Introduction, P 2

2 God created nothing beside you and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him can exist? Nothing beyond Him can happen, because nothing except Him is real. Your creations add to Him as you do, but nothing is added that is different because everything has always been. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real if you are God’s only creation and He created you eternal? Your holy mind establishes everything that happens to you. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind determines your perception of it.

Journal

I am as God created me, and I am this eternally without exception. I am like God because God created me like Him. Nothing that is unlike God exists. “Nothing beyond Him can happen, because nothing except Him is real.” So all the things I see and do and believe cannot be real if they are unlike God. I must be dreaming, living an illusion.

Because of what I am as God’s Son, I can choose to experience even that which is not real. If I am experiencing something, it is because I chose to do so. My holy mind establishes everything that happens to me. My responses to what happens to me are determined by my perceptions and my perceptions are determined by my mind. I am completely responsible in every way for all that I see and how I see it.

Perhaps at one time this would have felt oppressive. I do remember feeling overwhelmed at times and asking Holy Spirit to help me. Two things happened that helped me to see it all differently, and to accept the responsibility that is clearly mine. The first was that I realized I am responsible for the world I see, but I am not guilty for it.

The only reason I was running from the responsibility, trying to project it onto others is because I thought I was guilty. It was the guilt that was oppressing me, not the responsibility. Once I realized that I could not be guilty, and could accept at least to some degree that I am the completely free Son of God and can have any experience I want, I felt the burden of guilt lift and I could breathe again.
Once I was not afraid of my responsibility I could see that this knowledge was my salvation. If I am responsible for everything that means I can change my mind and undo what has been done. If my holy mind established everything I presently see, it can establish that which I now prefer to see. I do this through the Holy Spirit in my mind.

And that brings me to the second really important understanding. I do not heal my mind; the Holy Spirit does that on my behalf. I have an essential role to play, and that is to understand I need healing and then to desire and accept that healing. The rest is accomplished without my help. I think of this as setting aside all thinking, all active participation. I sit quietly in God and invite healing to take place. I open to healing and I allow it to happen.

It sounds so easy, and it is easy. Yet, I still see lots of resistance. I see the ego mind trying to take a bigger part. I see fear that nothing this easy could be valuable. I see myself choosing to stay in the story, find a solution there, being the one who succeeds. But I also see myself returning, over and over, to that quiet place in my mind, inviting the truth to join me there.

Introduction, P 1

1 Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing is beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity. You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything happening to you is caused by factors outside yourself. You must learn that time is solely at your disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility from you. You can violate God’s laws in your imagination, but you cannot escape from them. They were established for your protection and are as inviolate as your safety.

Journal

It is easy to forget that nothing is beyond me, that I have absolute control over what I experience because I have absolute control over what I believe. Then I read something like this in the Course and I am startled into awareness of my true nature. This is what happened when I read that time and eternity are both in my mind.

This means that although I feel like I am always running to stay ahead of time, always running out or falling behind, this can be true only if I choose to believe in time. Eternity is in my mind as well. Why not choose to believe in eternity? I must make that choice because I cannot believe in both. I remain in a state of conflict as long as I try to keep them both, choosing to believe in one then choosing to believe in the other. Conflict is war. War is suffering.

There is a solution to this conflict. I can choose to use time (which I still believe in) to undo my belief. Jesus says we cannot do this as long as we believe that anything happening to us is caused by factors outside ourselves. I’m getting pretty good at catching that belief in my mind and releasing it. I feel confident that I can soon let go of this belief permanently.

I still have to take care of this problem, but my frame of mind is up to me. I may still get hooked by an ego thought in my mind, but I don’t have to stay hooked. I am using time to undo the ego mind. This is the proper use of time and will bring me closer to allowing even the belief in time to be undone for me. I am more peaceful now and as a consequence happier. Today would be a good time to pay attention to the ego insistence that everything else is someone else’s fault. I really don’t want that silly thought floating around in my mind anymore.

The ego doesn’t give this up easily though. For instance, when I was told that I would have to replace the floor in the sanctuary, I panicked. My panic was the reaction to the belief that the need to replace the floor was my problem, but that can’t be. I am not governed by anything happening outside my mind. So I spent some “time” allowing Holy Spirit to clean my mental house, tossing out this absurd belief.

