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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 11. 4-29-15

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

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 10. 4-28-15

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.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 9. 4-24-15

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.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 8. 4-23-15

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P8
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.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 7. 4-22-15

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.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Something I Learned at the ACIM Conference

Before we get back to our study of the Text, I want to tell you a bit about the conference. First, I have attended a number of these conferences, six, I think. This is the best one I have ever gone to. There was a sense of family and a feeling of love that is beyond any I have experienced before. That alone made it well worth the trip.

I presented at the conference and I always enjoy that. I like telling people about my experiences with the Course and I like hearing about theirs. I love the feeling of a family reunion as I meet up with people I only see at the conference, and the surprise of seeing in person my virtual friends. It is really neat how close I feel to my Facebook and Yahoo Group friends.

I attended some of the presentations. Each year I go, I try to attend the ones I have never seen before. The one that was most helpful to me this time was Diederik Wolsak’s. He had an interesting story beginning with being born in a concentration camp. Diederik has a healing place in Costa Rico called, Choose Again.

I learned in that class a six step process designed to help me find the problem in its original form, and to finally forgive it so that it doesn’t keep popping up in my life over and over. And it absolutely will reappear until it has been forgiven. I have certain beliefs that wind up being projected into my life in different forms; the same belief, that is the same content, just being imaged in different forms.

After I heard Diederik talk, and saw him work with his process with a volunteer, I had a chance to try it on myself. I was in the bookstore at my table peddling my book. ~smile~ A friend came by and got a copy. She gave me the price of the book and extra. I was very grateful for the loving gesture, but after she left, I realized that I should not have let her do it that way. Rev Tony buys the books himself and I receive a commission from the publisher. To take money for the book would be like stealing from CMC.

This was no problem because I could walk across the room and rectify the situation easily. But here is what happened. I happened to glance over at the next table and Regina Dawn Akers was sitting there and watching what happened. I suddenly felt awful. I felt upset that Regina might think I am a thief. I was so anxious about this that I couldn’t wait to get to the register and turn in the money.

I kept wanting to go to Regina and tell her that I would never steal anything. Instead I sat with that feeling and waited for Spirit to help me see it differently. This went on for awhile and finally I was aware of the thought that I should use Diederik’s process. So I did that.

The first thing it tells me to do is to recognize I am in conflict and the situation has purpose and will lead to joining if resolved. This part is easy for me because it has been my practice for a long time. I have to admit, though, that my first and strongest desire was simply to feel better. I had to remind myself that there was more to it, that healing the belief behind the upset was very important.

The second step is to remember that it is all about me. I am not upset because my friend caused a problem for me, or because Regina would judge me (which she wouldn’t). This is not about anyone except me. I am the one that decided to be upset, the one with the issue to be resolved, and the one who will ultimately decide to accept the solution or keep the problem. This was easy for me, too. I practice this all the time. I hear the ego objections and desire to project, but I always know it is about me.

Step three is to feel the feeling. This can be a little harder for me. I hid from my emotions for so long that sometimes I have a hard time identifying them, and I still want to avoid them. But as Diederik says, this is where honesty is essential. My own work has shown me that I must allow the feeling to take it past the concept and into an honest desire for healing. As it happens in this situation the feeling was obvious. I felt anxiety and guilt, and this was true even though I did not intentionally do anything wrong.

Now step four is new to me. I have never done this before. It says to remember when I have felt this way before. How is the feeling familiar? I am looking for the source of the feeling, the first time I felt that way. As soon as I heard about this step, I saw why it was important. If I hold something against myself, if I establish a belief about myself and fail to question that belief, I will continue to make images of it, which I then project outward as my life. I have seen this happen many times, but never put it together in quite this way.

So I asked within for the first time I felt this anxiety and guilt and felt judged as a thief. I was in first grade and I stole a bracelet from someone at school. Its funny, as I think about this from that little girl’s standpoint, I didn’t think of it as stealing. It was pretty and I wanted it so I took it. Later in the day the nuns went from room to room instilling guilt and shame and demanding the thief come forward.

That was when I recognized I was a thief and I was guilty for it. I was too ashamed to confess. I was afraid I would no longer be loved or accepted, especially by the nuns who were so important to me. They would be so disappointed in me. I took it home and put it away and never looked at it again, until my mom found it and confronted me and then there was more shame.

Step five is to establish my judgment of myself in that moment. I thought I was a thief and I was ashamed and afraid. I felt very guilty. I thought that I would never be loved again. And mostly, I felt like I deserved to be shunned, because I really did it, and to make matters worse, I didn’t confess like a good little Catholic should. I felt like a bad person.

Step six is the best step at all. It is in this step that I establish the truth about myself. All of my life I have held onto the belief that I am a bad person, and in spite of all the work I have done so far, there was this deeply held belief that I could never be enough, because, after all, I am guilty. This incident, and the self-judgment, that others reinforced, has affected me all this time. Now that I saw this, I was able to forgive myself.

I reminded myself that I am a creation of a powerful Force of Love. I was created in His image and cannot be anything else. I was created eternally perfect and this cannot ever be altered by anyone or anything, including me or my actions. I said to myself; I forgive myself for believing that I am unlovable, bad, and shameful. Afterwards, I felt innocent and free! It was wonderful!

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Body, Food, and Healing

I am at the conference now and don’t know how much time I will have to write, so except for the Daily Lessons, this is going to be hit and miss. However, I was “thinking on paper” this morning, and so I would like to share this with you.

Sometimes when I eat certain foods I get heartburn and this happened at the airport. I think as we get closer and closer to awakening, what we eat will no longer affect us. Nook Sanchez used to be sensitive to many different foods and when hosting her as a speaker it was an issue because if she ate the wrong things, she would get sick. But now she can eat anything without effect.

This makes sense when you realize the body is an illusion created by the mind. We make the illusion and we control the illusion. However, it does no good to use the ego mind to try to deny the illusion we have made. It doesn’t work that way. So as long as I have foods I can’t eat and as long as I suffer sickness and pain, I will do what I can do and be grateful for the magical solutions.

In the meantime, I will continue to allow my mind to be healed. So that means when I avoid a food, at the same time I give as much willingness as I have to the Holy Spirit to have my mind healed of the belief that I am a victim to food. I used to be allergic to peanuts and wheat and corn, potatoes, and a slew of other foods. I suffered terribly from these food allergies and many environmental allergies. Now I don’t. I became tired of suffering and got serious about healing.

I couldn’t find a doctor who believed I could be healed of all these allergies so I received my healing through an alternative healer, but it was a miracle I found this man and that it worked so well. Some others who went to him did not benefit so much. Sometimes we want to be free of our pain, but don’t truly want to be healed. If this is so, nothing will heal us. So even when we have to use outside agents to heal us or relieve our pain, it is only through our permission that this happens.

The more I wake up, the more astounded I become at our true nature, and I haven’t come close to experiencing that nature completely. We are all-powerful and what a joke we play on ourselves as we pretend to be so helpless before the body and the world we made. I have not been able to affect the body and the world with my ego mind except in small and undependable ways even though my thinking mind understands these concepts. To truly affect what we made, we must do so through the mind that made them, and with the Holy Spirit’s help.

So I continue to ask for the healing of the mind that made it all and as the Holy Spirit heals me in perfect timing, much falls away. The ego mind wants more to do than ask and receive and objects to its little part, but that is the only thing that works and any other action just gets in the way.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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