In my defenselessness my safety lies.
* ANYONE who considers themselves a “servant of the people” needs to understand the principles discussed in this Lesson!
1. You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the “gifts” it merely lends to take away again; attend this lesson well. ²The world provides no safety. ³It is rooted in attack, and all its “gifts” of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. ⁴It attacks, and then attacks again. ⁵No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus.
* You find defenselessness ONLY within the attitude and acceptance of the Atonement.
* (I find it almost unnerving that I said that so boldly. “You find” instead of “I have found” and yet that is how I am supposed to write it. ~ and yes, both are true.)
* Therein you have acknowledged God as your Father because you accept your place as part of the Whole Body of Christ and forgive yourself and all brethren for the “impossible” belief of separation from God, freeing you from belief in the ego=god manifested world and allowing you to be receptive to the Voice of God through the Holy Spirit. THIS will promote healing and put us more in direct alignment with the ‘process’ of creation and communion with Father and All That Is.
2. The world gives rise but to defensiveness. ²For threat brings anger, anger makes attack seem reasonable, honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self-defense. ³Yet is defensiveness a double threat. ⁴For it attests to weakness, and sets up a system of defense that cannot work. ⁵Now are the weak still further undermined, for there is treachery without and still a greater treachery within. ⁶The mind is now confused, and knows not where to turn to find escape from its imaginings.
3. It is as if a circle held it fast, wherein another circle bound it and another one in that, until escape no longer can be hoped for nor obtained. ²Attack, defense; defense, attack, become the circles of the hours and the days that bind the mind in heavy bands of steel with iron overlaid, returning but to start again. ³There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of the imprisonment upon the mind.
* In other words, we become lethargic and no longer seek to be released from our trauma and misery.
4. Defenses are the costliest of all the prices which the ego would exact. ²In them lies madness in a form so grim that hope of sanity seems but to be an idle dream, beyond the possible. ³The sense of threat the world encourages is so much deeper, and so far beyond the frenzy and intensity of which you can conceive, that you have no idea of all the devastation it has wrought.
* This was recorded in the 60s and the ego=god mentality has entrenched itself even further since A Course in Miracles has been on the earth BECAUSE of the use of the principles within A Course in Miracles WITHOUT understanding the full or correct application of the Atonement.
* Remember that these words apply IF you have not sought an understanding from God as Jesus has shown us and do apply to that part of the ego=god mentality that we cling to which we may give up through the Atonement whenever we choose to do so.
5. You are its slave. ²You know not what you do, in fear of it. ³You do not understand how much you have been made to sacrifice, who feel its iron grip upon your heart. ⁴You do not realize what you have done to sabotage the holy peace of God by your defensiveness.
⁵For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams, and by illusions he has made; yet helpless in their presence, needful only of defense by still more fantasies, and dreams by which illusions of his safety comfort him.
* I have to respond to this, “⁵For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams, and by illusions he has made” from within the Atonement.
* I walk in the world BY THE SPIRIT. I LITERALLY have NOTHING ELSE TO GO ON. I cannot begin to explain what I mean by that at this time but it is so. I will say that I do expect that THIS is what Jesus means when he says that the world is nothing or that it will slip away.
* I KNOW that my life in this body or my mental capacities could be taken in the blink of an eye. One might say I am “thinking of myself as a victim’ but I want you to understand that it is a part of the SHIFT that is DEMANDED or Natural to the return to the WITNESS of what we truly ARE as the Son of God.
6. Defenselessness is strength.
* Hear that!
* The idea that “I know nothing of myself and rely fully on the interpretation and direction of the Holy Spirit” is VITAL for me to ACCESS the STRENGTH WITHIN DEFENSELESSNESS for this IS what it is.
²It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you.
* Hmm. NOPE.
* It testifies to the recognition of God in you as a part of the Christ which you ARE.
³Perhaps you will recall the text maintains that choice is always made between Christ’s strength and your own weakness, seen apart from Him.
* WRONG!
* Perhaps you will recall the text maintains that choice is always made between God’s Strength as a part of Christ and your own weakness, seen apart from GOD, or seen apart from BOTH GOD and CHRIST.
⁴Defenselessness can never be attacked, because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play, when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants.
* I wish to remember this as I move about in my community. I hear it as “…because I recognize God’s strength is beyond attack and that when others seem to be attacking it is because ‘Christ, as a Child Who forgot that His Father is nearby to take care of Him is lashing out.’ EVERYTHING has been forgiven by me in the Atonement BEFORE it OCCURS. But THIS is a nice reminder of how to LOOK AT THINGS as I go through life.
7. Defensiveness is weakness. ²It proclaims you have denied the Christ and come to fear His Father’s anger. ³What can save you now from your delusion of an angry god, whose fearful image you believe you see at work in all the evils of the world? ⁴What but illusions could defend you now, when it is but illusions that you fight?
8. We will not play such childish games today. ²For our true purpose is to save the world, and we would not exchange for foolishness the endless joy our function offers us. ³We would not let our happiness slip by because a fragment of a senseless dream happened to cross our minds, and we mistook the figures in it for the Son of God; its tiny instant for eternity.
9. We look past dreams today, and recognize that we need no defense because we are created unassailable, without all thought or wish or dream in which attack has any meaning. ²Now we cannot fear, for we have left all fearful thoughts behind. ³And in defenselessness we stand secure, serenely certain of our safety now, sure of salvation; sure we will fulfill our chosen purpose, as our ministry extends its holy blessing through the world.
* #7, 8, and 9 are ways that the Atonement adjusts our view of the world to bring our intention and attitude into a place where we will allow God to direct us instead of our hurt feelings or personal definition of right and wrong. ~ This is not to say there is no right or wrong because “Right Mindedness” defines that. Right Mindedness, per Jesus in the Course, aligns us with the ability to accept God’s Direction and not that brought about through our fear.
