions, like the one in the video, are harmless, others can totally grab our attention with startling consequences.

Whatever we focus on becomes a major part of our experience.

So it makes sense to pay attention to the do-gooders -- and that term is used in the best possible sense -- of this world. People who sarcifice and ask nothing in return; people such as deeply devoted religious figures both past and present, as well as unsung heroes: helpers, care givers, rescuers, etc.

Making the effort to discover active goodness and to appreciate the unselfishness of others lifts our thought above the mesmeric replay of tragedy, and we help the world move forward.

The moon, railroad tracks, and you

The senses are useful. They help us enjoy life – tasty things such as sweet strawberries, or blueberry pie, or a favorite soup. Through the senses we enjoy music and art. They also alert us to danger.


Yet they don’t always tell the truth. For instance in the railroad tracks photo two illusions leap out at us. An amazingly large moon hovers over parallel tracks that appear to meet in the distance beyond the photo.

In the other moonrise photo, below – how immense the moon appears.

Experience tells us that the moon doesn’t change size, that the tracks remain forever parallel. In fact the photos may have been fiddled with to give these special effects. We process what-appears-to-be-true and reject it for our contrary knowledge of what is really true so quickly, we don’t even think about it.


It’s helpful to participate in all of life with a willingness to step back and reassess what’s valid. If we accepted the illusion of converging tracks as reality, we’d never get on the train. If we believe that health for instance, is solely dependent on matter, we become restricted to what matter allows and permits.

If there’s a higher source of health, say God, or Truth, or Spirit, our whole life perspective begins to enlarge. The fetters of matter-based being start to fall away. Spiritual laws of Life find a place in our thinking, and somewhere an intuition kicks in that says there’s way more to life that the human senses are able to tell us.

What if the things we see are actually made of things we don’t see? So that where any material object appears to be, right there is really a solid spiritual fact expressing itself. And the spiritual fact is what’s true, what can be depended on.

The way this plays out for me is that anything negative or discouraging, can usually be traced to the limitations of believing matter is a reality, even a law-maker. Whatever is good and hopeful can be traced to that higher power called Mind or Truth. And that’s proving to be a good source for finding out what’s really true.

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It is the province of spiritual sense to govern man.

Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God.

Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God,
and to the spiritual sense of being.
Mary Baker Eddy

You must not judge

according to the appearance of things,
But by the reality!
Phillips Modern English

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Choosing our own thoughts

“The Silver Chair,” one of the classic Narnia books, sends the children on a quest to find a kidnapped prince. After many adventures they finally discover him imprisoned in an underground world. They are about to escape when the wicked queen returns. She uses her evil magic to lull them into a stupor where they dreamily repeat “There is no Narnia, there is no sun, there is no blue sky.”

Even in this stupor Puddleglum, the gloomiest of the rescuers, recognizes this as thought manipulation and refuses to submit. He rouses the children and the prince to claim their mental freedom. When the desperate queen assumes the form of a giant cobra, the prince destroys the snake, and they make good their escape.

We have a right to choose our own thoughts. Like these fictional heroes, we too are faced with manipulative suggestions. Every day. Such as:

• Aggressive drug company ads creating markets for their newest products.
• Media reporting the worst and most outrageous headlines
• Entertainment. Sigh. Well there is quality stuff out there, and if you’re willing to do a little research, you can find it.

These manipulations distort our views of reality. And like the wicked queen in the story, would almost convince us that there is nothing good, no sun, no blue sky.

The most insistent manipulation may be simply what the material senses report – that matter gives, governs, controls, and destroys life.

But what if matter itself is a distortion of reality, a corruption of God’s true creation? What if God’s laws are friendly, dependable, supportive, and good? And what if these laws are supreme – in spite of so much evidence to the contrary? What if we can tap into these laws by getting to know our Maker better?

A friend called and mentioned how she leaned on God’s laws. She had been ironing fusible interface onto a piece of fabric, but it turned out to be double-sided and unexpectedly stuck to her iron. In the confusion she tipped the steam iron and poured boiling water onto her hand.

She chose to turn immediately from the evidence of a burned hand to God’s law of harmony allowing no room for an accident. With that law sustaining her, she continued with her projects for the evening.

Every time her mental media wanted a report on the hand, she refused to go there, and turned back to God’s restorative law being the only one governing. By the time we were talking, 24 hours later, her hand was clean and clear. (She thought it was cool to share this in a post.)

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“As vapor melts before the sun,
so evil would vanish before the reality of good.
One must hide the other.
How important, then,
to choose good as the reality!”

Mary Baker Eddy
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