If I defend myself, I am attacked.
1. Who would defend himself unless he believed he were being attacked, that attack is real, and that by defending himself he can be saved? I
²And this is precisely where the senselessness of defense lies, for it gives full reality to illusions and then attempts to handle them as if they were true.
³This only adds illusion to illusion, making correction doubly difficult.
⁴And this is what you do when you try to make plans for the future, reactivate the past, or organize the present according to your wishes.
2. You operate under the belief that you must protect yourself from what is happening, because it contains something that threatens you. II
²To feel threatened is to admit an inherent weakness in yourself—to believe there is a danger with the power to require your appropriate defense.
³The world is built upon this insane belief.
⁴And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its punishments and mighty armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics, its leaders and its gods—all of it exists to uphold this sense of threat.
⁵For no one would walk the world with heavy armor unless his heart were gripped by terror.
3. Defenses are frightening.
²They arise from fear, and every new defense only adds to it.
³You think they offer safety.
⁴Yet they proclaim that fear is real, and that terror is justified.
⁵Does it not seem strange to you that when you make your plans, reinforce your armor, and secure your locks, you never stop to ask what it is you are defending, how you defend it, and against what?
4. Let us first consider what it is you are defending.
²It must be something very weak and vulnerable.
³It must be easy prey, something unable to protect itself, and thus in need of your defense.
⁴What else but the body is so fragile that it requires constant care and watchful concern to protect its little life?
⁵What else but the body fails and is unworthy to be the holy home of God’s Son?
5. And yet the body in itself cannot be afraid, nor is it something to be feared.
²It has no needs but those you assign to it.
³It requires no elaborate structures of defense, no healing medicines, no care, no concern at all.
⁴If you defend its life, adorn it with gifts, or build walls to protect it, you merely proclaim that your home is vulnerable to the thief of time, corruptible, decaying, and so insecure that you must guard it with your very life.
6. Is this not a frightening picture?
²How can you be at peace with such a concept of your home?
³Yet what but your own belief has given the body the right to serve you in this way?
⁴It was your mind that gave the body all the functions you see in it, and that placed its value far above the little heap of dust and water that it is. III
⁵Who would defend something he recognized as merely that?
7. The body needs no defense.
²This cannot be too strongly emphasized.
³The body will remain strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it roles it cannot fulfill, purposes beyond its scope, and grandiose goals it cannot accomplish.
⁴Such attempts—foolish, yet deeply cherished—are the source of the many insane attacks you make upon it.
⁵For you see the body as frustrating your hopes, your needs, your values, and your dreams.
8. That “self” which needs protection is not real.
²The body—this worthless thing that is not worth defending at all—needs only to be perceived as separate from you to become a healthy, useful instrument through which the mind can operate until it is no longer needed.
³Who would want to keep it once it has no use?
9. Defend 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 your belief that the mind is limited, fragile, apart from other minds, and separate from its Source.
10. These are the thoughts that need healing, and once they have been corrected and replaced with truth, the body will respond with health.
²This is the only real way to defend the body.
³But is this the way you try to defend it?
⁴The protection you offer it is of no benefit at all; it only increases your mental distress.
⁵This is not healing, but the denial of healing, for it places your hope where hope does not belong.
11. A healed mind does not plan.
²It carries out the plans it hears, through listening to the Wisdom that is not its own.
³It waits until it is 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 cannot impede its progress toward the goal that serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.
12. A healed mind has relinquished the belief that it must plan, though it cannot know the outcome, nor the means by which the goal is best achieved, nor even how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve.
²Until it does this, it will misuse the body in its plans.
³But when it has accepted this as true, then it will heal, and let the body go.
13. Enslaving the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick.
²It is not free to serve the plan for which it was created, one that far exceeds its own protection and requires its service for a little while.
³In this capacity, health is assured.
⁴For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it, it cannot fail.
14. It is perhaps not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are defenses, and all of them have but this one intent:
²They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of truth.