10. Be still a moment, and in silence think how holy is your purpose, how secure you rest, untouchable within its light. ²God’s ministers have chosen that the truth be with them. ³Who is holier than they? ⁴Who could be surer that his happiness is fully guaranteed? ⁵And who could be more mightily protected? ⁶What defense could possibly be needed by the ones who are among the chosen ones of God, by His election and their own as well?
* Hear in the the admonition “Be still, and know that I am God.” Jesus is using language that Bill and Helen understand in the world as “Christian” while trying to show them that it is all of us who have this calling because we ARE of God. And it is our will.
11. It is the function of God’s ministers to help their brothers choose as they have done. ²God has elected all, but few have come to realize His Will is but their own. ³And while you fail to teach what you have learned, salvation waits and darkness holds the world in grim imprisonment. ⁴Nor will you learn that light has come to you, and your escape has been accomplished. ⁵For you will not see the light, until you offer it to all your brothers. ⁶As they take it from your hands, so will you recognize it as your own.
* Here is a clear reason why full forgiveness of All That Is must be given: “⁴Nor will you learn that light has come to you, and your escape has been accomplished.”
* It establishes our salvation.
* And look at the slant on our ATTITUDE that Jesus is sharing with us through the Holy Spirit.
* THIS is what I would love to share with my community and our world as we wonder how to govern ourselves in a healthy and healing way:
12. Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play.
²It was designed by One Who loves His children, and Who would replace their fearful toys with joyous games, which teach them that the game of fear is gone.
³His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser.
⁴Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain to everyone ensured.
⁵The game of fear is gladly laid aside, when children come to see the benefits salvation brings.
* THIS is the ANSWER to people’s concerns about how to look after one another that is so prevalent today!
13. You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt; be happy now.
²That game is over.
* DO NOT let this cause you to “JUMP THE GUN” and think we are homefree because there is a lot of work to do. The message in #12 needs to be the underlying attitude of the masses for the kind of “quiet time” that the world wants where we are able to truly get along and work in harmony for the benefit of all.
³Now a quiet time has come, in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven’s children and the Son of God.
* We want to recognize that from the Atonement we ARE stepping into this “final, happy game upon this earth.”
14. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final, happy game upon this earth.
²And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless.
³So is the story ended.
* We choose to let go of seeing ‘stories’ as what we ARE and let God direct us.
⁴Let this day bring the last chapter closer to the world, that everyone may learn the tale he reads of terrifying destiny, defeat of all his hopes, his pitiful defense against a vengeance he can not escape, is but his own deluded fantasy.
* The following is what we EACH become in the Atonement, and NO earthly certification is required. You will be directed by the Holy Spirit and be purified and humbled along the way. Even if it is only in prayer and holding the ‘space’ for the truth that you are asked to do, it is important! And no one can take your particular place in this work.
⁵God’s ministers have come to waken him from the dark dreams this story has evoked in his confused, bewildered memory of this distorted tale.
⁶God’s Son can smile at last, on learning that it is not true.
15. Today we practice in a form we will maintain for quite a while. ²We will begin each day by giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible. ³Five minutes now becomes the least we give to preparation for a day in which salvation is the only goal we have. ⁴Ten would be better; fifteen better still. ⁵And as distraction ceases to arise to turn us from our purpose, we will find that half an hour is too short a time to spend with God. ⁶Nor will we willingly give less at night, in gratitude and joy.
16. Each hour adds to our increasing peace, as we remember to be faithful to the Will we share with God. ²At times, perhaps, a minute, even less, will be the most that we can offer as the hour strikes.
³Sometimes we will forget. ⁴At other times the business of the world will close on us, and we will be unable to withdraw a little while, and turn our thoughts to God.
* This has become a “walking-meditation” in my life.
17. Yet when we can, we will observe our trust as ministers of God, in hourly remembrance of our mission and His Love.
²And we will quietly sit by and wait on Him and listen to His Voice, and learn what He would have us do the hour that is yet to come; while thanking Him for all the gifts He gave us in the one gone by.
* I in the hour just passed.
18. In time, with practice, you will never cease to think of Him, and hear His loving Voice guiding your footsteps into quiet ways, where you will walk in true defenselessness.
* Amen.
²For you will know that Heaven goes with you.
* Yes, how I see myself, regardless of “my story.”
³Nor would you keep your mind away from Him a moment, even though your time is spent in offering salvation to the world.
⁴Think you He will not make this possible, for you who chose to carry out His plan for the salvation of the world and yours?
19. Today our theme is our defenselessness.
* Which we find in FULL ACCEPTANCE of the Atonement or release of the idea that we could be separated from God in any way.
²We clothe ourselves in it, as we prepare to meet the day.
³We rise up strong in Christ, (*AS A PART OF CHRIST) and let our weakness disappear, as we remember that His strength abides in us.
⁴We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day, and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength.
⁵We call upon His strength each time we feel the threat of our defenses undermine our certainty of purpose.
* Father, may the leaders of the world find this within. Amen.
⁶We will pause a moment, as He tells us, “I am here.”
20. Your practicing will now begin to take the earnestness of love, to help you keep your mind from wandering from its intent.
²Be not afraid nor timid.
³There can be no doubt that you will reach your final goal.
⁴The ministers of God can never fail, because the love and strength and peace that shine from them to all their brothers come from Him.
* It is God that is doing this, not us and we will feel this as will those we wish to serve.
⁵These are His gifts to you.
⁶Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return.
⁷You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness.
* Amen, and so it is.
(ACIM, W-153.1:1–20:7)
Till next time, God bless, debi.
Freedom Principles; At-One-Meant Now 
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