LESSON ONE HUNDRED-FIFTY-THREE

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: The Course text is in bold face. The Guidance is in normal type In His Guidance, He has asked Me to capitalize the pronouns You and We as an acknowledgement of the Divinity of All of Us, an acknowledgement of Equality, an expression of His Love and respect for You. When You see the word ‘YOU’ capitalized in the Guidance, know that He is not just speaking to YOU, He is honoring YOU.

L e s s o n  153

In my defenselessness my safety lies.

At first these words seem paradoxical, such a contradiction.  Defense is the ego’s constant stance.  Yet once again I will remind You that You are not an ego.  You are the Son of God.  And thus You are invincible.

This is the Truth.  I never lie to You.

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 well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack and all its “gifts” of seeming safety are illusory deceptions.

Yet horror that it is, to most of You it is Your home, for You know no other.  The idea that Home and Heaven are synonymous seems to You preposterous.  Yet it is the Truth.

You cannot fix the world, for it was flawed from its seeming inception created by plural gods.₁   (Being that it was an attack on God, how could it possibly be otherwise?

Since it was created by attack, how could anything but attack be the modus operandi?

It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus.

This is why sleep had to be invented.  Twenty-four seven of attack was just too overwhelming.  Oblivion became necessary.

² The world gives rise but to defensiveness.

Possibilities for harm are endless.  Get into Your shower, You might slip and kill Yourself.  Get into Your car, You might have an accident.  Go to work, You may be criticized or fired.  Walk to school, You might be molested.  Danger is everywhere!  Thus speaks the ego.  Shut it up!

That is not the Life that God is giving You; right here and right now You are Spirit.  And Spirit is invincible!  No ‘kryptonite’ can harm You, for You are more than Superman or Superwoman.  You are the Son of God.  And the Son of God is Eternal Spirit.  You are forever!

The world is always telling You a different story:  You are fragile.  Your life can be snapped in two – ending You.

All it does is end Your participation in the current dream and make Your loved Ones miserable.  Unless You’re rich and They’re waiting for You to kick the bucket.

And so called ‘dying’ doesn’t even end the drama for You, for most choose to dive back into another dream that seems just as real as the one that You have escaped.  Both just as real and just as threatening.

For threat brings anger, anger makes attack seem reasonable, honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self defense.

So much for ‘dying’, for somewhere You know that there’s no escape but Awakening.  Thus You always are on the defensive.

Yet is defensiveness a double threat. For it attests to weakness and sets up a system of defense that cannot work. – Your mind already knows this, and You feel hopeless and helpless.  You, the Son of God. – Now are the weak still further undermined, for there is treachery without and still a greater treachery within. – The fear is overwhelming!  You don’t know where to turn for help. – The mind is now confused and knows not where to turn to find escape from its imaginings.

So is life without the Holy Spirit.

A bad idea was the separation.  And there seems to be no way out of fear.

³ It is as if a circle held it fast, wherein another circle bound it, and another in that one, until escape no longer can be hoped for nor obtained. Attack, 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. There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of imprisonment upon the mind.

From this mental state, so terrified, springs almost universal anxiety.  There seems to be no rest for the weary.

⁴ Defenses are the costliest of all the prices which the ego would exact. In them lies madness in a form so grim that hope of sanity seems but to be an idle dream, beyond the possible. – For defenses but make the threats seems real. For whyo would defend Himself against phantasmagoria? – The 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. You are its slave. You know not what you do in fear of it. You do not understand how much you have been made to sacrifice who feel its iron grip upon your heart.

For You do remember not the happiness it was before the separation.

⁵ You do not realize what you have done to sabotage the holy peace of God by your defensiveness. For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams, and by illusions he has made; yet helpless he is in their presence, needful only of defense by still more fantasies and dreams by which illusions of his safety comfort him.

Why do You choose to stay within the dream?

⁶ Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you. Perhaps you will recall the course maintains that choice is always made between His strength and your own weakness seen apart from Him. 

Is not the solution then to cleave to the Holy Spirit?   The question is but rhetorical, for You know that it is.

Defenselessness 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.

Tired children does describe all Dreamers.

⁷ Defensiveness is weakness. It proclaims you have denied the Christ and come to fear His Father’s anger. What can save you now from your delusion of an angry god – the one which the ego has very cleverly invented – whose fearful image you believe you see at work in all the evils of the world? What but illusions could defend you now, when it is but illusions which you fight?

Even to read this, You find confusing.

⁸ We will not play such childish games today.

What a relief will that be for You, like laying down a very heavy burden.

For our true purpose is to save the world, and we would not exchange for foolishness the endless joy our function offers us.

This is not some lofty ideal about which We can write an ode or poem.  It is about giving those so trapped in the dream – including You – their way to freedom and to happiness.  For I do will that You All be happy.

We 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.

Today We turn from dreaming to the Truth with all Its freedom.