³It is not difficult to recognize in some forms that this is so, where the denial of reality is very obvious.
⁴Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.
15. The mind engaged in planning is unwilling to allow for change.
²It does not believe that God will give it everything it needs unless it makes its own provisions.
³It emphasizes the future, based on past experience and learning, and it believes it must control future events.
⁴This leads it to overlook the present, for it bases its faith on what the past has taught, in order to control what is to come.
16. The mind that plans is thus denying the opportunity to change.
²It relies on what it has learned to set the goals for future outcomes.
³Its past experience dictates its choices for what will happen.
⁴And it fails to see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, one free of the continuity of old ideas and sick beliefs.
⁵No longer does it anticipate, for present trust directs the way.
17. Defenses are the plans you undertake against the truth.
²Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your imagined self.
³Yet what remains is meaningless indeed.
⁴For it is your own reality that your defenses are designed to attack, conceal, dissect, and crucify.
18. Yet what would you not accept if you 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.
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. Your present trust in Him is the defense that promises a quiet future, a future untouched by any trace of sorrow, and filled with ever-increasing joy, as this life becomes a holy moment set in time, yet heeding only immortality.
²Let no defenses direct the future.
³Place it in the hands of your present trust, and this life will become a meaningful encounter with the truth, which was all your defenses were meant to hide.
20. Without defenses, you become a light that Heaven gratefully acknowledges as its own.
²That light will lead you through the paths prepared for your happiness, according to the ancient plan begun when time was born.
³Your followers will join their light to yours, and it will grow until the world is lit with joy.
⁴And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses, which only kept them terrified.
21. Today we will anticipate that moment with present trust, for it is part of what was planned for us. IV
²We rest in the certainty that everything we need is given us to accomplish this today.
³We make no plans for how it will occur, but realize that in our defenselessness, the truth will dawn upon our minds with certainty.
22. For fifteen minutes, twice today, we rest from senseless planning and from every thought that blocks the truth from entering our minds.
²Instead of planning, we will receive, that we may give; instead of organizing, we will be guided.
³And we are given as we say:
⁴If I defend myself, I am attacked.
⁵But in defenselessness I will be strong,
⁶and I will learn what my defenses hide.
23. That is all.
²If there are plans to be made, you will be told of them.
³They may not be the plans you thought you needed, nor the answers to the problems you believed you faced.
⁴They are answers to a different kind of question—one that remains unanswered but needs to be resolved until the Answer finally comes.
24. All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you are given now.
²And in the light and joy of the simple truth, you will wonder how you ever thought you had to defend yourself against your own release.
³Heaven asks nothing.
⁴It is hell that demands outrageous sacrifice.
⁵Today you give up nothing when you come defenseless to your Creator, just as you really are.
25. He remembers you.
²And today we will remember Him.
³For this is the Eastertime of your salvation. V
⁴It is the time when you arise from what seemed like death and hopelessness.
⁵Now light is born again in you, for now you come without defenses to learn your part in God’s plan.
⁶What trivial plans or magical beliefs can still hold value once you have received your function from the Voice for God Himself?
26. Do not try to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most.
²For you cannot conceive of the happiness that comes to you without your planning.
³Learn today.
⁴And the world will take this giant step and celebrate your Eastertime with you. VI
27. When petty things appear to raise defensiveness in you, and tempt you to make plans, remember this:
²Today is Eastertime. I would keep it holy.
³I will not defend myself,
⁴because the Son of God has no need to be defended against the truth of his Reality.
I The very length of this Lesson—the longest in the Workbook—is itself a sign of its importance. You will see that, apparently, it speaks about the defenses you design to protect yourself from the dangers of the world and the body, and, above all, about the “plans” you make. In a sense, it is true that it deals with those subjects, and it does so brilliantly and aptly; yet, in reality, it speaks of exactly the same thing as the preceding Lesson: how you react to the apparent demands of the illusory world. And it proposes exactly the same thing to you: that you do not get involved, that you forgive them, and that you place yourself in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
For this reason, this Lesson—like this entire Course—is also about forgiveness. See it that way, and you will understand it perfectly.
