Who would defend himself unless he thought
he was attacked, that the attack is real,
and that his own defense can save himself?
And herein lies the folly of defense;
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 defense.
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.|
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.
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 defense.
What but the body has such frailty
that constant care and watchful, deep concern
are 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 needs
but those which you assign to it. It needs
no complicated structures of defense,
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 defense
of something that he recognized as this?|
The body is in need of no defense.
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 defense, 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 defense.
Yet is this where you look for its defense?
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 that is best, the means by which
it is achieved, nor how to recognize
the problem which 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 recognize
in some forms which these self-deceptions take,
for the denial of reality
is very obvious. Yet planning is
not often recognized as a defense.|
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 regard as incompatible
with your belief 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 that 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 defense
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 this 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 defenselessness
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.
