Dominion and submission

Why do you think this picture was chosen for this post?

God is all.  There is no room for anything else but God.  God is Love.  There is no room for anything else but Love.  This may seem counter-intuitive when looking at mankind today.  We see conflict on the global and personal scale.  So how does submitting to and yielding to an all-powerful God help us to heal disease and conflict and to feel satisfaction and peace?

Funny you should ask.

I'm reading a book a friend recommended.  The book had clearly defined dominant and submissive characters in it which made for intriguing developments, conflict, and reasons to feel empathy.  My emotions were being tugged in all directions.  It made me ask about the pull of dominion and submission.  What is it about that that seems so compelling? 

Submission to God who is all, yields gentleness, strength, confidence.  It yields to a release of human will and increased satisfaction in doing God's will.  But when dealing with a material basis, dominion and submission are limited, harmful and empty.  I needed to see how this type of thinking can be uplifted to a point of healing.

On a material basis, dominion becomes dominating and can only be successful when another is depleted.  Submission becomes the ultimate in apathy and results in a loss of individuality.  Matter can only offer limitation and fear as a belief in separation or lack. So-called power is limited and manipulated by a belief in many minds scrambling to take whatever limited good is available.  After an appetite has been sated at this level, it only leaves with a deeper hunger.

Taking this higher to a humanitarian basis, dominion has a stage where honesty, goodness, compassion and affection come into play.  Submission is a kind of humility and receptivity to good.  Our better selves have expression in our choices to do good, to be honest, to be kind.  Issues of personal control soften with loving hearts willing to share and to be receptive to new higher ideas.

But the ultimate understanding of dominion and submission from a spiritual standpoint is what brings healing to all conflict and discord.  It is that spiritual basis where dominion and submission become one.  Because God is All, there can be no other consciousness than Love. 

When we yield to or submit to God as Love, we reflect Love thus, we reflect God's dominion. "Joy and dominion; Love reflecting Love" sings out a favorite hymn.   Here are some familiar sayings of Jesus and others from the Bible that help illustrate this point:

"I can of mine own self do nothing." (John 5: 30)

"...the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth  in me, he doeth the works." (John 14: 10)

"Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." (John 5: 19)

 "...wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" (Luke 2: 49)

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." (Matt 5: 5)

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Gen 1: 26)

Mary Baker Eddy's writings help to define dominion and submission and to articulate its highest impact:

When yielding to God, we are not giving up our individuality.  "Man is not absorbed in Deity, and   man cannot lose his individuality, for he reflects eternal Life; nor is he an isolated, solitary idea, for he represents infinite Mind, the sum of all substance." (Science and Health p. 258)

When we submit ourselves to God, good, we are not losing out on anything good, but gaining a mastery over sin, disease and even death. "This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged 
individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace." (Science and Health, p. 265)

But when thought is fixated on the material, it becomes an unsustainable repetitive hunger, whose mesmeric pull is broken by the attraction of  pure, enduring Love (God).   "Absorbed in material selfhood we discern and reflect but faintly the substance of Life or Mind. The denial of material selfhood aids the discernment of man's spiritual and eternal individuality, and destroys the erroneous knowledge gained from matter or through what are termed the material senses." (Science and Health p. 91)

God is Love, and there is no other power.  Yielding to this Truth, we lean on it.  We see ourselves as God sees us and the material pull has no power.  "Matter disappears under the microscope of Spirit.  Sin is unsustained by Truth, and sickness and death were overcome by Jesus, who proved them to be forms of
error." (Science and Health p. 264)

Submitting to God, we come home to a place that is familiar.  We are satisfied.  Our identity is clearer.  Our purpose is revealed and sealed by God.  Health is a natural consequence of this understanding.  Wholeness replaces dependence, and our relationships, careers, homes adjust and align with God's law of harmony. "Spiritual living and blessedness are the only evidences, by which we can recognize true existence and feel the unspeakable peace which comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love." (Science and Health p. 264)

I remember two instances in which I experienced this unspeakable peace.  One, while dancing in a performance when all elements of the dance came together and it seemed effortless.  Another, while skiing on powder in the mountains,  I felt at peace, and at one - with God and Her majesty.  I knew that I was an irreplaceable part of God's creation.  Submission to good and dominion became  one and I understood better what it means to be at one with God.

Submission and dominion on a material level never satisfies.  On a humanitarian level, we submit our thoughts to a higher basis, which transitions us to the understanding of Love.  We can freely submit ourselves to God.  We then reflect God's dominion over all things.

 

(For more study on this topic, look at the impact of dominion and submission in the context of the SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF MORTAL  MIND  on p. 115 of Science and Health)
 

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