Self-defense doesn’t actually add to my value.  Insisting that someone yield to me on the sidewalk, or whilst driving, or in a queue, these offensive moves do not actually accumulate the feeling of value I mean for them to purchase for me.  Victims are very vulnerable to this mistaken form of adding value.

As a victim I am quickly offended.  I imagine myself very grown up in standing up for myself no matter the circumstances.  I don’t want to seem weak.  I won’t submit to anyone.  I’m not going to be raped, again.  Her I am, running through life pointing fingers, whining, accusing, gleefully cataloging offenses, spending hours, days, years composing the perfect litany of arguments in my head; I’m common, bored, and boring, certainly angry, and worst of all, I’m failing to live.  (Billy Joel’s Angry Young Man song)

All of my justifiable indignation and entitled behavior is my effort at redeeming the value that I thought I lost when I became a porn star at the age of 3.  What I am doing, anytime I defend my self, is hurting my soul.  It’s just anger in a different form, this need to defend.  Self-defense accomplishes one thing – it fills your life with conflict.

My soul lost no value that first night when I was 3.  My unblemished soul walked out of my childhood with me, safe.  My soul never felt fear, never felt small, never felt anything but the intense attachment it will always have to God.

In order for my soul to be safe forever I have to starve the alpha predator of my self. All emotional and social self-defense (and most fiscal defense) is at the expense of the soul.  I cannot permit self defense because I need to avoid the ultimate consequence of a lifetime of angry self-defense: hell.  That’s the place where my soul begins to feel, begins to suffer.  I don’t want to know that place where God is not.

The crucifixion image, a naked man hanging, in public, condemned, mocked, betrayed, and abandoned, is the perfect image of humiliated helplessness.  This is the victim’s worst nightmare.  We already know how that feels.  My own physical, social, and emotional helplessness is a perfect visual in my minds’ eye.  One of the most hair-raising details I recalled many years ago is that, nightly as I get into bed, I involuntarily raise my pelvis upward to facilitate things (that would about to be done to me).

It’s wiffleball for me to use this personal history, this immaculate justification for my needs.  Me, me, me.  I need you to stop doing this.  I stalk over to a stranger, tell them to move, or to stop.  I stare with righteous fury at my husband or son screaming, “You hurt me.”  I walk into the world demanding, unbending, thinking I’m strong.  I need you to apologize, to acknowledge.  I need to have things arranged precisely this way……all self-defense.  I need, I need.

No.  No.  I don’t need.  No one needs anything from anyone.

The crucified Godson symbolizes utter submission.  He’s staring at me in a million churches; he’s hanging on a billion neckchains; it’s no accident, this ubiquitous image.

I am going to experience dominance, trespass, and insult daily for the rest of my life. There are needy people, aggressive people, and immoral people in every place I am.  Am I meant to submit to them?  Am I meant to just bend over for their petty needs?  Am I meant to be a helpless victim?

I am.

The soul doesn’t need to win.  There is no scarcity of love, mercy, truth, or dignity.  There is the delusion that sits like a fog over this realm, the delusion that diminished value is conferred on me by those who supersede me. No one has that power.

My value today remains exactly as it was when I was made.  My value is a constant.  Think of the errand of adding value to your soul as similar to making the color red more red, or making a dog more a dog – impossible.  For God, I’m worth everything.  Whilst this is true, it’s a worthless cliché, and of no real power to assist in redemption.

How can I express/know/feel my value?  In exactly the meek submission that seems like, looks like, and feels like total loss and failure.  Submit to know God.  God (strength, truth, dignity) that’s Who’s under the yucky, icky it, under the humiliating act of submission, hiding inside of it, like this elephant hiding on the head of the toothpick you were about to toss into a wastebasket.

Conscious, fearless, hateless submission is the opposite of humiliated helplessness.  Inside of a person who has learnt submission, were you able to reach in and try to press the immortal core of that person, you’d find impenetrable diamond strength, inconceivable strength, the kind of strength that can withstand any threat, any loss.  They don’t bend.  Their yes is the yes of a million years.  Their no needs no modifier, no amplification.  The door opens or closes quietly, permanently.

The territory I can, and must, occupy is not physical.  The territory which demands the best of my time, attention, and energy is my soul.  I gain nothing when I step on you.  If you step on me, and I fight back, I lose.  But if you step on me and I bless you, not a curse disguised as blessing, but an actual blessing, then transcendence happens and I know and see God better than I did a moment before.  That’s total joy, ultimate liberty, and the only prize that I can actually take with me when I die.

You want to hurt me because you’re in pain.  So you attack me physically or socially, or you steal from me in some way.  You cause chaos and you want to spread that chaos so you’re not alone in your pain. You try to smear your chaos on me, you try to infect me, you try to make me sorry, angry, and in pain too.  But I look you in the eyes without fear, without hatred, and choose to bless you.  Then I return to the meaningful work or play in which I am engaged, with people I love and choose to love.  I know God more deeply each time.  In the aftermath I am connected more to the source of true love, and I get the one and only thing I need – love.  I can have what I need right now, every moment, forever.  This secret is like picking up 20 carat diamonds off the ground that no one else can even perceive.

Self-defense is merely self-gratification with a pretty name.  Defense of self is a wicked distraction and ultimately a torment.  Submit to the injustice, to the aggression, because none of it matters, none of it touches anything of value to you.  Meekness costs you nothing to endure and wins you everything.  The secret backside of humble conscious, fearless, hateless submission is what instantly becomes known in your heart:  I am loved, fantastically, desperately, perfectly, by the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings.

Don’t resist.  Know this: there is no trespass.  They can’t hurt you.  Accept it all and you’ll see it’s not a trap but a wide-open space full of life, life!