Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked, that the attack is
real, and that his own defence can save himself? And herein lies the folly of
defence; it gives illusions full 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 when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or
organize the present as you wish. You operate from the belief you must protect
yourself from what is happening, because it must contain what threatens you. A
sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that
there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defence.
The world is based on this insane 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.
Defence is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defence is
made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror
justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your
plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend,
and how, and against what?
Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is very weak
and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect
itself, and needing your defence. What but the body has such frailty that
constant care and watchful, deep concern is needful to protect its little life?
What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?
Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing to fear. It has no need but
those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated structures of defence, no
health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. Defend its life, or
give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say
your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it
must be guarded with your very life.
Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept of your
home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own
belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in
it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would make
defence of something that he recognized as this?
The body is in need of no defence. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will
be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it
cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot
accomplish. Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for
the many mad attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your
needs, your values and your dreams.
The "self " that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and
hardly worth the least defence, need merely be perceived as quite apart from
you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can
operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?
Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the
faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body
must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And
you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the
mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its
Source.
These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health
when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body's only
real defence. Yet is this where you look for its defence? You offer it
protection of a kind from which it gains 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 must lie if it be meaningful.
A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans which it receives through
listening to Wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what
should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for
anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. It is secure
in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any
goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.
A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan, although it cannot
know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is achieved, nor how to
recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. It must misuse the body in
its plans until it recognizes this is so. But when it has accepted this as true,
then is it healed, and lets the body go.
Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself
must make the body sick. It is not free to be a means of helping in a plan which
far exceeds its own protection, and which needs its service for a little while.
In this capacity is health assured. For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the
strength that has been given it and cannot fail.
It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses,
with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a
frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of truth. This is
not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the
denial of reality is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a
defence.
The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of
future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for unless it
makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by
learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. It
overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to
let the mind direct its future course.
The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned
before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its
choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything
it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of
any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present
confidence directs the way.
Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to
select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your
beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your
reality which is the "threat" that your defenses would attack, obscure, and
take apart and crucify.
What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all
events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose
is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer
pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in
every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to
Eternal life.
Your present trust in Him is the defence which promises a future undisturbed,
without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases as this life
becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no
defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a
meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.
Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be
its own. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according
to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. Your followers will join their
light with yours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with
joy. And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses which
availed them nothing, and could only terrify.
We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of
what was planned for us. We will be sure 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 defencelessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn
upon our minds with certainty.
For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every
thought which blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive
instead 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 defencelessness I will be strong, And I will learn what my defenses hide."
Nothing but that. If there are plans to
make, you will be told of them. They may not be the plans you thought were
needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thought confronted you.
But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet
in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.
All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today.
And in the light and joy of simple truth, you will but wonder why you ever
thought that you must be defended from release. Heaven asks nothing. It is hell
that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times
today when undefended you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.
He has remembered you. Today we will remember Him. For this is Easter time in
your salvation. And you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness.
Now is the light of hope reborn in you, for now you come without defence to
learn the part for you within the plan of God. What little plans or magical beliefs can still have
value, when you have received your function from the Voice of God Himself?
Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. For you can not
conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. Learn
today. And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate your Easter
time with you. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise
defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving plans, remind yourself
this is a special day for learning, and acknowledge it with this:
"This is my Easter time. And I would keep It holy. I will not defend myself, Because the Son of God needs no defence Against the truth of his Reality."
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