The Self-fullfilling Propecy and the Energy Continuum

The Course says, “If I defend myself, I am attacked.” The purpose of defenses is to protect us from fear, yet building a defense reinforces our sense of vulnerability that, along with the perception of danger, justifies our need for defense. Without fear, there is no need for protection, and so having defenses means we are afraid. Thus we see that though the purpose of a defense is to protect us from fear, it only reinforces it. When I believe I need defense, I attack myself by denying I am the invulnerable spiritual being God created me as. If I am one with spirit and all that is, there could be nothing outside me, and certainly nothing that could threaten me. However, when I plan for my defense, I state I am not invulnerable. To the contrary, I say that I am. That is the attack. Defenses do what they would defend.

In terms of the continuum conceptual framework, this means I am not using the continuum as my conceptual framework where everything is one energy in the form of four ‘realms’, but rather I am using the dichotomy conceptual framework, in which distinctions are rigid and absolute, never the twain shall meet, either spirit or matter.

Using the continuum, it is possible to see that all attack is Self attack – attack on my reality as spirit. It cannot be anything else. Arising from your own decision not to be what you are, it is an attack on your identification. Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because when you attack, you must have forgotten what you are.

As long as I use the dichotomy as my conframe, believing I am separated from spirit and living only in a material world, I believe the world is a hostile, threatening place in which I am vulnerable. I must believe this because ideas leave not their source, and with the dichotomy conframe I’m either in a world that is made of non-spiritual material, completely separate from spirit, or a completely non-material world made of spirit. Once the world of the dichotomy is in place in our minds, it is very threatening and we certainly need protection.

But there is an alternative: the continuum. We need not stop living as we do but look at life differently, with a different conframe, through the eyes of spirit, using the continuum as our conceptual framework, instead of the dichotomy. When we are feeling attacked, we can realize that we and only we are responsible, that we’ve done it to ourselves, lost the essential part of our identity by having chosen one side of the dichotomy, then choose to shift to the continuum. Then, once on the continuum, we can give it over to spirit and be guided from within, shifting from the right to the left, letting the specifics of the attack and the very idea of attack itself be handled by spirit. From that reality of wholeness and oneness we can be in the world, the world of the continuum, and be able to make a contribution to a world that works for everyone and everything.