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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
But in defenselessness 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 defense 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 defense
Against the truth of his Reality.”