Daily Watch for the week of November 6th, – November 13th, 2022

From 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

297 — WATCH that you consider properly what might be called one’s surplus thinking. If you pull up the weeds in your garden without regard to those surrounding it, you have a steady job, since the weeds around it continually encroach upon it. If we cultivate right thinking in reference to disease or to sick patients, and go no further, the weeds of thought in relation to the rest of our human experience may encroach on that small plot of cultivated right thinking.

Mrs. Eddy once declared, “If you do not have patients come to you, you can treat the birds and plants; they need treatment.” The birds and plants might stand for our surplus thinking, since we malpractice on whatever we hold in thought as being material or mortal. The whole of creation cries out to us to stop malpracticing on it, by holding it as matter, and subject to sin, sickness, decay and death. Our effort to think right starts with the endeavor to stop malpracticing on our own bodies when we suffer as a result of it, and to help others who are sick, by this same method. Such effort, however, is only a beginning in the right direction. We can never be called right thinkers until we have corrected our surplus thinking.

Once during a thunderstorm Mrs. Eddy directed her students to handle the surplus of electricity. This term suggests mortal mind that has gotten out of control and is running amuck. Mrs. Eddy saw the need of controlling and correcting it, and admonished her students to do likewise.