Grandeur versus Grandiosity

Chapter 9.8 – Grandeur versus Grandiosity

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 “enemy” has struck, and attempts to
offer gifts to induce you to return to its “protection.” Self-inflation is 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 when you decide not to tolerate self-abasement and
seek relief. Then it offers you the illusion of attack as a “solution. “
 
The ego does not understand the difference between grandeur and
grandiosity, because it sees no difference between miracle impulses and egoalien
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. 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.
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 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. 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, 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.