Sunday, June 21, 2015
Lesson 172: Review: “God is but Love, and therefore so am I.” “In my defenselessness my safety lies.” “I am among the minsters of God.”
The Course teaches us to be defenseless. We can easily perceive that as being vulnerable. And being vulnerable at its root makes us feel fearful, wary of some kind of ensuing attack. This is devastating for us when we think that defenses are the protection we need from the insanity of the world’s violation of us. The world thinks attack is the answer to everything. “Be louder and bolder, get ahead, be first|!” The world has all kinds of thinking that we listen to all the time and therefore we start to believe it. The Course on the other hand is teaching us an entirely new way of functioning. It says- NO ATTACK- no matter what.
When we think about attack and participating in attack, we then see ourselves as vulnerable. We grow to believe we are going to get the brunt of the onslaught from the world and never again be safe. We believe we will suffer in every way if we don’t attack. Our egos really have a one track mind- they believe everything is about attack. Either doing it or receiving it. Our egos have a huge resistance to believing attack is not the one and only answer to the insanity of the world.
I think our egos equate the word ‘safety’ with defenses. Jesus’s teaching here is very different from the world’s. Defenselessness seems like a sure way of getting ourselves destroyed. What we learn here instead is that our certainty is the only true way of staying entirely safe in our minds. The certainty is the way we live in the true state of invulnerability. Being invulnerable is definitely a mind thing- not necessarily with our bodies. But since our bodies are not real what we want to do is not get attached to the ensuring to them that no attack will be imminent.
However, we just need to realize that our energetic power is in the certainty of our minds. When we feel and believe and intend this then our invulnerability is intact. This is why we are asked to focus only on the mind. When we save the mind through being certain, we will encounter no attack. If we feel certain in the mind, the body also has the greatest chance possible of not being affected by attack. This is why we need to switch our worldly perspective and hold that our power is when we experience our certainty first and foremost.