Dear Susan:

It would seem that nothing really leaves our thought, unless we "unsee" it...[meaning to see it ] as an illusion without any truth.  Can you comment on this?

Yes, of course, we are all familiar with this sense that we need to "undo" or "unsee."  Sometimes it relates to present circumstances confronting us and sometimes to past experiences and how we believe they are still influencing us.   

Trying to “undo” our thinking, can turn into incessant mental house cleaning—getting rid of bad memories and mental images and keeping the good ones.   But the real problem is: Can we trust the one who is deciding on what to keep and what to junk?  Is this “one” fully informed?  On what basis is the decision being made? 

Who establishes the criteria for real and unreal, for Truth and untruth?  If our Geiger counter were completely accurate, there would be no problem.  But since the one who is “unseeing” is also the one who often gets things wrong, what if we unsee the wrong thing?  What if we succeed in “unseeing’ something we weren’t supposed to “unsee” at all?  Tricky stuff!

It can also lead to denial of what is the challenge before us.  For example: We suspect that our son is doing drugs.  Well, this is certainly a bad thing.  I think I’ll “unsee” it and know that my son can’t be doing drugs because he possesses the “truth-consciousness.”   You can see the problem—yes?  Sometimes icky things should not be UNSEEN!  They need to be seen and confronted.  When I was a kid, and the TV screen was showing some awful image, my parents would insist that we “change the channel.”  This was the general attitude of the 1950’s and 1960s.  It was not a very successful method however.  Instead of having 4 stations running icky pictures, we now have 104!

Spirituality is not about “unseeing”.   It is about seeing.   We should dedicate ourselves to looking deeply into the actuality of every situation and ask ourselves certain questions in an effort to see it for what it is—good or bad.  What we want to do is be able TO SEE what is the case—free of all the mind’s systems and the will’s overlay of desire.  When we can see, we are able to call a spade a spade and in so doing, there remains nothing left to unsee.  When we can actually see (instead of seeing what the confused mind sees) we no longer have to talk ourselves out of something we believe. 

In short, when we can see, we no longer have to UNSEE.   Seeing is the thing!

So, rather than trying to “unsee” one illusion at a time, our work should be focused on breaking free of the fundamental delusion that seems to include all the others.  When we engage in the insistence that we are a personal, mortal "I", locked in a mortal dream, with mortal beliefs--each one needing to be "undone" or “unseen”  —well, no wonder KARMA and evolution seem to make some sense to us.

Mary Baker Eddy speaks to this point, when she writes, “The believer and the belief are one and are mortal.”   [see Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures—p. 487:17]  The more we contemplate this statement, the broader become its ramifications.  The ultimate belief is that there is a believer believing.  The illusion is that there is a deluded mortal suffering from his delusion, and therefore needing to “unsee” and “undo.”

Yes, we all have our own list of beliefs or illusions we would like to get rid of.  But spending too much time on the list proves both frustrating and futile, because the list renews itself every day—practically ever minute!  Instead, we should be disengaging ourselves from that thing in us insisting--“I am (or he is/ she is /they are) a mortal person believing the belief!” 

From personal experience, I can tell you it was a rude awakening to break out of the belief that I was a real someone with (real) false beliefs and to discover instead that I was the belief.  OUCH! I had planned on spending years and years working myself out of the mess, nice n’ easy,  one belief at a time--right on into eternity as a matter of fact, since I figured that was about how long it would take me.

The point is, we do not want to confirm that there is a believer while we are trying to undo the beliefs!  Better to focus on the fundamental question:  Who is it that is believing in the first place?

If you have a question you would like Susan to address, that you think would be of interest to other site visitors, please use our Q&A form or write to BeyondSelfHelp@aol.com. Questions of a more personal or specific nature can be discussed privately with Susan through her counseling work.