Your post on watching is very helpful. Watching for any sense of personal self demands vigilance and it is easy to become mesmerized that it’s me doing the task at hand rather than the great I AM that I AM.
Recently I read an address by Clarence Steves who came into Christian Science through a healing following World War I. Severely wounded, he served in the Navy during the war and spent a number of years in a Veteran’s Hospital. A hospital nurse offered him Science & Health and he devoured it. The passage that awoke him and brought healing was page 228:3-6 “…that nothing inharmonious can center being, for Life is God.” He went on to become a practitioner and teacher. Absence of personal sense enabled him to see the Truth so clearly.
He said, “Some students are afraid of what others are thinking about them; false concepts of ourselves in the past, etc. If I have accepted identity as spiritual and “before Abraham was, I AM,” it is of no concern what the human seems to think or not think, because it is not knowing what I AM. If one has accepted the butterfly and left the cocoon, what does it care about anything that happens to the cocoon, or what others are saying about it; and what harm can they do that which knows itself to be the functioning presence of the Almighty One? Fly above the cocoon stage, keep both wings up, and fly unto the mountain. Never be concerned about the caterpillar. We have left the sepulchre and can cry out, ‘Rabboni.’”
“It is important, if someone is gossiping about the caterpillar, condemning it, judging it, that we keep absolutely disconnected from it, because it is not our concept of ourselves; and so all the malpractice, ignorant or malicious, is harmless when we refuse to identify ourselves with the caterpillar concept. Let us take the wings of the morning and dwell in the universality of our being.” (p. 68, Selected Addresses of Clarence Steves)
What a powerful illustration to use to watch my thinking. Am I aligning with the butterfly or the caterpillar?