Grandeur
is of God, and only of Him. Therefore, it is in you. Whenever
you become aware of it, however dimly, you abandon the
ego automatically because, in the presence of the grandeur
of God, the meaninglessness of the ego becomes perfectly
apparent. Though it does not understand this, the ego
believes that its “enemy” has struck, and
attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its
“protection.” Self-inflation of the ego is
its alternative to the grandeur of God.
Which
will you choose?
Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. It is without
hope because it is not real. It is an attempt to counteract
your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness
is real. Without this belief grandiosity is meaningless,
and you could not possibly want it. The essence of grandiosity
is competitiveness, because it alwalys involves attack.
It is a delusional attempt to outdo, but not to undo.
We
said before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness
and viciousness. It remains suspicious as long as you
despair of yourself. It shifts to viciousness whenever
you will not tolerate self-abasement and seek relief.
Then it offers you the illusion of attack as a solution.
The
ego does not know the difference between grandeur and
grandiosity because it does not know the difference between
miracle impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. We
once said that the ego IS aware of threat, but does not
make distinctions between two entirely different kinds
of threat to its existence. Its own profound sense of
vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment except
in terms of attack. When it experiences threat, its only
decision is whether to attacknow, or to withdraw to attack
later. If you accept its offer of grandiosity, it will
attack immediately. If you do not, it will wait.
The
ego is immobilized in the presence of God’s grandeur
because His grandeur establishes your freedom. Even the
faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego
from your mind because of complete lack of investment
in it. Grandeur is totally without illusions, and because
it is real, it is compellingly convincing. Yet the conviction
of reality will not remain with you unless you do not
allow the ego to attack it. The ego will make every effort
to recover and mobilize its energies against your release.
It will tell you that you are insane, and argue that grandeur
cannot be a real part of you because of the littleness
in which it believes.
Yet your grandeur is not delusional because you did not
make it. You have made grandiosity and are afraid of it
because it is a form of attack, but your grandeur is of
God, Who created it out of His Love. From your grandeur
you can only bless because your grandeur is your abundance.
By blessing, you hold it in your minds, protecting it
from illusions and keeping yourself in the Mind of God.
Remember
always that you cannot be anywhere except in the Mind
of God. When you forget this, you will despair and you
will attack.
The
ego depends solely on your willingness to tolerate it.
If you are willing to look upon your grandeur you cannot
despair, and therefore you cannot want the ego. Your grandeur
is God’s answer to the ego because it is true. Littleness
and grandeur cannot co-exist, nor is it possible for them
to alternate in your awareness. Littleness and grandiosity
can and must alternate in your awareness since both are
untrue, and are therefore on the same level. Being the
level of shift it is experienced as shifting, and extremes
are its essential characteristic.
Truth and littleness are denials of each other because
grandeur IS truth. Truth does not vacillate; it is always
true. When grandeur slips away from you, you have replaced
it with something you have made. Perhaps it is the belief
in littleness; perhaps it is the belief in grandiosity.
Yet it must be insane because it is not true.
Your
grandeur will never deceive you, but your illusions always
will. Illusions are deceptions. You cannot triumph, but
you are exalted. And in your exalted state you seek others
like you and rejoice with them.
It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity because
love is returned, but pride is not. Pride will not produce
miracles, and therefore will deprive you of your true
witnesses to your reality. Truth is not obscure nor hidden,
but its obviousness to you lies in the joy you bring to
its witnesses, who show it to you. They attest to your
grandeur, but they cannot attest to
pride because pride is not shared. God wants you to behold
what He created because it is His joy.
Can your grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses
to it?
And
what can be real that has no witnesses? What good can
come of it? And if no good can come of it, the Holy Spirit
cannot use it. What He cannot transform to the Will of
God does not exist at all. Grandiosity is delusional because
it is used to replace your grandeur. Yet what God has
created cannot be replaced. God is incomplete without
you because His grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing
from it.
You
are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one
else can fill your part of It, and while you leave your
part of It empty, your eternal place merely waits for
your return. God, through His Voice, reminds you of It,
and God Himself keeps your extensions safe within It.
Yet You do not know them until you return to them.
You
cannot replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace yourself.
God, Who knows your value, would not have it so, and so
it is not so. Your value is in God's Mind, and therefore
not in yours alone. To accept yourself as God created
you cannot be arrogance because it is the denial of arrogance.
To accept your littleness IS arrogant because it means
that you believe your evaluation of yourself is truer
than God’s.
Yet if truth is indivisible your evaluation of yourself
must be God’s. You did not establish your value,
and it needs no defense. Nothing can attack it or prevail
over it. It does not vary. It merely IS. Ask the Holy
Spirit what it is and He will tell you, but do not be
afraid of His answer, for it comes from God. It IS an
exalted answer because of its Source, but the Source is
true and so is Its answer.
Listen
and do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive.
He would have you replace the ego’s belief in littleness
with His own exalted answer to the question of your being,
so that you can cease to question it and know it for what
it is.