My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability.
1. It is clear that if you can be attacked, then you are not invulnerable.
²You perceive attack as a real threat.
³This is because you believe that you yourself can genuinely attack.
⁴And what can have effects through you must also have effects on you.I
⁵This very law will ultimately save you.
⁶But for now, you are misusing it.
⁷Therefore, you must learn how to use it in your favor rather than against yourself.
2. In projecting your attack thoughts, which is inevitable, you will come to fear attack.
²And if you fear attack, it is because you believe you are not invulnerable.
³Thus, attack thoughts make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where those thoughts reside.II
⁴Attack thoughts and invulnerability cannot coexist in your mind.
⁵They are in direct contradiction.
3. Today’s idea introduces the notion that you always attack yourself first.
²If attack thoughts imply the belief that you are vulnerable, then their effect is to weaken you in your own eyes.
³Thus, these thoughts attack your perception of yourself.
⁴And by believing in them, you lose the ability to believe in yourself.
⁵A false image of yourself has taken the place of what you truly are.III
4. Practicing today’s idea will help you understand that both vulnerability and invulnerability are the result of your own thoughts.
²Nothing except your own thoughts can attack you.
³Nothing except your own thoughts can make you believe you are vulnerable.
⁴And nothing except your own thoughts can prove to you that this is not true.IV
5. Six practice periods are required for today’s idea.
²Try to devote a full two minutes to each session, although you may reduce it to one minute if you experience significant discomfort.
³However, do not reduce the time to less than one minute.
6. Begin each session by repeating today’s idea. Then close your eyes and review the unresolved situations whose outcomes concern you.
²This concern may take the form of depression, anxiety, anger, a sense of pressure, fear, apprehension, or worry.
³Any problem that recurs frequently in your mind throughout the day is a suitable subject for the practice.
⁴You will not be able to address many in each period, since you should spend more time than usual on each one.
7. Today’s idea should be applied as follows:
²First, name the situation:
³I am concerned about ____.
⁴Then go over every possible outcome that has caused you anxiety, naming each one specifically by saying:
⁵I am afraid that ____ will happen.
8. If you do the exercises correctly, you should identify five or six disturbing possibilities for each problem, or even more.
²It is far more effective to work thoroughly with a few cases than to skim lightly over many.
³As the number of anticipated outcomes increases, you may find some of them becoming less acceptable to you—especially those that come to mind near the end.
⁴Nevertheless, try to treat them all equally, as much as you can.
9. After naming each feared outcome, say to yourself:
²That thought is an attack on myself.
³Conclude each practice period by repeating today’s idea once more.
I We always relate to everything from the way we see ourselves. We treat things, others, and God in the same way we treat ourselves, and since we do not truly love ourselves, our relationships with the world and with God are loveless. We inevitably project the degree of love—or its absence—that we feel for ourselves onto everything we perceive or conceive, for perceiving and conceiving are essentially the same. Thus, when you attack, you implicitly acknowledge that if such an attack can harm you, it can also harm others. That is why every attack is an admission of vulnerability: if you attempt to destroy, it is because you believe you too can be destroyed.
II Anger and fear are two sides of the same coin. Fear is the side you experience when you attack yourself, and anger is the side you show when you project your attack outward. Yet both are the same thing: absence of love. But can an absence truly exist when what is lacking is something that does not exist, by definition? That is why this Course affirms that fear is an illusion—a perception of something that is not there—since what God has not created cannot exist. Still, it is perfectly possible to believe in it and, in doing so, you make it real for yourself.
If you are afraid, you will attack, and if you attack, you will be afraid. It is an inevitable cycle. You will feel fear because you will believe you are in danger, that you can be harmed, that you are vulnerable to the attack of those you have attacked. You will feel small, weak, and you will lose your peace of mind. Then you will seek to protect yourself, perceiving yourself surrounded by threats and feeling the need to build defenses against your enemies. This happens both individually and collectively. The countries with the most powerful armies are, paradoxically, those whose citizens are most fearful, for they live under a constant sense of threat. Where you see many flags, you will find much fear.
This is yet another example of how God’s law is fulfilled: “You will receive what you give.” And you, who are everything, how could you give anything you do not want for yourself if you know it will return to you?
Recognize that every condemning judgment, even the slightest, is an attack. You may think you cannot avoid judging or condemning, that many of your judgments are unconscious and you cannot even detect them. Do not worry about this; there is a very simple mechanism for knowing if you are attacking someone, something, or even life itself: whenever you feel bad, even the slightest discomfort, you are judging and condemning—that is, attacking. You are not lacking tools to detect when you are misusing your mind; you only need to use them.
The opposite is also true: those who are not afraid do not attack. Gentleness is born of an awareness of invulnerability that can only exist in the absence of fear.
Remember: whenever something displeases or disturbs you, even slightly, say to yourself: “There must be a better way of seeing this, and I am willing to find it.” Be constant and unyielding in this principle. Do not tolerate even the slightest unease. You are the host of God. Keep your house clean.
III First you feel bad, and then you attack. But in reality, the correct order is this: first you attack yourself, which is why you feel bad, and then you attack.
The images you hold of yourself are neither false nor true; they are all false, because you are not an image. You are the Son of God, who conceives false images of himself and of everything he perceives. Moreover, it is important that you understand that your attack thoughts do not affect you at all; they only affect that image you have of yourself, but not your true reality.
In this way, you rule over a small mental kingdom where countless dramatic stories take place—stories you tell yourself, stories in which the characters you have created suffer and struggle, including that “I” you think you are. The goal of this Course is to train your mind to learn to tell yourself a more benevolent story, until the time comes when you cease to believe in any kind of story, and then you awaken.
IV Nothing, except your own thoughts, can affect you, because you relate only to your own thoughts and to nothing else. You know nothing other than your own thoughts.
What happens is that many of your thoughts you call “things of the world,” though they are nothing but your own ideas, to which you have added the belief that they are something external to you, physical and real. This belief, in turn, is nothing but another thought. That is, to a thought about something you wish to relate to, you attribute the notion of being something outside yourself.
When you regard that idea as accessible, you place it in space; and when you regard it as inaccessible, you place it in an imaginary time: the past or the future. The dimensions of space and time are ways of thinking in terms of separation.