From this place of clarity I could see that the problem was not the floor, but my thoughts about the floor. Looking at those thoughts with the Holy Spirit and releasing them to Him, I was free of the emotional response of earlier. Solutions began to appear and peace reigned once again. This was so much easier and quicker than before because practice does indeed makes perfect.

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 11

11 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, but do not 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.

Journal

I don’t know what to say about this. Jesus wants me to ask the Holy Spirit what I am and to believe His answer rather than my own. I cried as I read this. I cried because I want the answer. I want to know what I am. I cry that I am not the little self that the ego wants me to believe in. In fact, I am something else altogether, something very different. Mostly I cry because I am afraid to ask. What if I don’t hear anything at all?

Jesus told me to ask anyway, and suggested I simply allow the answer to come as it will and when it will. He said to open my heart to the answer and then step away from both question and answer. Step away and trust. I trust that the answer will be exalted because of its Source and that it will be true, because of its Source. I trust that I will receive an answer because it is my true desire to know my Self.

I see the wisdom in stepping aside now that the question has been asked. It is still too easy for me to slip back into the ego thinking mind and that is not going to bring me an answer. It will only interfere with it as the ego adds its own confused thoughts. I know the concept of what I am, but what I want is a true knowing, not just an idea I am willing to embrace, but a knowing that goes all the way to the Heart, to the center of my being. I gladly release the personal self I made so that the Self can take its place. I am willing, and where my will is not strong, I am willing to be willing.

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 10

10 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.

Journal

I think this paragraph is the clearest yet. Jesus tells us that it is not arrogance to accept myself as God created me. Quite the opposite, actually. True arrogance is insisting that I have changed Reality. I have made myself different than God created me. I used to think that this was possible because God gave me free will.

Now I understand that I am free to have any experience I want, but I am not free to change the unchangeable. I think of it like this. I am free to break the law, but I am not free to change the law. I am free to jump off a mountain, but I am not free to suspend gravity. In the same way, I am free to play the part of a separate body in a world of separation, but I am not free to change God.

Jesus is helping us to remember that God is whole and indivisible. He is eternal and unchangeable. We are so accustomed to the shifting changing nature of the world we made, that it is hard for us to grasp the unchangeable, but this is the nature of Reality. We are part of God, and there is nothing that can alter that. We are irreplaceable in the mind of God. The Voice for God reminds us of this truth.

Our extensions are held safe in the Mind of God as well. They wait for our return. Do you begin to understand what you are as you read this? Do you get just a tiny taste of your grandeur? I sit here in the quiet and peace of early morning and I contemplate my grandeur. It seems odd to think of myself this way, but if this is God’s Will for me then it must be true.

I can imagine this life of Myron as a story unfolding in my mind. I can participate in the story while remembering that it is not a true story, just imagination. Then I get up from my desk to get dressed. I realize I can’t wear my favorite pants because I gained weight, and I feel like an idiot for eating every desert in front of me. I wonder what is wrong with me that I think life isn’t worth living without ice cream.

And once again I have embraced my littleness, forgetting all about my grandeur, which now seems like a faraway dream of something impossible. I opened a document at random earlier this morning, and this is what I read.

“I looked in the mirror and instead of thinking, “This is my body,” I thought, “This is an image I have made.” Then I followed it back to the source of the image. “This is an out picturing of a desire I have.” I had a desire and I made an image of that desire and I projected the image as the body of Myron. Looking again at the image I made, I had to ask myself a different question; “What was I thinking!”

I giggled at that thought, but it is a good question and the key to my second way of using this lesson. (Lesson 325) What was I thinking? If I look around at my world I can ask myself this question about each image. Is the image I made a reflection of the Love that I am? Is it worthy of the Son of God?

It is perfectly ok for me to project a body, but the body I project tells me something about the beliefs I am holding. If I want a slimmer, healthier body and that is not the image I have made there must be a disconnect someplace. Do I think I am not worthy of the body I want? Do I think I am too guilty to have that body?

