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 is the only offering it can make. The grandiosity 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, the 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-debasement, and seek relief. Then it offers you the delusion of ATTACK as a solution.
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 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 of the complete lack of investment in it. Grandeur is totally WITHOUT illusion, and because it is real, it is compellingly convincing. But 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. But 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 minds, 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. But 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, since both are untrue, and therefore on the same level. Being the level of shift, it is experienced as shifting, and extremes are its essential characteristic.
But truth and littleness are DENIALS of each other, and 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. But 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, simply because love is returned, but pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles, and therefore will 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, simply 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 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. But 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 He created you CANNOT be arrogant, because it is the DENIAL of arrogance. To accept your littleness IS arrogant, because it means that you believe that YOUR evaluation of yourself is TRUER THAN GOD's. But if truth is indivisible, then 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.
You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred, and realize its full extent. And you may think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and dispel it WITHOUT the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself. But there is one more complication which you have interposed between yourself and the Atonement, that you do not yet realize. We have said that no one will countenance fear, IF HE RECOGNIZES IT. But in your disordered state, YOU ARE NOT AFRAID OF FEAR. You do not LIKE it, but it is NOT your desire to attack which really frightens you. You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden, because you are MORE afraid of what it covers.
You could look even upon the ego's darkest cornerstone WITHOUT fear, if you did not believe that, WITHOUT THE EGO, you would find, within yourself, something you fear even more. YOU ARE NOT AFRAID OF CRUCIFIXION. Your real terror is of REDEMPTION. Under the ego's dark foundation is the memory of God, and it is of THIS that you are really afraid. For this memory would INSTANTLY restore you to your proper place, and it is THIS place that you have sought to LEAVE.
Your fear of attack is nothing, compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look upon your savage wish to kill God's Son, IF YOU DID NOT BELIEVE THAT IT SAVES YOU FROM LOVE. For this wish CAUSED the separation. You have protected it, because you do not WANT the separation healed, and you realize that, by REMOVING the dark cloud that obscures it, your love for your Father would IMPEL you to answer His call, and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is salvation, to PREVENT you from this. For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and MUCH stronger than IT will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, AND HIS FOR YOU.
THIS IS WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO HIDE. In honesty, is it not harder for you to say "I love" than "I hate?" For you associate love with weakness and hatred with strength, and your REAL power seems to you as your real weakness. For you could NOT control your joyous response to the call of love if you heard it, and the whole world you THINK you control WOULD vanish. The Holy Spirit, then, seems to be ATTACKING YOUR FORTRESS, for you would SHUT OUT GOD, and He does not will to BE excluded.
You have built your whole insane belief system, because you think you would be HELPLESS in God's Presence. And you would SAVE yourself from His love, because you think it would crush you into nothingness. You are afraid it would sweep you AWAY from yourself, AND MAKE YOU LITTLE. For you believe that magnitude lies in defiance, and attack is grandeur. YOU THINK YOU HAVE MADE A WORLD THAT GOD WOULD DESTROY. And by loving Him, WHICH YOU DO, you would throw this world away, WHICH YOU WOULD.
Therefore, you have used the world to COVER YOUR LOVE, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the CLOSER you come to the Love that is hidden beneath it. AND IT IS THIS THAT FRIGHTENS YOU. You can accept insanity, BECAUSE YOU MADE IT. But you cannot accept love, BECAUSE YOU DID NOT. You would rather be slaves of the crucifixion, than Sons of God in redemption. For your INDIVIDUAL death is more valued than your living Oneness, and what is GIVEN you, is not so dear as what you MADE. You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. But hatred CAN, for it enters of ITS will, and cares not for YOURS.
The reason you must look upon your delusions, and not keep them hidden, is that THEY DO NOT REST ON THEIR OWN FOUNDATION. In concealment, they APPEAR to do so, and thus they seem to be SELF-SUSTAINED. THIS is the fundamental illusion on which they rest. For BENEATH them, and concealed as long as THEY are hidden, is the loving mind that THOUGHT it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot BE denied. Not all the tricks and games that you have offered it can heal it, for HERE is the REAL crucifixion of God's Son.
And yet he is NOT crucified. For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.
Beneath all your grandiosity, which you hold so dear, is your real call for help. For you call for love to your Father, as your Father calls you to Himself. In that place, which you have hidden, you will only to unite with the Father, in loving remembrance of Him. You will find this place of truth as you see it in your brothers, for though they may deceive themselves, like you they long for the grandeur that is in them. And perceiving it you will WELCOME it, and it will be yours. For grandeur is the RIGHT of God's Son, and no illusions can satisfy him, or save him from what he IS.
