Lesson 26, My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability
Today’s workbook lesson says, “…what would have effects through you must also have effects on you. It is this law that will ultimately save you, but you are misusing it now. You must therefore learn how it can be used for your own best interests.”
This is referring to the Law of Love, which we learned about in NTI Ephesians last week. The mind receives an idea. If we cast attention on it, we activate it and deliver it to our oneness (which ACIM calls projection). What we deliver, we also receive.
That can also be summed up with, “What I think I see (project); What I see, I experience; What I experience, I think.” Etc.
Let’s first review the law of Love then we’ll look at how the attack thoughts are simply a misuse of the law. Regina Dawn Akers describes the law in this way: “Love is Spirit giving to Spirit, through Spirit, that which Spirit requests.” NTI Ephesians reminds us that although we think of ourselves as separate from one another, we are one through the law of Love:
Through this law, the ones that seem many are one. And in fact, they have always been one, as they are bound as one through the law. … Through Christ all are bound together and there is no separateness, this is the law of Love. This is what you are. You are inseparable from it.
In teaching us this lesson, Jesus specifically points to what the Course calls attack thoughts. Attack thoughts are very simply a way of maintaining your belief in yourself as a separate individual. By projecting my attack thoughts onto something or someone “outside of me,” I continue to create a world where I am both guilty of and subject to attack. Thus, Jesus points out that my attack thoughts cause me to fear attacks. This is the misuse of the law of Love.
Because your attack thoughts will be projected, you will fear attack. And if you fear attack, you must believe that you are not invulnerable. Attack thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are. Attack thoughts and invulnerability cannot be accepted together. They contradict each other.
As we saw in the tip for yesterday’s lesson, everything is for my own best interest. When we withdraw the meaning we would give, we find that everything that happens within the tapestry of this world is all being used to bring remembrance of the one true desire, which is to recognize that which we are. And not to get too circular, but that which we are is the law of Love or inseparable oneness!
Okay, but what do the practice lessons have to do with attack thoughts and my vulnerability? Jesus tells us:
Practice with today’s idea will help you to understand that vulnerability or invulnerability is the result of your own thoughts. Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so.
If we do the lesson and do it thoroughly, we will find out that our misplaced and projected fears are going to show us how we are attacking ourselves. Mine went something like this: I’m concerned that it is raining again today. I am afraid that if it continues to rain like it has for the past month it will only exacerbate the problems we are having at work with supplying wooden pallets and products to our customers. The customers are already shouting from the roof tops, “You aren’t giving me all I need as fast as I need it!” I’m afraid the stress of trying to decide which customers should have their orders filled and which customers will have to wait and the work and decision making that scenario entails would put my management employees over the top. I’m afraid those employees might quit. I am afraid I couldn’t operate the business without them. I am afraid I’m not good enough to continue the business in their absence. I’m afraid I’m not good enough.
You see, I blamed (attacked) everything and everyone from the rain, to my customers, to my people in management for my own thoughts of vulnerability. This blame, attack or judgement “that you make assumes something within illusion is real. Judgement accepts as real and then separates.”
NTI Luke 6 tells us how to escape this loop of attack and defense:
The world is a great temptation for you, because the world was made as a distraction from truth. Everything in the world is not truth, and yet you want to make sense of it and make it real. To the degree that you can let go of the world and not be concerned about it, that is to the degree that you can accept healing. And to the degree that you are involved in the world and taking care of its many problems, that is to the degree that you reject healing as the answer to its problems.
Healing comes from pulling back and dis-identifying from those attack thoughts (resting, accepting and trusting). It is coming to know these attack thoughts aren’t real thoughts. They are just misplaced, projected thoughts that we have about ourselves because we believe we are separate. Because our true identity is in our oneness as the Son of God, we receive as we ask. With this knowledge, we have both the motivation and the tools needed to escape from the cycle of attack and defense.
