When you look deep into the bottom of a cold pond you have an absolutely clear (even somewhat magnified) view of the rocks, animals, and plants that are in front of you. They’re either totally stationary or moving in a logical way.
But if you only look at the surface of the water of that same clear pond, you won’t see what’s really right front of you. Perhaps you’ll see the sky and trees or other things around you reflected on the surface. On the calmest day even a slight breeze or your own breath on the water can make the reflection you see if you’re not looking deep appear unstable or unclear even though what’s really in front of you is stable and clear.
When you don’t look deeply, you can’t see what’s really there. What you see may be beautiful, or not, but everything appears to be subject to outside forces of changing winds, currents, or waves.
Similarly, if you look with deep spiritual insight at life, you see what’s real, predictable, logical, and held by divine Principle in perfect harmony. However, if you just look at the surface of life, you see yourself and what’s around you wavering, unsure, unstable, and subject to chance and change.
It is our ability to look beyond the surface of what appears to be life, to look beyond mortality, to look at life directly as it really is, as God created it–spiritually–that gives us a true view of the reality of life. When we see the true spiritual view of reality, we see order, stability, control, predictability, continuity, and health.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (129:22-24), “We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things.” Christ Jesus also looked past the mortal or surface appearance of things, as was shown when he was able to see beyond his own crucifixion to the eternal life that he later demonstrated in resurrection (See John 2:19) “ Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
You, too, have the ability to see beyond the mortal surface of your life, to see the beauty of your life as it really is here and now. Seeing this deeper reality raises our expectations, enriches our experiences, and secures our trust in the goodness of divine Life, which blesses us and those around us. It brings healing thought and comfort.