Lesson 148: Review: “My mind holds only what I think with God.”  “If I defend myself I am attacked.”  “Sickness is a defense against the truth.”

The Course asks us to rest in our certainty for the strength of protection. 

One thing that is unavoidable is that we begin the attack cycle when we energetically or practically raise our defenses. 

The world sure seems like a scary place and we may want to do something to have our shields of safety upright and functioning to protect us from harm.  This seems like the only way to truly keep ourselves safe.

The Course reminds us that when we raise our energetic protection, the purpose is to prevent the assault of outer attack, and this may appear logical certainly from one perspective. 

The Course teaches that when we allow our defenses to come up, then we start to feel the attack because we insert ourselves right into the attack cycle.

When we are defended we are believing that someone out there is going to go through with some attack and be a villain toward us.  

That fear is what then begins the attack cycle we think we want to prevent, but now we have started it ourselves with our own fear nonetheless.  This then begins the cycle that we are trying to avoid.

We get afraid in the process that someone out there is going to hurt us or victimize us.  And so, we put up defenses on the one hand, which is what we assume we want.

But, also, at the same time, we believe in some part of our minds that someone is apt to attack us because that is the purpose for raising our defenses.

Then, we start to feel weak.  

When we think someone else is bound to attack us and causes us to feel vulnerable because of their potential attack toward us, then, the reality is that we end up feeling vulnerable anyway.

We feel vulnerable because we entertain the idea that we can be attacked in the first place because we need to raise our defenses.

And this even smallest amount of vulnerability is all we require to have the feeling that we are in the position where we CAN be vulnerable in the first place.

This defeats our purpose of the desire to keep ourselves safe.

The Course teaches rather to simply stay completely focused on feeling our certainty as a result of any situation that may trigger our concern that we might be vulnerable to being a victim.

When we sit solidly in our certainty, then the feelings of vulnerability simply fade away.

Then, with no vulnerability thoughts, there is no part of us subjecting ourselves to attack energy, even if we think the attack energy is pointed toward someone else in particular. 

The problem is that attack energy always comes through us when we feel toward someone else, which is exactly why the Course teaches us to stay focused on not feeling attack energy toward anyone else, even if they are seemingly attacking us. 

We don’t want to respond by raising our defenses because then we put ourselves into the most immediate line of attack, which is then geared toward us as well and therefore, will cause us also to somewhere along the line receive jolts of attack as well.