Evidently I still need to be convinced of what I am. I am the holy Son of God. I am perfect in every way because this is how I was created. In my creation God gave Himself to me, so I must be worthy. Guilt cannot be real because it is not what God gave me as Himself; it is not part of God. So it must be an artifact of the separation idea, and therefore I am free to let that idea go. It is a false idea that I have been renting space to in my mind. It is a bad tenant and its time to evict it.

Now when I look in the mirror if I am not happy with the image I made, I know that there is a belief in my mind that is obscuring my reality. I know that it is guilt that must be undone. This is the same thing I knew before. I have been looking at guilt thoughts and asking for healing for a while, but now that I understand how all things I see reflect ideas in my mind, I can see in some of these images the guilt that colored them. “

That was pretty good guidance to read this particular writing today, Holy Spirit. Thanks. I need to think about these things to remind me that what I look on is not reality. It is just an idea in my mind. What I am is an eternal, divine being. I am part of God. I am irreplaceable in the Mind of God. What could that body in the mirror be but a strange idea I thought to experience. As I watch it play out I invite the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, to gently wake me up from this dreamy experience I am having.

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 9

9 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.

Journal

Jesus is going to a lot trouble to convince me that it is ok for me to claim my grandeur. He must know that I will be uncertain about that. I have been taught that it is arrogant to think of myself in those terms, even sacrilegious. If I see myself as the Son of God; if I claim my holiness and use that holiness; if I accept that I am, indeed, the savior of the world, will I be slapped down and put into my place?

Will I be taking a huge chance in drawing attention to myself? After all, I have spent all of time hiding from God, keeping a low profile so I won’t be noticed. I have pointed to my brother as the guilty one. Now I suddenly stand up straight and claim my inheritance. That is quite a difference, and the ego is warning me against this. But Jesus says that not only is this acceptable, it is my function. I am to be the light of the world. By fulfilling my function I am saving not only myself but all of the Sonship with me.

I am irreplaceable in the Mind of God. I am loved forever. I begin to remember this is true as I allow my mind to be healed and as I allow my brother’s grandeur to be revealed to me. As I see my brother in all his glory, I finally accept my own grandeur. I return my awareness to the Mind of God where I truly exist.

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 8

8 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 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.

Journal

I used to believe the ego when it told me I was less than others. This was the lie most familiar to me and the one I found easiest to believe. So when the ego offered me grandiosity, it was a nice change and so I would readily accept it. It was harder for me to believe so I would look for proof to sustain the belief. When I would receive compliments I would see this as the proof I needed, and when none came I would be devastated.

In order to accept grandiosity, I had to see someone else as less than and that is an attack on that one, and also on me because I had to believe we were separate in order to do this. Here is an example. When I first started teaching I would ask Spirit to speak through me and the student would like what he heard. He would remark on how helpful I was, and I would feel pride.

I would be relieved because I was so unsure of myself and I compared myself to other teachers who seemed so much better than me. So this offering of grandiosity felt like a real boon to me, but it was always followed by the ego’s other offering, littleness. I would realize that I had taken the Holy Spirit’s credit, even if it were only in my mind. I would feel guilty for that and afraid.

I would feel bad because my need to be “better than” was an attack on every other teacher. It was like I was standing on them in order to appear bigger. I felt depressed because I was teaching myself that separation is real and that the only way to succeed in the world is to hurt others, or at least to be seen as better than others. I wasn’t allowing myself to be aware of all this, but I knew it. We always know what is happening even as we hide that knowledge from ourselves. As with all ego gifts, the grandiosity came with a high price tag.

I kept doing the work though, and my mind was healed more and more. Now when I teach and I receive compliments, I know that Holy Spirit came through me clearly. I am so grateful for that, and so pleased to be doing my part. I don’t need to be better than anyone else. I just need to do what I am guided to do, and each other teacher does what they are guided to do. Together we offer what is needed. One person needs to hear what I allowed through, and someone else needs to hear what another teacher offered. All the parts come together as a whole.

