Lesson 261

God is my refuge and security.

 

Now we are onto a new question which explains,"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts."  (W.PII.Q5.1.1) We all think our reality is that of a body and that within this 'fence' we think we live only to die and decay and crumble. It keeps us safe from love and that is what we want. Really? Now that seems like a strange thought to us who are constantly seeking love. Yet all the while that we think it is love that we are pursuing, we are actually keeping ourselves safe from it. When we look at all of the psychological and physical defenses we put up against being hurt and feeling vulnerable, we can see that, indeed, we are trying to keep ourselves safe from love. Real love can have no fear and needs no defense. What are we protecting ourselves from with our defenses except love? Our fear of love is our fear of losing these seemingly protective boundaries of self that we identify with. We protest that we are not afraid of love, yet we are intent on keeping our individuality and we feel safe in our specialness.
 
The ego does not even know what love is, but it does sense that if the Self that we truly are chooses love then the ego will disappear. The ego has also devised a plan to keep itself safe from us even knowing that we have a choice for something other than it. If we don't know that we have a choice available to us in our minds, then we will always side with the wrong-minded perspective of the ego because that is all that is in our awareness. With it comes our belief in the reality of the body. Our belief in our separate selves living in this world is thus never questioned deeply.

Now we are called to put this belief to question. What if we are wrong about our reality? What if our reality is not the body at all? Our identification with our reality as a body is kept intact as long as we continue to identify with the ego thought system of separation. In the choice we made to run away from God's Love and accept the thought system of the ego, we have forgotten who we are. The thought system of sin and guilt, accepted into our mind, was so horrendous to us that we left the mind. This mindlessness keeps us safe from God's Love because, again, it means that we can't make another choice as long as we don't know we have a mind. Now we seem to live in separate bodies, separate from each other, contained in this fence with space between us where we no longer see our Oneness but only separate parts. "Minds are joined; bodies are not." (T.18.VI.3.1) (ACIM OE T.18.VII.51) That is why bodies were made. They were made not to join. Only minds can join.
 
Why would we choose safety from God in a body when the body is going to die? Why would we turn to the body for our safety when it is such a fragile, impermanent organism? We do this because it seems it is the proof that we are right about ourselves, that death is real, and God is therefore wrong about who we are. That is the ego's game. It shows us that the ego's strategy has succeeded and that God does not exist. It tells us that only the separated self that we think we are is real and God is the illusion. It seems to us this is what reality is and that God is indeed a myth. The impermanence of the body proves that the strategy of the ego, which is to make us believe we are separate from God and on our own, has worked. It establishes that separation is a fact. Now God can't exist because how can there be both separation and Oneness?

So what is the truth? Duality or Oneness? If Oneness is the truth, then there can be no victim and victimizer. There is no one to attack or be attacked. There is just one mind. But in that scenario, we don't exist. Thus if our existence as separate individuals is a reality, it can only be true if God and Oneness have been annihilated, which is exactly what the ego says we have done. This is where we have accepted the belief in sin into our minds and, with it, all of our thoughts of unworthiness, lack and longing. And because the ego tells us we did exactly that---destroyed God so we can have a separate existence---it offered us an escape into the body and into the world, where we could be safe from God and thus safe from His Love. Even more important, we would be safe from the punishment we think is coming to us because of our perceived attack on God.

Of course none of this is in our awareness, but the thought we hold is that attack offers us what we want, which is our emancipation from God. So now we hold this belief in the value of attack. We see value in being a victim and we also play the role of victimizer. This reflects a cycle of attack and defense. It is a world of one or the other. It is a world of gaining at someone's expense. It is a world of bargaining, where we try to get for ourselves what we think we need. This is the basis of special relationships. It is in these relationships that we bargain by giving as little as we can to get as much as we can, and what we are trying to get is the love that we think is lacking in us.

Our experience of having been born into a body and identifying with the body has obliterated from our minds where we came from. Now we project our own forgetting on God and we say God has forgotten us! So the lie that the ego has sold us, which is that God is our enemy and that He is pursuing us in order to punish us for our sin, is held in our unconscious minds. We have come to believe that we are entirely on our own. We feel a strong sense of abandonment. We simply have no memory of where we came from. Oh yes, we can tell many stories of past lives, or going back to the womb and our experience there, but we don't know what preceded our existence as bodies. Jesus said in the Bible, "Before Abraham was, I am." We have all always been. Now with the benefit of this teaching, we are given a way to question what the ego is and what it has done. As long as we identify with its thought system without question, we will continue in this cycle of birth and death. It is all held up by the belief that we have sinned against God and are guilty. It is a pattern that we relive over lifetimes and it is a pattern of being victimizers or victims of each other.

While we don't die when the body dies, we think we will die when it (the fence) dies because we have identified ourselves so much with it. So we do think that the body is real and it is who we are. We pay a huge price in identifying with the body, but to us it seems worth it. Why is that? Because we want to maintain our separation even though we suffer in our perceived aloneness. "And if he did not die, what 'proof' is there that God's eternal Son can be destroyed?"(W.PII.Q5.2.9) We thought we would be safe from God in the body and in the world and could escape God's punishment for our sin, but sickness, aging and death show us this is not at all the case. The body, where the ego assured us we would be safe, is vulnerable. Jesus is asking us to question the whole setup. How could this vulnerable body ever keep us safe? And what do we need to be kept safe from anyway? The whole ego story that we bought into can now be questioned and collapsed as the lie that it is.

