6. What Is Your Base?

When standing on something that is sinking, like a boat on the sea, or a house on the drifting soil, what will you do? The most natural response will be to get out of the sinking structure and to move to a more firm and stable base that will give you better support. You will reach for solid ground. This new solid ground under your feet will offer a stronger support for you to stand and walk on.

When you feel like you are sinking or even drowning in problems, conflicts, poverty, loss, pain, an overload of work, emotions of fear, sadness or anger, the same tactics need to be adapted. Every sense of sinking or drowning means your standing is unstable. You need to shift your base to a more stable ground to place your feet upon, namely, under-standing. Indeed, understanding provides stable ground to imbalance.

For a child to understand there are no monsters in the bedroom hiding in the shadows, will help the child to exchange fear for knowing and trusting there is no need for fear. But as long as the child does not understand there cannot be any monsters in his bedroom, the fear will stay. Without the child’s own understanding, even the caring words of a parent will not be sufficient, because to the child, the danger will still be lurking when the parent is gone. Understanding is what ensures a stable standing.

Sure, a child’s imagination and fear for monsters is to us evidently an unnecessary fear. What about problems that we are confronted with that are presented as ‘more real?’ The solution is the same. To find ourselves in imbalance, suffering and hardship, is due to standing on unstable ground. We need to reach for under-standing ground. No imbalance can occur that we cannot find stable ground for.

Now, if you do not change base when sinking, all is not over. At some point of the sinking, you will hit the bottom. The bottom of the pit is also a ground from which to move up. That is why people who have lost everything, who have nothing left in their life to go on for, have the opportunity to find a rejuvenating foundation to stand on. This point where there is nothing left to lose, support can be found. Just like a burnt forest that has lost its vegetation turns into fertile soil. The worst situation we find ourselves in, the nearer we are to discovering the answer that is waiting for us. When all is lost and burnt, we are more eager and receptive to the more stable under-standing.

To change ground materially — to change from one material base to another — has its limitations. Even the strongest rocks are inclined to erosion; a boat can get damaged; the soil under a house can start moving. This is why we need to look to what is most stable of all, if we do not want to keep exchanging one sinking floor for another. The most stable ground to stand on, is Holy Ground. It provides us with spiritual under-standing that turns all instability into stability.

Spirit is not less stable or tangible because it is not material, and cannot be grabbed or perceived with the senses. In fact, it is more stable, because it is immaterial. Because the nature of Spirit is immaterial, it cannot be limited by place or time; it is always available, and it is unchanging. Spiritual strength, Love, and stability cannot be deteriorated by any conditions of the weather. No mortal, limited power can touch an infinite spiritual power. That is why Spirit is the most stable ground that can stand under.

For every need, at some point, we will need to reach for spiritual foundations. We can change one material means for another. But no material help will ever be complete or lasting. And every material help can also be of harm in the same extent as it would fill a need.

We can change the locks on our doors for metal bars, shooting equipment, or an ingenious technical security system. It might give a higher security for a while, but it will not last. Any invented system, can be unlocked by invention. And as it might secure the inhabitants, it can also become a tool to capture them, or trap them with fire. True protection and security can only be found in spiritualized thought.

The stable support from below as described, can also be symbolized as uplifting from above. A hot air balloon, a cable pulling from a helicopter, can also lift us from sinking or drowning. Reaching for the under-standing stability of Spirit, has an uplifting and revealing experience, not in the vertical sense of the three or more material directions, but in a sense of a superior and stable force which operates despite all material and mental directions that seem to allow destabilizing forces.

Jesus walked on the water. He did not invent a floating device; he did not support on something reaching to the ground. His support was one of a purely spiritual nature. He radically relied on the support of God, through under-standing and knowing His Father in heaven. Material science declares it impossible for this event to take place. Whether or not this actually happened, is not the issue of this story. Yet, the spiritual under-standing explains how spiritual activity does not stand on any material base or rule.

Peter, encouraged by his Master, took a step on the water too. But the wind was strong, and he feared. Peter’s doubtful standing on God, resulted in a less constant walk than his teacher’s. But his teacher being present “stretched forth his hand, and caught him” (Matt 14:31), showing him the true under-standing — a stable standing, even on a surface of water, hit by wind or storm. For “the storm may roar without me, no change my heart shall fear” (hymn 148, by Mary Baker Eddy).

Then what is your base? Are you depending on material laws and rules? Or are you standing on spiritual Truth? Does your happiness depend on material events and situations that need fulfilling according to custom and expectation? Do you serve fear, stress, hunger, lack, pain, captivity? Or does your happiness and peace rest on the everlasting divine Principle that governs all — that quietens the storm and lightens the dark?

Search your heart, actions and motives, and find their source. When they stem from an eternal unsinkable base, then those actions and motives will be part of that base, and complete security and stability will be found. If your actions and motives do not come from the heavenly base, then your heart will keep searching and changing base, until at last the divine foundation is revealed.

Whether it be “through Science or suffering” (Mis 362:27), spiritual stability will be found. The scientific realization that we can only start from the spiritual base, is ‘through Science.’ When sinking experiences leave us feeling empty and abandoned, we are encouraged stronger to find that new base, which is ‘through suffering.’ Regardless we do it now or later, the divine foundation is inevitable, because everything outside God is empty.

The waters in the rivers always flow back to the sea. Even when interrupted and deviated, it always finds its way to where it comes from. Likewise, we eventually will “gravitate Godward” (S&H 264:5), to find where we come from.

Tender stable Love,
the Hanna


Abbreviations:
S&H: ‘Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures’ by Mary Baker Eddy.
Mis: ‘Miscellaneous Writings’ by Mary Baker Eddy.