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. Now we cannot fear, for we have left all fearful thoughts behind. And in defenselessness we stand secure, serenely certain of our safety now, sure of salvation; sure we will fulfil our chosen purpose as our ministry extends its holy blessing through the world.

Does this still seem an impossible dream?  Listen carefully:

¹⁰ Be still a moment, and in silence think how holy is your purpose, how secure you rest, untouchable within its light.

Reach out and take My hand, and We will do this together until You do understand how True are My words, how very Holy is Our mission.

God’s ministers have chosen that the truth be with them. – They must be the living Truth for All their Sisters and Brothers. – Who is holier than they?

What does make Them Holy except their willingness to be so.

Who could be surer that his happiness is fully guaranteed? And who could be more mightily protected? What defense could possibly be needed now by those who are among the chosen ones of God by His election and their own as well?

What makes Some the “chosen ones of God” but their own choosing!  For surely God does not favor One over the Other, for He Loves each One of Us with equal fervor.

You are included.

¹¹ It is the function of God’s ministers to help their brothers choose as they have done.

For Every One is both Loved and chosen.

God has elected all, but few have come to realize His Will is but their own.

For the ego has made God out to be a person, and then resists listening to this super ‘man’, another person.

And this would be legitimate but for the fact that God is not a person.  He is Love Infinite and so are You.  God is the state of Consciousness where All Things are Joined as One, and All Things equal.

It is the Love that Loves Us All, the Source of What We Are.

We are All precious.  We are All special.

Every One is worthy of all We have to give.   Withhold no Gifts at all from any of Your Brothers.  “Freely ye have received, so freely give.

And while you fail to teach what you have learned, salvation waits and darkness holds the world in grim imprisonment. Nor will you learn that light has come to you, and your escape has been accomplished. For you will not see the light until you offer it to all your brothers. As they take it from your hands, so will you recognize it as your own.

It is in giving that We do receive.  Nowhere is this truth more obvious than in the Wakening of the Son of God.

¹² Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play. It 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. His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser. Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain to everyone ensured. The game of fear is gladly laid aside when children come to see the benefits salvation brings.

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. That game is over. Now 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 pause but for a moment more to play our final happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless.

¹⁴ So is the story ended. Let this day bring the last chapter closer to the world that everyone may learn the tales he reads of terrifying destiny, defeat of all his hopes, his pitiful defense against a vengeance he can not escape, are but his own deluded fantasies. God’s ministers have come to waken him from the dark dreams this story has evoked in his confused, bewildered memory of this distorted tale. God’s Son can smile at last on learning that it is not true.

And that “God’s Son” is You.  Each One of You.

¹⁵ Today we practice in a form we will maintain for quite a while. We will begin each day by giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible. Five minutes now becomes the least we give to preparation for a day in which salvation is the only goal we have. Ten would be better; 15 better still. And 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. Nor 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. At times, perhaps, a minute, even less, will be the most that we can offer as the hour strikes. Sometimes we will forget. At 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.

¹⁷ Yet when we can, we will observe our trust as ministers of God in hourly remembrance of our mission and His Love. And 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.

Life in the dream has been lived without God as constant Companion.  As We Awaken, We know Him as ever-present Love.

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, for you will know that Heaven goes with you. Nor would you keep your mind away from Him a moment, even though your time is spent in offering salvation to the world. Think you He will not make this possible for you who chose to carry out His plan for the salvation of the world and yours?

God goes as Me wherever I do go.

¹⁹ Today our theme is our defenselessness. We clothe ourselves in it as we prepare to meet the day. We rise up strong in Christ and let our weakness disappear as we remember that His strength abides in us. We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength.

²⁰ We call upon His strength each time we feel the threat of our defenses undermine our certainty of purpose. We will pause a moment as He tells us, “I am here.” Your practicing will now begin to take the earnestness of love to help you keep your mind from wandering from its intent.

Are You grasping the joyous possibilities that come from taking these Lessons seriously?  Could You do anything that’s more important?

²¹ Be not afraid nor timid. There can be no doubt that you will reach your final goal. The ministers of God can never fail because the love and strength and peace that shine from them to all their brothers come from Him. These are His gifts to you. Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. You lay aside but what was never real to look on Christ and see His sinlessness.

When You look with Christ’s eyes of Love, You will see sinlessness in every Brother’s face.

*~*~*~*~*

¹ Despite beliefs and translation to the contrary, the literal translation of the very beginning of the Bible reads: “In the beginning gods created the heavens and the earth.”  Or: As the source, gods created the heavens and the earth.

[Thank you Dear Brother]

*Sun~Rose is the scribe of the recently published book, “YOU ARE LOVED AND SAFE: PREP NOTES FOR EXPERIENCING GOD’S LOVE“, Jesus’ Guidance on the Miracle Principles

She is also author of, “RADIANT LIFE: RAW FOOD AND THE PRESENCE OF LOVE”

BOTH now available on amazon.com