To put this into practice, we need to look at how our daily lives exemplify the lies of the ego and to question the false beliefs and misperceptions that we hold. As we learn to observe our thoughts and beliefs without judgment, we can increasingly see that, "The body is a dream. Like other dreams its sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear." (W.PII.Q5.3.1-3)

This lesson reminds me of the song by Resta called Person where she says about the body that "It can't see. It can't hear. It can't feel anything. It does what it's told, never raises a stink. It can't think, can't create, was not born, does not die, but we say it is "I". I'm a person. It's a wee little bundle of water and dust, but feed it and clean it and clothe it we must. House it, insure it, transport it in cars. Take it out to the bars. It's a person. A body, an image, with secrets inside: a private and personal person."

Jesus reminds us that our safety lies in God who is "my refuge and security." (W.261) This is reminiscent of Psalm 46, but the focus is different. It is not about God smiting our enemies and keeping us safe in our bodies. It is about our actual true safety and security being in our Identity as the Christ Self, one that can never shift nor change and has nothing to do with the body. The shift away from the body as our identity, to that of mind, is a process that requires time. That is what time is given to us for.
 
I remember when I really felt guided to go to Sedona to do a year of study and contemplation of the Course. Driving by myself across the desert in the dead of night, I had a moment of overwhelming fear and wondered what the hell I was doing putting myself at potential risk. There were hardly any cars on that part of the road and I felt the momentary panic of having my car breakdown. This thought was followed by a bigger realization that I was truly safe and protected, that there was nothing to fear, that God truly is my refuge and security, and that the only safety I truly have is with Him. Further, I felt so strongly guided to go to Sedona and everything fell so beautifully in place for my being there that I did feel, as a result, that this part of the journey was in His Hands as well. However, now I see this was still about feeling His protection for the safety of my body. The truth is that we are eternal beings outside of the body, but, at the time it helped me get through this trip and release the fear.

What does the lesson mean when it says, "Let me today seek not security in danger"? (W.261.1.3) How do we try to find safety in fear? It is in all of the things we do to feel safe in the world including the food we eat, clothes we buy, money, car, house, friends, and absolutely everything that we put around us for our protection. Our psychological defenses are also made for this purpose, but when we look to the world for security, it only gives us an illusion of safety. The world is a place of fear and made from fear. There can be no security here because there is nothing permanent and consistent here that we can completely rely on. Further, we seek for our security in the thing (our body) that is always in danger. How quickly the body can be hurt or die. We know that it just takes an instant. It is hardly a place of refuge or security! So we spend a lot of energy putting up physical and psychological defenses to keep ourselves from being hurt. We are trying to keep ourselves safe and thus identify with what we think will keep us safe. Yet over and over we see that our bodies cannot protect us.
 
I am inspired when I read of those who have learned this lesson in some form. This was the case of Terry Anderson some years ago when he was abducted in Beirut and held hostage for close to seven years by a group of Hezbollah Shiite Muslims who were supported by Iran. His request for a Bible was granted him and with the reading of the Bible slowly the chains were removed, both physically and metaphorically, from his mind. During this time, he kept praying for his release and for his safety, but he had a realization this was not the right prayer. It was when he started praying for understanding, for strength and grace, that he was able to see his captors as himself, and soon after he was released. I have been equally inspired in my reading of the Peace Pilgrim and many others who illustrate for us the power of forgiveness.

Can you imagine when we truly know who we are nothing can shake our security? We experience that truth when we enter the quiet place each day where we rest in God. We experience it when we see that, where we felt uncertain before, we now know that we no longer have to rely on our little selves, but we can call out to God. We know it when we no longer feel so alone. We know it when we trust that all things work together for good. We know it when our fear diminishes and the blocks to the awareness of the Self that we are are removed.

Today let us not seek for idols in the world that seem to keep us safe. Today we are choosing our reality. We are with God right in this moment. Our bodies truly are wind-up cosmic toys. We can withdraw our identification with them. God is our home. That is where we are resting. That is where we can escape from the belief in this world and in our body. See yourself above this battleground where you truly are safe. While your wind-up toy is running around doing things that are focused on its well being, you are safe in God. God is our refuge and security.

Just as I write this, my son calls to say he has had a horrendous accident and is in the hospital where his face requires many stitches. Fear comes up together with worry and concern. Now I ask for help to remember who he is and see him as healed and whole. I look more fully at my own fear about my vulnerability. I recognize that worry is an attack and ask for help to simply see him with compassion and to let the fear go. It is another opportunity to go deeper into the mind and uncover my false beliefs and to let them go.

The body can serve a holy purpose in the world. We are not asked to deny our bodies, but to put them to their proper use. The body does not change, but the purpose that the mind puts it to can now be changed. Now we use it to join with our brothers instead of separate from them.