I am not afraid to say that I sometimes channel fairly clearly what is given. I don’t feel proud, I feel joyous. It is not grandiosity because it is not of the little ego me. I am simply stepping out of the way as much as I can to allow something to come through. That is my grandeur. I am God’s Son, His holy child. I am part of the Christ Mind. I am the light of the world and it is my function to save the world. The ego thinks this is grandiosity, but it is simple truth.

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 7

7 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.

Journal

I felt exalted at the conference, and I surrounded myself with others like me. And we certainly celebrated! We celebrated the Family that is Christ, that is us. We celebrated the Love that we are and that we are all about. Was there some grandiosity and some littleness in there? Probably. It is hard to avoid completely while there is still some confusion about who we are. The mind returns to the familiar ego thinking when we become careless, at least for awhile. I think when we wake up and live from that awakened state, that surely we don’t keep sliding back and forth.

I made the self that wants to be grand and that is afraid it is little and I can release that self anytime I want. I don’t need to fight the ego because to do so would be to say the ego is real and a worthy opponent. It is neither. Awakening is a matter of wanting to return home more than I want to remain here. It is a matter of desire that is single minded rather than the wishing and hoping of the split mind. Today’s paragraph and today’s lesson go well together. The following is a commitment I made for today when I did my lesson.

Today I will remind myself of the truth. I will think about my true nature as the perfect child of a perfect God. I will think about being Love and about how much my Father loves me. I will think about how much I miss my real Life and how much I want to be Home. I will think how blessed I am that I am eternal and unalterable and I will be glad.

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 6

6 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.

Journal

I am so encouraged when I read something like that first line. “The ego depends solely on your willingness to tolerate it.” I am free to stop listening to the ego thinking, and to listen to Holy Spirit instead. I am free to finally stop thinking the ego at all, and without my desire for it, the ego will cease to exist. When I believe the thoughts in my mind it seems like separation is very real, but it is not. That is why I question my thoughts. The Holy Spirit is the arbitrator in this questioning and His judgment is final.

The other thing in this paragraph that caught my attention is that littleness and grandiosity alternate. Yeah, no kidding! They alternate wildly sometimes. It has become more obvious to me lately because I have been paying attention. The ego does not care if I feel arrogant or if I despair at my worthlessness, as long as I see myself as separate and special.

I don’t really know how any of us remain even nominally sane considering how unstable a life based on separation is. I can be ridiculously proud of some completely unimportant accomplishment and think how much better I am than someone else, then in the next moment feel terribly guilty for that thought. The ego loves all this internal drama and it projects it outward and so life can feel like one drama after another.

Now that I am beginning to accept my reality, at least some of the time, the contrast is obvious. I can go for longer periods of time now, feeling more life my Self, and it is like being able to breathe freely after being short of breath for a long time. Or like the sun has come out after a lifetime of living in shadow. Perhaps it is a little scary because I still retreat into my littleness or grandiosity, but I think I could get used to my grandeur. ~smile~

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 5

5 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.

Journal

I remind myself that I am in the Mind of God. I do this often. Probably the reminder I use nearly every day is that My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy, and there is nothing my holiness cannot do. I bless others when I envelope them in my holiness. I use these reminders often because it is still easy for me to forget that I exist in the Mind of God.

Everything exists in the Mind of God or it doesn’t exist at all. If I see anything as existing outside the Mind of God, and I do this when I see guilt in anyone, I automatically eject myself from my Home. While I cannot actually do this, I can believe I do, and what I believe is real for me, and thus I suffer as if it were true.

The reason an absolute like this is easy for me to forget is because I chose to experience myself as outside the Mind of God, and then chose for the great amnesia to cover the truth. It makes for a very realistic experience, but it also makes it feel hard to recover my memories. I will be doing fine and then I will see something in the illusion that I am still attached to and, whoop! down the rabbit hole I go.

A Course in Miracles is my ladder out of the rabbit hole. When I am in despair, or when I am at war with myself or someone else, anytime I am not happy, I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking, because I know that it is my thinking that attracted me to the rabbit hole to begin with. I will begin to remember what Jesus tells me through the Course, and with each true thought, I climb another rung until I am free of the insanity once more.

