April 01, 2018

Day 104 - A Course in Miracles

Day 104 - A Course in Miracles



Chapter Nine: The Correction of Error

VII. Grandeur Versus Grandiosity

48 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?

49 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.

50 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.

51 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.

52 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 mind, 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.

53 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.

54 Truth and littleness are denials of each other because grandeur is truth. Truth does not vacillate; it is alwaystrue. 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 areexalted. And in your exalted state, you seek others like you and rejoice with them.

55 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.

56 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.

57 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 cannotreplace 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.

58 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.




Workbook - L e s s o n 104

I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

1 Today's idea continues with the thought that joy and peace are not but idle dreams. They are your right because of what you are. They come to you from God, Who cannot fail to give you what He wills. Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. They are not welcomed gladly by a mind which has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.

2 Today we would remove all meaningless and self-made gifts which we have placed upon the holy altar where God's gifts belong. These are the gifts which are our own in truth. His are the gifts which we inherited before time was and which will still be ours when time has passed into eternity.

3 These are the gifts which are within us now, for they are timeless. And we need not wait to have them. They belong to us today. Therefore we will to have them now and know in choosing them in place of what we made we but unite our will with what God wills and recognize the same as being one.

4 Our longer practice periods today, the hourly five minutes given truth for your salvation, should begin with this:

5 I seek but what belongs to me in truth,
And joy and peace are my inheritance.

6 Then lay aside the conflicts of the world that offer other gifts and other goals made of illusions, witnessed to by them, and sought for only in a world of dreams. All this we lay aside and seek instead that which is truly ours, as we ask to recognize what God has given us.

7 We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him. We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth.

8 So do we clear the way for Him today by simply recognizing that His Will is done already and that joy and peace belong to us as His eternal gifts. We will not let ourselves lose sight of them between the times we come to seek for them where He has laid them. This reminder will we bring to mind as often as we can:

9 I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
God's gifts of joy and peace are all I want.



365 Days Through A Course in Miracles
            A Daily Miracle Lesson


             ___________________________________________________


... sharing is fair!


* simple TABLE of CONTENTS! ...  with published posts until this moment.

START DAY: You can begin any time with the Teachings! Read, meditate and make the daily exercises, one by one, every day ... for 365 days! Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, ... until the completion of the 365 lessons!
LOVE, LIGHT & BLESSINGS    ~ SOPHIA ~