Only his love is real, and he will be content ONLY with his reality. Save him from his illusions, that you may accept the magnitude of your Father in peace and joy. But exempt no one from your love, or you will be hiding a dark place in your minds, where the Holy Spirit is not welcome. And you will exempt YOURSELF from His healing power, for by not offering total love, YOU will not be healed completely. And healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot enter where there is one spot of fear to mar its welcome.
You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him.
In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, EXCEPT by departing in peace, and returning to the Father? If the Son did not wish to REMAIN in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness, where it can believe it is where it is NOT. God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so.
To SINGLE OUT is to MAKE ALONE, and thus MAKE LONELY. God did not do this to you. Could He SET YOU APART, KNOWING that your peace lies in His Oneness? He denied you only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His creation. Having GIVEN you creation, He could not take it FROM you. He could but answer your insane request with a sane answer, which would abide with you in your insanity. AND THIS HE DID. No-one who hears His answer but will give up insanity. For His answer is the reference point BEYOND delusions, from which you can look back on them, and see them as insane. But seek this place and you WILL find it, for Love is in you, and will lead you there.
Your sense of who you are depends entirely on the extent of your awareness. Awareness is your IDENTITY.
How much of your mind you are aware OF, determines the boundaries of your sense of Self.
If you have a lot of repression and denial and unconsciousness, your sense of Self will be little and confined. This is what Jesus refers to as "littleness".
You will still be aware, but your awareness will be limited. And yet, you will believe that the amount of Self you are aware of, is all of yourself. You won't even suspect there is more to you.
Everyone always believes they are their whole self. Whether they are actually aware of the whole of their self, is another matter. You could be aware of only 10% of yourself, and still believe that you are aware of your whole self.
The amount of awareness you have, if your awareness of your wholeness is limited, will also be limited. You will think you wake up in the morning and are "fully aware", at the maximum of your ability to be aware. But you won't be.
Your mind is vast. But it is blocked and divided and segmented. Your conscious self has been sectioned off into a small corner of the mind, and the rest has been made unconscious in order to hide your sin and guilt.
You will still, as the conscious self, believe that you are all of yourself, and that you are a whole person.
When obstacles to peace, blocks to awareness, denial and suppression and unconsciousness begin to be lifted away from your mind, you become aware of parts of your mind that you didn't even know existed.
That means your awareness of your whole mind increases.
Realize, that IDENTITY, is very tightly tied into how much awareness you have of your mind. If you are only aware of 10% of the mind, you will believe that everything you ARE aware of is all that there is to you. Your sense of SELF is limited by the outer edges of your awareness.
As your mind becomes freer of blockages, and things which were unconscious become conscious, your awareness is going to increase. And along with that, you are going to become more aware of a "larger Self", or a bigger sense of Identity. Your identity is going to expand.
Gradually your sense of "Who am I" is going to expand away from littleness into magnificence and grandeur, and thus your sense of Self will expand. You will "turn into" your Higher Self.
Really, it is just a matter of revealing, uncovering, remembering, making conscious again, and becoming aware of again, parts of your own mind which have been hidden and kept in the dark for a long time.
We call this clearing out of the clutter, "purification", and it produces an "awakening", i.e., simply an increase in awareness. Becoming aware that there is more to you than you realized.
That you are not just a little self stuck in a body. You are not just some little victim in a dream. You are huge and powerful, you are Christ.
And the amount of awareness that you are going to have as a result, is going to be much more than you have been used to. You literally will be MORE AWARE than you ever thought was possible, because you will be AWARE OF more than you ever thought existed.
When there is nothing left hiding in the darkness, no secret sins or hidden hates, and no more unconsciousness, and no more shadow or persona, the mind will be made whole again - fully aware of all of itself at once, and that is what it means to become aware of your Real Self. Spiritual awakening.
Aware of all that is - God.
Earth is in fact an alien world, and human bodies are alien bodies. Given that our true natural state or "home world" is The Kingdom of God (Heaven), Earth represents the total opposite to what is natural and is alien to it.
That which is is "alienated" is that which is separated or exiled or unlike. That which is "alien" is that which is so unlike your nature that it seems completely against it.
Jesus also refers to "alien" in the sense of heaven's truth being "alien to" how you are on earth, because it is so different. Here's what he has to say about you trying to be an alien in an alien world...
