Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
For decades, the law-abiding people of this country have been taught to be passive when faced by criminals, particularly if they are armed with a gun. That was also the advice given airline passengers in hijack situations, at least until 9/11 showed us the power of angry passengers who refuse to go to slaughter like sheep. Now we have yet another school shooting in which a nut is able to take target practice on students cowering in justifiable fear for their lives.
Has the time come to change the way we react to these situations? If three men had charged the Virginia Tech shooter, they surely would have been able to take him down, although two of them might have been killed in the attempt. With the shooter down, the rest of the students could swarm him and, hopefully, kill him on the spot.
Shouldn't our schools be teaching students this approach instead of the traditional hide under the desk and hope he shoots someone else tactic? Could it have turned out any worse yesterday? In Columbine?
If the students had started hurling books, laptops, chairs, etc at the shooter as a few brave men went after him, he might not have been able to hit anyone.
I'm not in any way criticizing the students at Virginia Tech. I'm sure they reacted as most of us would have. That's exactly why the schools need to be training students to react differently in the future.
A healed mind does not plan. The body is in need of no defense. Defend the body and you have attacked your mind.
A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense.
The world is based on this insane 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 gods, all serve only to preserve its sense of threat.
Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what?
Let us consider first what you 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 your 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 falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?
What is the body?
The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles.
Within this fence, he thinks he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. Fencing off love, he must identify with the body. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside?
The body will not stay. Yet this is seen as double safety. Proving that the Son of God is impermanent, the body is "proof" it works. It "works" because if the Son's oneness still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked? Who could be a murderer, and who could be a victim? Who could be the victor, and who could be his prey? If the body did not die, what "proof" is there that God's eternal Son can be destroyed?
Made to be fearful, the body must serve the purpose given it...unless its purpose is changed. This is changed by changing what you think it is for. It's original purpose is for attack. There is a non-pun-intended link between arms, and armament.
Bodies are not natural, but they were made for a reason. It's "reason" is reported on the front page headlines. As such, it was made by an unreasonable mind.
Given a new purpose, a body can be the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, the pursuit of hell can be exchanged for the pursuit of the goal of Heaven. With this purpose, the Son of God can extend his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road to Heaven with him. Now the body serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill.
You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you.
Your safety lies in truth, and not in lies.
The body is a hideout from love. As such, it is not home or safe. Identify with love, and you are home, safe. Identify with love, and find your Self.
The body is not a creation...certainly not of God. The body is a dream. Like other dreams it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear. But fear, like the dreams it births, does not exist. It is not the truth. Love creates in truth, and truth can never fear.
Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing of fear. It has no needs but those which you assign 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 beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you admit that your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.
Is not this a fearful picture? Can you be at peace with such a fearful concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would defend a pile of dust and water if he recognized it as such?
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