A Course in Miracles

Chapter 9 - Grandeur vs Grandiosity

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 always 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 attack now, or
• to withdraw to attack later.

If you accept its offer of grandiosity, it will attack immediately.

If you do not, it will wait.

Grandeur is Totally Without Illusions

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 its 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 soley 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

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.

Accept Yourself As God Created You

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 Gods'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.