LESSON 135 If I defend myself I am attacked.

1. 1Who would defend himself unless he thought he were at­tacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? 2And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illu­sions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. 3It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly diffi­cult. 4And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish.

2. 1You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you. 2A 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. 3The world is based on this insane belief. 4And 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. 5For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.

3. 1Defense is frightening. 2It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. 3You think it offers safety. 4Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. 5Is 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?

4. 1Let us consider first what you defend. 2It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. 3It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing your defense. 4What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? 5What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?

5. 1Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing of fear. 2It has no needs but those which you assign to it. 3It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. 4Defend 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.

6. 1Is not this picture fearful? 2Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? 3Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? 4It 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. 5Who would make defense of something that he recognized as this?

7. 1The body is in need of no defense. 2This cannot be too often emphasized. 3It 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. 4Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. 5For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams.

8. 1The “self” that needs protection is not real. 2The 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. 3Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

9. 1Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. 2For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. 3You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. 4And 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.

10. 1These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and re­placed with truth. 2This is the body’s only real defense. 3Yet is this where you look for its defense? 4You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. 5You do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.

11. 1A healed mind does not plan. 2It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. 3It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. 4It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. 5It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.

12. 1A healed mind is relieved of 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. 2It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. 3But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets the body go.

13. 1Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. 2It is not free to be the means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection, and which needs its service for a little while. 3In this capacity is health assured. 4For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.

14. 1It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. 2They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection, at the cost of truth. 3This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, where the denial of reality is very obvious. 4Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.

15. 1The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. 2It does not think that it will be provided for, unless it makes its own provisions. 3Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. 4It overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course.

16. 1The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. 2What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. 3Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. 4And 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. 5Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way.

17. 1Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. 2Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. 3Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. 4For it is your reality that is the “threat” which your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.

18. 1What 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? 2Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. 3But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. 4While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life.

19. 1Your present trust in Him is the defense that promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy that con­stantly increases, as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. 2Let 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.

20. 1Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. 2And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. 3Your followers will join their light with yours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy. 4And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses, which availed them nothing and could only terrify.

21. 1We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of what was planned for us. 2We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. 3We 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.

22. 1For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every thought that blocks the truth from entering our minds. 2Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. 3And we are given truly, as we say:

4If I defend myself I am attacked. 5But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide.

23. 1Nothing but that. 2If there are plans to make, you will be told of them. 3They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. 4But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.

24. 1All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. 2And in the light and joy of simple trust, you will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defend­ed from release. 3Heaven asks nothing. 4It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. 5You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.

25. 1He has remembered you. 2Today we will remember Him. 3For this is Eastertime in your salvation. 4And you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness. 5Now 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. 6What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice for God Himself?

26. 1Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. 2For you can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. 3Learn today. 4And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate your Eastertime with you. 5Throughout 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:

6This is my Eastertime. 7And I would keep it holy. 8I will not defend myself, because the Son of God needs no defense against the truth of his reality.