II When you wake in the morning, you open your eyes and behold a world in which your brother offends you, and you blame and condemn him. You consider the world to be a dangerous place and build all kinds of defenses to protect yourself from it. You look at yourself and see a body that you strive to enhance and care for, because it is the image you have of yourself and you think it is fragile. And finally, you place yourself in a condition of existence within an irrevocably linear time, making plans to organize your future lest something occur that might cause you to suffer.
Your guilty brother, the dangerous world, your vulnerable body, and the uncertain future exist only in your mind, and they have no more reality than what you confer upon them.
You are dreaming, and your dream is populated by uncertainty and threat. It is a bad dream from which it would be wise to awaken.
But how will you achieve that?
Try to see it this way:
Imagine yourself outside your body, watching yourself asleep in bed. That you who sleeps is dreaming, and in his dream he, too, sees an imaginary world full of threats that terrify him. Now think that this you who dreams cannot awaken, because he knows no other condition—he has forgotten that he was once awake—and besides, the light terrifies him because it would dispel the only thing he now knows. What would you advise him?
Consider that he can only faintly hear you in the distance, and he is incapable of interpreting anything that is not expressed in the same terms in which his own dream is structured. You can only speak to him using the symbols he knows.
Do you see that if he reacts with fear to what he is beholding, his dream will become even deeper, more “real” to him? Would you not tell him to relax a little, not to take it seriously, and that all that which he believes he faces is not real? Would you not advise him to forgive and let pass what he believes he sees? Can you think of better advice?
Now imagine that your sleeping self has managed to hear you and has obeyed. What do you think would happen to his dream? He is still dreaming; he has not awakened. But his expression has certainly changed. You cannot see what he is dreaming now, yet from his face you infer that his dream must be better, for you see him calmer.
Keep speaking to him. Now you can shift somewhat from that emergency discourse you used to draw him out of terror and begin to teach him how to shape a happier dream. You cannot lead him directly from fear to love; first you must teach him to forgive his fantasies, or he will remain trapped in them due to the power fear has to bestow reality upon illusions. Now you can begin to explain to him the power his mind also has to create worlds, and you will also teach him to distinguish pleasure from pain, fear from love, and peace from distress.
Now he is ready to reconcile himself with the idea that everything he gives, he is giving to himself, for in his dream there is nothing but himself. You will explain to him, in simple terms, that giving and receiving—or teaching and learning—are the same, and if he listens and puts it into practice in his fantasies, he will see that it is true. For you, who are outside watching him sleep, the matter is more than evident, since you know that everything he experiences is occurring within his sleeping mind, even though to him that is not yet so clear.
When you see that he has been calm for a while and has acquired some skill in handling his illusions, you will go a little further and begin to teach him to manage the dream itself. You know that he could make any change he wished, for it costs the same to dream one thing as another. Yet you also understand that his dream is still structured around values, categories, merits, importance, and difficulty. That is the world in which he believes he lives: a world full of different things—some desirable and others fearful—but to him all are very real and distinct from each other. To you, however, they are all the same; they are only fantasies.
Now that you see him calm and fairly centered, you will teach him to make changes in his dream that will seem to him surprising and wonderful. He will call them miracles. You will simply smile. You have done a good job with him. He is now ready for you to awaken him.
III Genesis 2:6–7 “But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
IV Realize that you are not taking this Course by chance; it is part of the plan designed for your salvation and for the world’s with you. You are now beginning to be centered, and your eyes are starting to open little by little. Do not lose focus, and put all your will into strengthening your present trust; the rest will be given to you as you go. Open your eyes and ears, and let yourself be guided. You are in good hands—the best.
V Easter is the central feast of Christianity, commemorating the resurrection of Jesus. It marks the end of Holy Week, which recalls His passion and death.
VI Do not be surprised that this is yet another of those Lessons that constitute a “giant step” in your learning.