Ghost from Elizabeth Thomsen
I was about 11 years old. I froze in my tracks and listened.
My folks were having a new house built just around the corner from where we lived and that night I was the one who went over to make sure it was all locked up for the night. While inside checking windows and doors I heard footsteps. The interior walls weren’t done yet and those footsteps echoed loudly throughout the darkened house.
As I listened – more footsteps! I got out of there and ran home as fast as I could.
When I got home my folks said I was as “white as a ghost”. I explained what had happened. My Dad went with me back to the new house. Long story short – it was a cat.
I survived, my fear subsided, and normal color returned to my face.
I’ve been thinking more and more about the mental component of things. And so I’ve thought about this experience from time to time in this vein. It seems pretty clear to me that the fear in my thought slowed my blood flow. And when the fear subsided and thought returned to normal, the blood flow returned to normal and my appearance returned to normal. Clearly there was a mental component to this physiological symptom. Isn’t blushing from embarrassment the same phenomenon, in the other direction?
Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (KJV John 8:32). He’s talking about knowing. He’s talking about thought. The “truth”, I think, refers to the divine fact, which is all good and always good. Here’s something interesting: the Greek words that were translated into the English word “truth” in this passage, mean “the true” and “to not be concealed”, “to not be hid”. So it’s like he said, know the divine fact, have thought filled with divine goodness, and it will not be hid or missing, but that goodness will appear outwardly.
In my case back then, “know safety and God’s protection and the truth will make my thought free from fear and my blood flow free from languor.”
In the textbook of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “When the blood rushes madly through the veins or languidly creeps along its frozen channels, we call these conditions disease. This is a misconception. Mortal mind is producing the propulsion or the languor, and we prove this to be so when by mental means the circulation is changed, and returns to that standard which mortal mind has decided upon as essential for health.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, page 373).
Speaking of God as Truth, Love and Principle she further says (ibid, page 261), “Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.”
Worth thinking about?!
