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One of my projects this year has been to pray about body image, and it seems to be helping. Below you can see some quotes I have found useful to contemplate, mostly from the Bible and the writings on Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy (largely from her seminal work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures). I include them here, both for my own reference going forward, and for anyone who would like to join me in better understanding themselves as having a blissfully perfect body as the direct outcome of being a permanent reflection of infinite Soul.

I am happy to report that I am beginning to slenderize as I endeavor to actively identify myself more with God (i.e: Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle, which I accept as synonyms for God) than as material body. I’m learning I must identify myself correctly, repeatedly and frequently, to reverse ingrained bad habits of thinking. I am realizing that I am not a thin mortal or a fat mortal, because I am not a mortal at all, but an eternal, spiritual idea of the one God that is infinite, ever-present, all-powerful, and good. As God’s expression and manifestation, I cannot be otherwise, if I accept only Truth.

Consider with me these thoughts:

“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.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 261:2)

“Man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 63:5)

“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?” Matthew 6:25 KJV

“When you say ‘Man’s body is material,’ I say with Paul: be ‘willing rather to be absent with the body, and to be present with the Lord.’ Give up your material belief of mind in matter, and have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its own likeness.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 28-1)

“A material body only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal man possesses this body, and he makes it harmonious or discordant according to the images of thought impressed upon it. You should embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness. You should banish all thoughts of disease and sin and other beliefs included in matter.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 208:25-2)

“The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 192:23-24)

“Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 392:24)

“Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 412)

The body is the receptacle of unconscious thought.” Amy Torres

“Symptoms are never in the body but only in false thought.” Helen Wood Bauman (CS Sentinel 4/11/64)

“The body improves under the same regimen which spiritualizes thought; and if health is not made manifest under this regimen, this proves that fear is governing the body… The moral and spiritual facts of health, whispered into thought, produce very direct and marked effects on the body.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 370:5-20)

“Body cannot be saved except through Mind.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 98: 7-8)

“Citizens of the world, accept the ‘glorious liberty of the children of God,’ and be free! This is your divine right! The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 227:23)

“Mind governs the body, not partially but wholly.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 111:28-29)

“To divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear, – this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true. Thus we may establish in truth the temple, or body,’whose builder and maker is God.'” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 428:8)

“God is bodiless –incorporeal.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 116:20)

“I keep my body under control and make it my slave.” 1 Corinthians 9:27 Contemporary English Version

“Exercise [your] God-given authority. Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.” Mary Baker Eddy (SH 393:8)

“Glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Corinthians 6:20 KJV

“I will believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is.” A friend from Creative Arts Camp

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