Who would attempt to defend themself unless they thought they were attacked, that the attack was real, and that their own defense could save them? And herein lies the folly of defense: it gives illusions the status of reality, and then attempts to handle them as if they were real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly complex. And it is this you do when you attempt to bring forward the past, control the present, or plan the future.

They who defend operate from the belief that they must protect themselves from what is happening because it must contain what threatens them. A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness, a belief that there is danger that has power to hurt, thus demanding that appropriate defense be made. The world is based on this disturbed belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders, and its idols and gods, all serve merely to preserve its sense of threat. For everyone who walks the world in defense must have fear striking at their heart.

Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. They who defend think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of terror made real and fear justified. Is it not strange that those who defend do not pause to ask, as they elaborate their plans and make their armor thicker and their locks tighter, what they defend, and how, and against what?

Let us consider first what they defend. It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself, and needing their defense. What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? What but the body, misunderstood, falters and must fail to serve the Child of the Divine as worthy host?

Yet it is not the body that can fear, or be a thing to fear. The body rightly understood has no needs but those that are assigned to it. It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care, and no concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it appear attractive through its eyes or walls to make it safe, and you are simply stating that your chosen home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.

This image is indeed fearful. Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with this way of serving you except your own beliefs? It is your mind that gave the body all the functions that you look upon in it, and set its value far beyond a little compilation of dust and water that has been animated for a time. Who would make defense of something that they recognized as this?

The body needs no defense. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it roles it cannot fill, purposes beyond its scope, and exalted aims that it cannot accomplish. Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make in defense of your body, and upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values, and your dreams.

This “self” you have projected onto the body that needs such elaborate protection is not real. The body, valueless in Eternity and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite distinct from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate and communicate within Spirit’s Guidance until the body’s usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and you cast your mind into delusion. For you will have perceived in your mind the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not have perceived the mind as free from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, apart from other minds, and separate from its Source.

These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with Truth. This is the body’s only real defense. Yet is this where you turn for its defense? Or do you offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but that merely adds to your distress of mind? Such does not heal, but merely takes away the hope of healing, for it fails to understand where hope must be if it be meaningful.

A healed mind does not “make plans.” It carries out the Plans that it receives through listening to Wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has learned what is well or best to do, and then proceeds to do it. Even in those situations where one has accepted responsibility and therefore should and must organize and direct, the healed mind does not depend upon itself for anything except its trust in its adequacy to fulfill the functions and plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles cannot impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the greater Plan established for the good of everyone.

A healed mind is relieved from the burden of believing that it can plan and control, understanding that it cannot know the outcome that is best for everyone involved, the means by which this is achieved, nor even how to recognize the problem that any Plan given by Spirit is made to solve. An unhealed mind must burden the body in its plans until it recognizes that this is so. But when it understands that it doesn’t know, then it can be healed as it releases the body from being the focus of its concerns.

Binding the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. The body then is not free to be a means of helping in the Plan that far exceeds its own protection, and that needs its service for a little while. But only in this capacity is its health assured. For everything the mind employs for this Purpose will function flawlessly, and with the Strength that has been given it, and cannot fail.

It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are merely defenses, with the purpose all defenses are made to fulfill. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of Truth. The self-deception involved is not difficult to perceive in some forms that these defenses take, in which the denial of Reality is very obvious. Yet planning is often unrecognized as a defense. In fact, all self defenses are the plans you undertake to defend against the Truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your true reality that is the “threat” that your defenses would obscure and keep away.

The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions. From these provisions it believes it can also control the present, an idea that renders the present already past.

In planning, the future is emphasized instead of the present, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. Such planning overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea that the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course. The mind that plans is thus bypassing the only time when the fundamental change of mind required for awakening can be accomplished, which is now. Instead, what it has learned previously becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice of what it wants to happen next. And it does not perceive that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and false beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all in such a future, for present confidence directs the way.

It may be suggested that it is wise to be prepared for what may come in the future, and that such preparation is a form of planning. This Course has said that careful preparation is indeed wise when one’s intention is to directly approach the Divine, for otherwise awe will surely be confused with fear. And such preparation is naturally part of our curriculum. But this preparation involves learning to be miracle- and revelation-ready in the present, not planning for an unknown future. Your future is known by One who has planned everything needed for your awakening and Happiness. This plan is the Atonement—the Divine’s Plan of Awakening. The only preparation needed to complete your readiness for the Divine and fulfill your part in Its Plan is to let your defenses be laid aside. In this way your readiness will certainly become mastery as you allow time to be wisely used on your behalf.

Think a moment on this:

 

What could 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?

 

Perhaps you misunderstood Its Plan in the past, for It would never offer pain to you. But your defenses, including your planning, did not let you see Its loving Blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, It led you gently toward eternal Life.

Your present trust in It is the only defense that promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with Joy which constantly increases as this life becomes a Holy Instant, set in time, but heeding only Immortality. Let no defenses, preparations or plans, but only your present trust, direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the Truth that your defenses would only conceal.

Without defenses you become a Light that Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be Its Own. And this Light will lead you on in ways appointed for your Happiness according to the ancient Plan of Atonement, begun when time was born. Your sisters and brothers will join their Light with yours, and It will be increased until the world is lighted up with Joy. And gladly will our sisters and brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses that availed them nothing and could only terrify.

We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of what has been planned for us. We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no preparations or plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the Truth to dawn upon our minds with Certainty.

For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every thought that blocks the Truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give our presence instead of prepare for our future. And we are given truly as we say:

 

“If I defend my self, I defend against my holy Self.

But in trust and defenselessness I will be strong,

and I will learn what my defenses were intended to hide.”

 

Nothing but that. As you listen and receive, if there are any aspects of the Plan you need to be aware of for the part you are to play, you will be told of them. They may not be the aspects you thought were needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems that you thought confronted you. But they are answers to another kind of question that remains unanswered, yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.

All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. And in the Light and Joy of simple Truth, you will wonder why you ever thought you must defend yourself from Release. Heaven asks nothing. It is the nightmare of separation that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you truly are.

Your Creator has remembered you. Today we will remember It. For this is a time of resurrection in your journey of awakening, and you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness. Now is the Light of Hope born anew in you, for now you come without defense to learn the part for you within the Plan of the Divine. What little plans or magic thoughts can still have value when you have received your function from the Voice of the Divine Itself?

Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. For you cannot conceive of all the Happiness that comes to you without your planning. Learn today. And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate the time of resurrection with you.

Throughout the day, as trivial things appear to raise defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving preparations and plans, remind yourself that this is a unique day for learning, and acknowledge it with this:

 

“This is a time of resurrection, and I would keep it holy.

I will not plan a possible future or otherwise defend myself,

because the Children of the Divine need no plans or other defenses against

the Truth of their reality.”