"Grievances are completely alien to love."
"If I hold grievances I am attacking love, and therefore attacking my Self. My Self thus becomes alien to me. "
"Try to avoid the tendency toward self-directed selection, which may be particularly tempting in connection with today's idea because of its wholly alien nature. Remember that any order which you impose is equally alien to reality."
"What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real but different from yourself."
"Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him while he is alien now who is at home."
"For in his home his Self remains. It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself."
"A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place which called you to return although you do not recognize the Voice, nor what it is the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again."
"Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father's house, and knows that He is alien here."
"For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts."
"Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He."
"Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."
""Let me not separate my function from my will."
"I would not use this for an alien purpose."
"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about."
"Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. You will need help to make this meaningful because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed."
"When you GIVE UP peace, you are EXCLUDING yourself FROM it. This is a condition which is so ALIEN to the Kingdom that you CANNOT understand the state which prevails WITHIN it." "In your FORGIVENESS of this stranger, alien to you and yet your ancient Friend, lie HIS release, and YOUR redemption WITH him."
"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. "
"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."
"Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an "enemy," an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are."
"Its alien nature, TO THE EGO, is proof you will NOT find the answer there."
"Reason is ALIEN to insanity, and those who use it have gained a means which cannot BE applied to sin."
"The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding."
"What NEEDS interpretation MUST be alien. Nor will it EVER be made understandable, by an interpreter you cannot understand."
"This child will teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. For his will be no alien tongue."
"If you think about it, you will see that, while this kind of thinking is totally alien to having THINGS, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with IDEAS."
"He is not attempting to force an alien will UPON you."
"If you did not have divided wills, you would recognize that willing is salvation because it IS communication. It is impossible to communicate in alien tongues."
"Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own."
"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy. And now you MUST believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and "something else," a "something" to be feared instead of loved."
"The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. "
"Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here."
"Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts."
"It is not the purpose of an alien power, thrust upon you unwillingly."
"And you WILL deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a "something" you are not."
"He would have no separation, like an alien will, rise between what He wills for you, and what YOU will."
"You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. But your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language."
"The seeds of sickness and the shame of sin He CANNOT bridge, for He cannot destroy the alien will that He created not."
"Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth and nothing are you LESS inclined to listen to."
"He does not see the Christ in him who calls. What answer can he give to one who seems to be a stranger; alien to the truth and poor in wisdom, without the god who must be given him?"
"Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. But the insane believe it because they are insane."
"Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth."
"Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source. "
"If you will consider WHAT you have taught, and how alien it is to what you THOUGHT you knew, you will be COMPELLED to recognize that your Teacher came from BEYOND your thought-system, and so could look upon it fairly, and perceive it was untrue."
"It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names and thousands more. Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved and concepts can be meaningfully shared."
"God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will."
"Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose."
"And no thought ALIEN to His Oneness can abide with Him there."
"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."
"There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality."
"Perceiving something alien to itself in your MIND, the ego turns to the body, NOT the mind as its ally BECAUSE the body is not part of you."
"The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him."
"Nothing at all has happened, but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE's dream."
"The son of man perceives an alien will, AND WISHES IT WERE SO."
"You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son."
"To value specialness is to esteem an alien will, to which illusions of yourself ARE dearer than the truth."
"By adopting the ego's viewpoint, you undertook an ego-alien journey WITH THE EGO AS GUIDE. "
"Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you could not recognize."
"Vengeance is alien to His Mind BECAUSE He knows of justice."
"To the world, generosity means "giving away" in the sense of "giving up." To the teachers of God, it means "giving away" in order to keep. This has been emphasized throughout the text and the workbook, but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world than many other ideas in our curriculum."
"Teaching devices which are totally alien to a learner's perceptual system are usually merely disruptive."
"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
This is where my mind went last night. I had no idea God felt so highly of me. Holy Spirit guided my thoughts.
God loves you.
God knows you.
God created you.
God designed you.
God chose you.
God still wants you.
You are God's treasure.
God cherishes you.
God holds you like a most beloved thing.
God feels happy with you.
God is pleased with you.
God is joyful that you are exactly perfect.
God values you.
You are worthy of God.
God sees you as being worth something.
God feels you are important and special to him.
God smiles upon you.
God wants you.
God is overjoyed that you can share with him.
God actually thinks you are highly valuable to him.
God knows you deserve to be loved.
You are worthy of receiving love from God.
You are worth loving.
You mean something to God.
You mean everything to God.
