In her book "Speak For Yourself," Jessica Driver defines genius as "only you, freed from self-consciousness, clear-sighted and unafraid." This genius presence is what scientific metaphysics terms impersonal thinking. Impersonal thinking describes that instance when idea consciousness is so fully present that any thought of a "you" or "other" is absent. It describes the Mind-action experience of oneness when no concept obscures vision, i.e. no view of a "me" or a "you" clouds the presencing of NOW. Living from the ground of being of impersonal thinking generates on-going miracles in individual daily experience, shaping what we do as the day opens out.
Inversely, thinking as a person includes all human attempts to be positive or negative or to fix, change, evaluate, manage, manipulate or analyze human behavior and/or events. Personal thinking includes all the activity in the domain of the human condition. Personal thinking is the notion that judgment means something; that what we do as human beings is significant, has meaning and can make a difference in Life's on-going self-expression. Personal justifications for action are nothing more than personal justifications for action. They don't mean anything. They are ways you and I cling to favorite experiences, fixed ideas, traditions, human beliefs and the like. We provide them with perpetuity.
The dictionary gave this simple example of an impersonal sentence, "It is raining." It's a clear statement of fact. Anything added to that sentence to modify it in any way, is a personal additive which in some degree, modifies the fact. I was very surprised to read all the "personal" definitions given for impersonal thinking like unfriendly, inhospitable, cool, remote, distant. All these would seem to imply that personal thinking is loving, kind, helpful and the like. Then I realized that these definitions described someone personal trying to be impersonal. Love, the awareness that whatever is perfectly is, best defines impersonal thinking since it occurs only when no thought of yourself or another as a two-legged animal is present.
"It is raining" is simply a statement of fact to which human beings add personal meaning wholly dependent on their own perception. The healing of any victim role you may be experiencing is only possible when you are free enough to identify the "personal" belief you are entertaining and can then allow whatever is to be itself just the way it is and just the way it is not, regardless of what human preferences you may be entertaining. I'm reminded of the graphics on my computer showing the transfer of a document from one place to another. The pages float from their original file and are deposited in another folder. If the human being, the original file having "thoughts about," can allow those "thoughts about" to simply float through his attention zone and land in the arena called the "human condition," he can free himself from the constant temptation to add meaning and thereby perpetuate beliefs. The alternative possibility is to focus on the divine facts whereby a new world evolves right where the troublesome view seemed to exist. Devotion of thought to the facts will generate peace and joy and power right where you are, regardless of the view that would suggest otherwise. This is impersonal (Mind itself) thinking in action generating unprecedented human experiences.
The recent fires in California were extensive and destroyed many homes, private property and much forest habitat. The next thing we heard was that it had rained which helped the firemen get the conflagration under control. On the heels of that statement came the concern that if it rained too much, mud slides would pose as great a threat as the fires. As the conscious infinitude of being, we instinctively turn to our highest perception of the divine facts of Being to resolve any issue disturbing us.
We might ask, "What good is knowing the Truth?" Mrs. Laird taught that we don't have to know the Truth to have the Truth. Truth is all there is and is operating as all thinking this very moment. Quoting from her 1972 Seminar in Los Angeles, Mrs. Laird says, "In living the I as conscious identity, we accept all the circumstances of daily life without question since we make them for our good. They are neither right nor wrong, pleasant nor unpleasant, except in the vision that makes them that way." This is not to say that we can simply verbalize positive statements and expect life to turn in a 'better' direction. Positive thinking is not Science. Again, quoting Mrs. Laird, "All circumstances exist as the demand of Love for identity. Life is infinity. Infinity is like a bridge; build no house upon it. Still less, while passing over, need one complain that he does not like the view. Science does not regard problems as errors to be eliminated by right thinking. You can't eliminate anything by right thinking." Errors are eliminated in the view since they never existed in fact.
When a difficulty confronts us, the scientific metaphysician, living responsibly that "a knowledge of aught beside himself is impossible," recognizes the demand his divinity is making on his humanity to live himself consciously aware. This includes the recognition that no cause exists outside of the Being constituting who he is every instant. The challenge then becomes one of permissiveness. What will allow the happening to occur as of value in divine identity, without becoming attached to the human propensity to reject or deny the appearance or view in one's human experience? Recognition that every human situation is a view, shaped by each individual according to what he believes and/or understands himself to be, is the place to begin.
If I believe I exist external to Mind/Consciousness, with a separate entity and identity, I will live the role of victim in my human experience. If perception is sufficiently attenuated to acknowledge the presence of perfection and wholeness as the reality present regardless of the picture being presented in daily living, the ways and means will arise to live myself fulfilled and complete each moment of Now, in the face of whatever the senses behold. The scientist recognizes that "It is wiser to regard [human circumstances] as identity for our self-fulfilling divinity, than to complain and blame them 'for our weakness of character.'" [Laird] Our troubles are never due to the actions of another. "We are the world we walk through," not a part of it. Man's capacity to live as conscious identity accesses reality at its deepest level where subject and object are one. This is what 'impersonal thinking' means.
Scientific Metaphysics teaches that nothing external to Mind/Consciousness is present or has power. My ability to live my Self instead of the personal referent (the view of myself) constitutes my ability to have peace and joy and power as my human experience. My inability to give up my attachment to appearances - my view of the form showing up, constitutes the degree to which suffering will be my human experience of living.
"Stronger than an army is an idea whose time has come." I don't know the source of that expression but it is true. Ideas abounding, unimpeded by opinions, judgments, considerations, fears, and dual perception, include everything necessary for their full expression. Listening to one's Self is the key. Mrs. Eddy described man as "spiritual idea" and defined idea as "an image in Mind, the immediate object of understanding." (S&H 115) This is another way of saying that 'spiritual idea' [Being], present action [Identity], constitutes the immediate object seen, heard and felt [our language world], since what we believe is what we see, hear and feel. Perception is reception.
"Impersonality of thought is Principle in practice." (Laird) A scientific metaphysician recognizes that the Principle that evolved the problem is the Principle that is the solution. One conscious infinitude of Being is all that's ever happening regardless of the additives human beings generously bestow. All is well, always.
