Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Lesson 153: “In my defenselessness my safety lies.”
When we think about how to be ‘safe’ many times we start thinking about fighting or attacking in some way. But when we think of the energy of maintaining our safety, it is a picture likely of us being coddled and warmed and nurtured. When we are safe our environment is gentle and the sharp edges are gone. This could be something like putting us in a play pen where the edges of the pen are soft, so if we push against it, we will feel comfortable and maintain our healthy state. When we think about how to take care of a baby, this is the same kind of energy we want to have with ourselves in order to take care of our own need for safety.
In an ideal world, while taking care of our safety- the environment would be with no rough edges, no sharp weapons. This would be the superb answer about how to keep us safe. The Course also wants us to take this gentle approach in how to meet our need for safety. The Course says no edges, no attack, as this is the beginning of our attack cycle. When we are worried about our safety our egos are most apt to try to overkill at the response. The ego wants to take inappropriate means to meet this need for safety. The ego says that attack is the only answer worth listening to.
The ego is just living in a state of constant illusion. Its reality doesn’t make sense at all because the ego doesn’t understand that God’s certainty is so incredibly powerful that when we feel this energy, the world can not hurt us in any way. The ego is desperately fixated on maintaining rigid control. The ego wants to keep asserting its own opinion and simply loudly denying that God’s certainty can be exactly enough to maintain a healthy life while we live in the world.
The ego believes its own story that the world is a force to be reckoned with so our egos are quite distressed at adopting any version of reality counter to its own insane belief. This is why we have to understand that God is outside the laws of the Universe. His essence is not of this world so we simply can’t assume how powerful God’s certainty actually is.
We have to be willing to listen to the Course’s teaching so we can understand that it is simply our belief that keeps us weak and vulnerable. This is how we can be hurt, when our hearts and minds are not clear that we are drops of the energy of God. Therefore, nothing can give us cause for concern. When we are God’s rightful heir and we realize this, every last little way we live is totally altered.
We can live in the certainty, the most powerful confidence that every existed. And we can be in perfect peace all the time because we live knowing that we are totally lovable as is everyone else. And we carry our certainty as well. Then nothing interferes with our happy, grateful mind because every interaction is a blessing. We spend our time loving the moment instead of looking for ways to be defended. When we know nothing can hurt us, we have only the very richest life in all ways.