This morning we'll discuss Lesson 153, "In my defenselessness my safety lies." This is,
in a sense, a sequel to Lesson 135, "If I defend myself I am attacked." What the ego
loves to have us do is to be defensive. When we are defensive, when we get defensive when
somebody criticizes us or corrects us, or is even mildly critical of something we've
done, what we are really doing is we're saying, "I am a sinner and I'm angry because somebody
else is reminding me of my sin," and then I become defensive and I seek to protect myself.
In other words, I seek to defend and protect my defenses, and as long as we do that I continue
to attack myself by seeing myself as a separated ego, seeing myself as a sinful, guilty, fearful
ego, and by making the ego's error real I will never recognize that the whole thing
was a defense (right from the beginning) of choosing against the thought of Atonement
in our right minds that reflects the only truth that there is, the truth of God, the
truth of our undifferentiated unity as a child, a creation of perfect Oneness. As the text
says at one point, "a Oneness joined as One." But when we choose the differentiated self
of the ego and make that real, we then defend against that by making up a non-existent problem,
which is our guilt because guilt tells us we sinned, which never happened, and then
we make guilt so horrendous that we have to escape from it into the world, and then we
defend our body against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," as Hamlet said. All
the terrible things the world that impinge on us, that impose on us, that cause us to
be upset, cause our loved ones to be upset, and so we're continually defending ourselves
against a non-existent problem. And then how could I be ever safe? Because the real problem
is not my body, it's not the protection of my body, it's not all the various locks and
keys that we erected in our world to protect us, because the problem is the mind's decision
for something that never happened, that doesn't exist. So how could I protect something that's
not even there to protect? That's my strength. My strength is the strength of Christ that's
in my right mind, or the memory of the strength of Christ that's in my right mind. Right at
the end of the text Jesus says, "We always choose between our weakness and the strength
of Christ in us." The weakness that is ours is the ego, but it's a weakness that we then
protect with the seeming show of strength; that's what the body is; that's what we think
healthy bodies are. That's what we think anything in this world is; we think it's something
that protects us so we would feel good about ourselves. We seek to protect our bodies;
we seek to protect the bodies of our loved ones. We seek all kinds of medical attention
to keep our body healthy and protect it from disease. On the international arena we try
to protect our race, our religion, our country, our culture, and we wage wars continually
to defend ourselves so that our borders will be safe; our religious tenets will be safe,
our culture will be safe, our bodies will be safe. And all that does...all that does
is reinforce the ego's inherent weakness. It's a weakness because the ego is a thought
that says there is something other than the strength of God. There is something other
than the omnipotent Creator; omnipotent in the sense that there is no other power in
the universe. But by choosing the weakness of the ego as our identity, we then seek to
strengthen that by our various defenses. But when we are defenseless we are saying there's
nothing to defend because the ego is non-existent. So when you seemingly attack me, even though
you're motive may be to attack me, that is your ego; that is your ego's dream; that is
your ego's belief in weakness. What does that have to do with me? It only has to do with
me if I...if my mind chooses to participate in your dream of attack, your dream of seeming
strength. But when I meet your attack on me with defenselessness I am saying, "You might
attack my body but you cannot attack my mind, and my mind is all-powerful; therein lies
my strength; therein lies your strength." Now this does not mean on the level of the
world, the level of the body that I don't defend myself in what the world would judge
as defenses. It simply means whatever I may do that protects me and protects you from
doing something for which you would pay a price (namely your own guilt let alone what
society might exact of you), what I'm really doing is that I'm not calling attention to
my behavior. The peace with which I react, the peace with which I quote/unquote "defend"
myself; that peace is saying, "Nothing you can do can disrupt the peace of God that's
in my mind, and that is my strength, and that is your strength." It's my defenselessness
in the face of what appears to be attack that witnesses to you, to the world, and reinforces
in myself the fact that my true strength is in my mind's power to choose the strength
of God and to choose against the weakness of the ego. And it's my defenselessness, it's
my peace, it's the love that I feel for you (regardless of what you are doing); that's
what demonstrates to you and to me, once again, that the strength of God is my reality, not
the weakness of the ego.