LESSON 135

”If I defend myself I am attacked.”

Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defens could save himself? And here in lies the folly fo defense; it gives illusionsfull reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do whenyou attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish. You operate from the belief you must protect from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat is anacknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. The world is based on thisin sane belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat.For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart. Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. It is not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, whatyou defend, and now, and against what? Let us consider first what you defend.It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must besomething made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing your defense.What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concernare needful to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must failto serve the Son of God as worthy host? Yet it is not the body that can fear,nor be a thing of fear. It has no needs but those which you assign to it. Itneeds no complicated health structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine,no care and no concern at all. Defend its life, or give its gifts to make itbeautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to thethief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded withyour very life. Is not this picturefearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowedthe body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is yourmind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it, and set itsvalue far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would make defense ofsomething that he recognized as this? The body is in need of no defense. Thiscannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind doesnot abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond itsscope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts,ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks youmake upon it. For it seems to fail upon hopes, your needs, your values and yourdreams. The ”self” that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless andhardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart fromyou, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mindcan operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when itsusefulness is done? Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For youhave seen iun it the faults, and weaknesses, the limits and the lacks fromwhich you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separatefrom bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain thatcomes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart fromother minds and separate from its Source. These are the thoughts in need ofhealing, and the body will respond with health when they have been correctedand replaced with truth. This is the body´s only real defense. Yet is thiswhere you look for its defense? You offer it protection of a kind from which itgains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not heal,but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see where hope mustlie if it be meaningful. A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the planthat it receives through listening to Wisdom that is not its own. It waitsuntil it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. Itdoes not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill theplans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impedeits progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the greater planestablished for the good of everyone. A healed mind si relieved of the beliefthat it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome which is best, the meansby which it is achieved, nor how recognize the problem that the plan is made tosolve. It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. Butwhen it has accepted this as true, then it is healed, and lets the body go.Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itselfmust make the body sick. It is not free to be the means of helping in a planwhich far exeeds its own protection, and which needs its service for a littlewhile. In this capasity is health assured. For everything the mind employs forthis will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it andcannot fail. It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans arebut defenses, with the puprose all of them were made to realize. They are themeans by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection, at thecost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in some forms which theseself-deceptions take, where the denial of reality is very obvious. Yet planningis not often recognized as a defense. The mind engaged in planning for itselfis occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think thatit will be provided for, unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes afuture emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from pastevents and previous beliefs. It overlooks the present, for its rest on the ideathe past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course. The mindthat plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned beforebecomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choiceof what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything itneeds to gurarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of anyold ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for presentconfidence directs the way. Defenses are the plans you undertake to makeagainst the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard whatyou consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remainsis meangless indeed. For it is your reality that is the ”threat” which yourdefenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify. What would you notaccept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, presentand to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhapsyou have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But yourdefenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you evertook. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life. Yourpresent trust in Him is the defense that promises a future undisturbed, withouta trace of sorrow, and with joy that constantly increases, as this life becomesa holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses butyour present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaninfulencounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal. Withoutdefenses, you become a light which Heaven greatfully acknowledges to be itsown. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according tothe ancient plan, begun when time was born. Your followers will join theirlight with yours, and it will beincreased until the world is lighted up withjoy. And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses, whichavailed them nothing and could only terrify. We will anticipate that time todaywith present confidence, for this part of what was planned for us. We will besure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today.We make no plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessnessis all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from sensless planning, and from everythought that blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will recieveinstead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. And we are given truly,as we say:

”If I defend myself I am attacked
But in defenselessness I will be strong,
And I will learn what my defenses hide.”

Nothing but that. If there areplans to make, you will be told of them. They may not be the plans you thoughtwere needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thoughtconfronted you. But they are answers to another kind of question, which remainsunanswered yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last. Allyour defenses have been aimed at not recieving what you will recieve today. Andin the light of joy of simple trust, you will but wonder why you ever thoughtthat you must be defended from release. Heaven asks nothing. It is hell thatmakes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these timestoday when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.He has remembered you. Today we will remember Him. For this is Eastertime inyour salvation. And you rise again from what was seeming death and hoplessness.Now is the light of hope reborn in you, for now you come without defense, tolearn the part for you within the plan of God. What little plans or magicalbeliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from theVoice for God Himself? Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefityou most. For you can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to youwithout your planning. Learn today. And all the world will take this giantstride, and celebrate your Eastertime with you. Throughout the day, as foolishlittle things appear to raise defensivness in you and tempt you to engage inweaving plans, remind yourself this is a special day for learning, andacknowledge it with this:

”This is my Eastertime. And I would keep
It holy. I will not defend myself,
Because the Son of God needs no defense
Against the truth of this reality.”

Love