 We continue today with chapter 9. Grandeur versus 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. When this occurs, even though it does not understand it, the ego believes that its, quote, enemy has struck and attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its, quote, protection. Self-inflation is of the ego. It 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 when you decide not to tolerate self-abasement and seek relief. Then it offers you the illusion of attack as a, quote, solution. The ego does not understand the difference between grandeur and grandiosity because it sees no difference between miracle impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. I told you that the ego is aware of threat to its existence but makes no distinctions between these two very different kinds of threat. Its profound sense of vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment except in terms of attack. When the ego 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. 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 you will give up all investment in it. Grandiosity 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 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. 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 coexist nor is it possible for them to alternate. Littleness and grandiosity can and must alternate 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 and pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles and will therefore deprive you of the true witness as 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 in 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 nor prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely is. Ask the Holy Spirit what it is and he will tell you. Be afraid of his answer because 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 what you are so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is and from the workbook Lesson 72 Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation. While we have recognized that the ego's plan for salvation is the opposite of God's we have not yet emphasized that it is an active attack on his plan and a deliberate attempt to destroy it. In the attack God has assigned the attributes which are actually associated with the ego while the ego appears to take on the attributes of God. The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of that wish for it is that wish that seems to surround the mind keeping it separate and alone and unable to reach other minds except through the body that was made to imprison it. The limit on communication cannot be the best means to expand communication yet the ego would have you believe that it is. Although the attempt to keep the limitations that a body would impose is obvious here it is perhaps not so apparent that holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation but let us consider the kinds of things you are apt to hold grievances for. Are they not always associated with something a body does? A person says something you do not like. He does something that displeases you. He, quote, betrays his hostile thoughts in his behavior. You are not dealing here with what a person is. On the contrary you are exclusively concerned with what he does in a body. You are doing more than failing to help in freeing him from the body's limitations. You are actively trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him and judging them as one. Herein is God attacked for if his son is only a body, so must he be as well. A creator wholly unlike his creation is inconceivable. If God is a body, what must his plan for salvation be? What could it be but death? In trying to present himself as the author of life and not of death, he is a liar and a deceiver full of false premises and offering illusions in place of truth. A body's apparent reality makes this view of God quite convincing. In fact, if the body were real it would be difficult indeed to escape this conclusion and every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It overlooks entirely what your brother is. It reinforces your belief that he is a body and condemns him for it and it asserts that his salvation must be death projecting this attack onto God and holding him responsible for it. To this carefully prepared arena where angry animals seek for prey and mercy cannot enter the ego comes to save you. God made you a body very well. Let us accept this and be glad. As a body do not let yourself that body offers. Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation. This is the universal belief of the world you see. Some hate the body and try to hurt and humiliate it. Others love the body and try to glorify and exalt it. But while the body stands at the center of your concept of yourself you are attacking God's plan for salvation and holding your grievances against him and his creation that you may not hear the voice of truth and welcome it as friend. Your chosen savior takes his place instead. It is your friend. He is your enemy. We will try today to stop these senseless attacks of your salvation. We will try to welcome it instead. Your upside down perception has been ruinous to your peace of mind. You have seen yourself in a body and the truth outside you locked away from your awareness by the body's limitations. Now we are going to try to see this differently. The light of truth is in us where it was placed by God. It is outside us and is not our concern. To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. To see our self as separate from the body is to end the attack on God's plan for salvation and to accept it instead. And wherever his plan is accepted it is accomplished already. Our goal in the longer practice periods today is to become aware that God's plan for salvation has already been accomplished in us. To achieve this goal we must replace attack with acceptance. As long as we attack it we cannot understand what God's plan for us is. We are therefore attacking this place. Now we are going to try to lay judgment aside and ask what God's plan for us is. What is salvation father? I do not know. Tell me that I may understand. Then we will wait in quiet for his answer. We have attacked God's plan for salvation without waiting to hear what it is. God at our grievances so loudly that we have not listened to his voice. We have used our grievances to close our eyes and stop our ears. Now we would see and hear and learn what is salvation father? Ask and you will be answered. Seek and you will find. We are no longer asking the ego what salvation is and where to find it. We are asking it of truth. Be certain then that the answer will be true because of whom you ask. Whenever you feel your confidence wane in your hope of success flicker and go out repeat your question and your request remembering that you are asking of the infinite creator of infinity who created you himself. What is salvation father? I do not know. Tell me that I may understand. He will answer. Be determined to hear. One or perhaps two shorter practice periods an hour will be enough for today since they will be somewhat longer than usual. These exercises should begin with this. Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation. Let me accept it instead. What is salvation father? Then wait a minute or so in silence preferably with your eyes closed and listen for his answer. Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation. We ask our father in heaven what is salvation? We ask to be shown. We ask to behold salvation in our mind. We began the day with a text and a clear distinction between the grandeur of God versus the grandiosity of the ego. The grandeur of God is truth. The grandiosity is pride. Ego pride the ego puffing itself up trying to overcome a sense of meaninglessness and despair and loneliness. We will not let the ego tempt us with any of its other gifts of the world. We sink deep inside today opening to the glory and the grandeur who we are as God created us. We will not fall into despair the despair of pursuing a self-concept that God did not create. Today we want grandeur to return to our awareness. We have always been grandeur. Today we desire to be aware of our identity of the grandeur of our identity. We lay aside all thoughts of grandiosity competitiveness attack We lay aside all feelings of suspiciousness all feelings of viciousness and sink deep into the peace that passeth the understanding of the world. The ego could never understand the difference between grandeur and grandiosity because the ego cannot understand God or love. The ego perceives grandeur as a threat because the ego is grandiosity. But we open to the experience of grandeur as strength strength in God. From our grandeur we can only bless because our grandeur is our abundance. Littleness and grandiosity are the same even though grandiosity can puff itself up with pride. Grandiosity is little because it falls far short of the grandeur and the magnitude of spirit. Today we open up and our grandiosity is protected by holding grievances believing our brother our sister is a body yet if we perceive our brother and sister as a body we will perceive ourselves as a body God is not a body Christ is not a body God Christ our spirit we cannot limit our perception of ourselves to the body we must open to the happy dream of forgiveness the real world in which we look upon the world completely anew. We were given a beautiful example in the workbook today that holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation holding grievances is an active attack on God's plan for salvation holding grievances is an active attempt to not be aware of forgiveness and then we are told that these attack thoughts these grievances are always associated with something a body does a person says something you do not like he does something that displeases you he betrays his hostile thoughts and his behavior Jesus reminds us you are not dealing here with what the person is on the contrary you are exclusively concerned with what he does in a body you are doing more than feeling to help him freeing him from the body's limitations you are actively trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him and judging them as one so if I perceive my brother my sister as a body I am judging my brother my sister I am confusing the body with my brother my sister herein is God attacked or if his son is only a body so must he be as well a creator wholly unlike his creation is inconceivable this is the basis for forgiveness God is love God is spirit God creates like God Christ is love Christ is spirit the creation is like the creator spirit eternal changeless forever always to perceive anything anyone as a body to perceive one's self as a body is a denial of spirit so today we let go of attachment in the body we accept that every grievance that we hold insist that the body is real every grievance that is held overlooks entirely what our brother and sister truly is because it overlooks the spirit and reinforces the belief that he or she is a body grievances are condemnations so today we are grateful to remember I am spirit I am invulnerable as spirit I cannot attack or be attacked such is the truth we are reminded of this today as we share this lesson holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation Amen