Sometimes, I just walk around that rabbit hole. One of these days I will stop peeking in to see if there is anything interesting there, and then I won’t slip in anymore. Soon, I hope. Every time I climb back out, I swear I am never going back in, and when my mind is clear, I can’t imagine choosing the ego again. I do see that I am not as attracted to what might be down that hole as I used to be and so don’t go there as often. I also see that it is easier to find the ladder than it used to be and that I am quicker to lose interest in ego thoughts, and that encourages me.

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 4

4 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. 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 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.

Journal

Oh my gosh, Jesus has obviously been hanging out in my mind, looking at my thoughts. Or maybe we all have similar thoughts that we are little and so grandeur is delusional. But Jesus says that my grandeur is real because I did not make it. It is mine simply because of who I am, simply because I was created in the image, as an extension of, my Father. It is mine because creation is eternal and unalterable, so I can only be what God created. If I were not grand, it would mean that God is not grand. And yet, I hear compelling evidence from the ego that says this is pure arrogance on my part and is going to get me in big trouble if I don’t show some humility, and sometimes I listen and believe.

Humility, in the ego’s eyes, is the denial of truth. In God’s eyes, humility is stepping back from my own vision to accept His Vision. Humility is letting go of what I have believed about myself and accepting what I must be, that is, accepting my grandeur. I have done this and do it often, and yet, I still return to the false humility and to the grandiosity offered by ego. This is why Jesus tells us that the ego will react, and so we must protect our newfound understanding if we are to keep it. This is why I stay vigilant for ego attacks on my grandeur, and why I release those thoughts to the Holy Spirit every time I notice them.

In Lesson 100, I am being asked to accept happiness as my natural state. This is my function as I accept my part in God’s plan for salvation. I wrote about this in my journal, and it is also an example of protecting my grandeur. Here is what I wrote.

Today, my goal is to be happy. My happiness will heal the world. My smile will heal the world. This should be a goal that I eagerly embrace and I do, but not before I sat with this lesson for my first five minutes. I didn’t go to sleep happy, and I didn’t wake up happy. I have had some back pain and leg pain, the first time in a long time, and I have ignored the idea of healing.

My brother who is in prison is sick and has asked me to make calls to the prison on his behalf to get the treatment he needs. It has not been going smoothly. I have more to do at work than ever, and I have to get everything ready for the conference. This morning, I realized that I need to make plane reservations and other plans for a workshop I will be doing shortly after the conference.

A lot has changed at work and I am having to adjust to the changes. The most discouraging and upsetting of all is that I am aware that I have been resisting some of these lessons. I have been doing them, and I have received a lot of benefit, but I have also been resistant. I hate when this happens because it feels like I am at war with myself. How can I win if I am my own enemy?

The strongest resistance occurred the other day while doing one of the lessons. I had great success. I experienced something that was not an effect of the ego thinking, something the ego self could take no credit for. It was a small thing not lasting but a few moments, but it was wonderful, and it was important. It represented my desire to awaken. The ego mind went from suspicious to vicious in less than a minute.

That is when everything became a problem I couldn’t solve. Looking at it this morning after the meditation, I see that I brought into this story of Myron all sorts of problems and upsets and distractions. Anything that would stop this spiral toward awakening that was scaring the ego mind. So when the lesson said that my goal was to be happy today, I felt like it was the one more thing that was just too much and I couldn’t do it.

But I am not alone in this. I do have much Help. My Help whispered in my heart to just do the meditation as suggested, and not to worry about it. I sat there with my hand on my heart and I called for help. I poured out all my fears and disappointments and discouragements. And as I did so, I realized that I was sinking past these thoughts as I named them. I remembered that peace and joy are in me because God put them there, so how could I fail to find them?

Again, there were no bright flashes of lights or fanfares of any kind, but it was like the sun had come from behind a cloud and illuminated my thinking. I saw how all my problems were just thoughts in my mind, and that everything is fine. I saw the confusion in my mind unravel and everything became clear and simple.

Happy, happy, joy, joy! I can’t help but smile and laugh now. Nothing had really happened except that I let the ego mind lead me back into its darkness, into fear and guilt and doubt. And now I have returned to reality because it is my desire to take my part in God’s plan for salvation, and nothing can thwart the desire of a Son of God.