Welcome to Active Meditation A Course in Miracles Lesson 135 If I defend myself,
I am attacked.
All the world's structures,
All its thoughts and doubts,
All the world's penalties and heavy armaments,
Its legal definitions and its codes,
All the world's ethics and its leaders and its gods,
All serve but to preserve the sense of threat.
For no one walks the world in armature,
But must have terror striking at their heart.
Would you defend yourself unless you thought you were attacked?
That the attack was real?
And that your own defense could save yourself?
Herein lies the folly of defense.
It gives illusions full reality,
And then attempts to handle these illusions as if they were real.
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 acknowledgement of an inherent weakness,
A belief that there is danger,
Which has power to call on you to make an appropriate defense.
The world is based on this insane belief.
Say to yourself,
Say in your mind,
If I defend myself,
I am attacked.
The self that needs protection is not real.
The body,
Valueless and hardly worth the least defense,
Needs merely be perceived as quite apart from you,
And your body becomes a healthy,
Serviceable instrument,
Through which the mind can operate until the body's usefulness is over.
Who would want to keep a body when its usefulness is done?
Defend the body and you have attacked your mind,
For you have seen in your body 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 condition,
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.
Again,
Say to yourself,
If I defend myself,
I am attacked.
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 that is the threat which your defenses would attack,
Obscure and take apart and crucify.
A Healing Mind A healed mind does not plan.
A healed mind carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own.
A healed mind waits until it has been taught what should be done,
And then proceeds to do it.
A healed mind does not depend upon itself for anything,
Except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it.
For fifteen minutes twice today,
We rest from senseless planning,
And from every thought that 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 to ourself,
Say in our mind,
If I defend myself,
I am attacked.
In defenselessness,
I will be strong.
And I will learn what my defenses hide.
If there are plans to make,
You will be told of them.
They may not be the plans you thought were needed.
They may not be 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.
Say to yourself,
Repeat after me,
If I defend myself,
I am attacked.
In defenselessness,
I will be strong.
In defenselessness,
I will learn what my defenses hide.
Now,
Be attentive.
If there are plans to make,
You will be told of them.
Listen.
Listen.
All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today,
In the light and joy of simple trust.
You will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release.
Heaven has 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.
God has remembered you.
Today,
We will remember God.
Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most,
For you cannot conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning.
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.
I will not defend myself because the child of God needs no defense against the truth of reality.
Ponder on this.
I will not defend myself because the child of God needs no defense against the truth of reality.
If I defend myself,
I am attacked.
In defenselessness,
I will be strong.
In defenselessness,
I will learn what my defense is to I.
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