You are God's child.
God is very happy that you are like him.
God knows you are perfect.
God knows you are innocent.
God sparkles with delight at your beauty.
God wants you.
God welcomes you with open arms.
God desires for you to exist.
God wills to protect you always.
God wants to protect you because you are his treasure.
God treasures you and is enamored with you.
God adores you.
God loves to give you everything.
God loves being with you.
God is very close to you.
You are very intimate with God.
God protects you and surrounds you with himself.
God envelops you in his love and safety.
God knows he has created something very good in you.
You are a divine creation of God.
You are completely loved by God.
God deeply cares about you.
God sees you as permanently holy.
God recognizes you and knows you.
You belong to God.
You are God's personal property.
God maintains you with his power forever.
God shares all of himself with you.
God hides nothing from you.
God is open with you.
God wants you to be happy.
God wills that you be perfect and whole.
God has given you eternal life.
God depends on you.
God knows you are completely dependable.
God trusts you.
God is ecstatic at how lovely you are.
God created you with all his heart.
God loves you unconditionally.
God can never stop loving you.
God wants to love you forever.
You will never be alone.
You can never be out of his sight.
God will always be with you.
God wants to be with you always.
God enjoys you.
God is certain of your endless innocence.
God will never accuse you of anything.
God will never hold anything against you.
God is your family.
God is your creator.
God holds you like a perfect star, high in heaven.
God wants you to be surrounded with love.
God wants you to never be alone.
God has even created your brothers to enjoy being with you.
Everyone loves you like God loves you.
God finds you worthy of inheriting everything he has to give.
You have everything that God has.
God has opened himself up to you fully.
God himself shines upon you to light your way.
God goes with you everywhere.
God will never hurt you.
God will only heal you and support you.
God understands you perfectly.
God knows you completely.
God accepts you entirely.
God is very happy with you.
God sees you as deserving everything good.
God wants you to have everything.
God blesses you and harmonizes with you.
God wants to help you to create with him.
God is overjoyed to see you being yourself.
God loves you laugh with you.
God is your best friend.
God is completely benevolent toward you.
God beholds you as magnificent.
God finds you to be glorious and grand.
God could not have created anything better than you.
You are the absolute maximum of God's perfection.
God has pulled out all the stops for you.
God suspends you in his perfect love and adoration.
You can never offend God.
You can never make him stop loving you.
God will love you for eternity.
God loves you very much.
"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was."
"The difference is that I love ONLY what God loves WITH me, and, because of this, I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourselves, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you."
"God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity, on whom God loves with perfect love?"
"Every brother God loves as He loves you; neither less nor more."
"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever."
"God loves His Son."
"God wants us to be healed"
"God WANTS you to behold what He created, because it is HIS joy. Can your grandeur be arrogant, when God HIMSELF witnesses to it?"
"God wants only His Son, because His Son is His only treasure. You want your creations, as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for YOUR creation."
"If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows his children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed."
"Nothing that God knows not exists. And what He knows exists forever, changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them, and in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent, or could suffer change." "God knows what His Son needs before he asks."
"God knows His Son as wholly blameless as Himself, and He is approached through the appreciation of His Son. Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as YOURSELF, and His Wholeness as YOURS. For Christ is the Son of God, who lives in his Creator, and shines with His glory. Christ is the extension of the love and the loveliness of God, as perfect as his Creator, and at peace with Him. Blessed is the Son of God, whose radiance is of His Father, and whose glory He wills to share as His Father shares it with Him."
"You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God. When you awake in Him, you will know your magnitude by accepting HIS limitlessness as YOURS."
"Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of WHAT GOD KNOWS ABOUT YOU, and in this light, error of ANY kind becomes impossible."
"Can YOU see guilt where God KNOWS there is perfect innocence?" "And so is Heaven's Son prepared to be Himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father understands, and understands it perfectly with Him"
"If God knows His children, and I assure you he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible?" "God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly."
"God knows you NOW. He remembers NOTHING, having ALWAYS known you exactly as He knows you now."
"God knows you are deserving of life"
"And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality."
"Whenever you question your value, say, "God Himself is incomplete without me."
"God is incomplete without you, simply because His grandeur is total, and you cannot BE missing from it."
"YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS."
Worth, is really a question of value, but even moreso a question of whether something QUALIFIES or "deserves". It's also related to appropriateness. Is it right, that you be loved. So we're also talking about your "rights", or what you are entitled to. Which also relates to what you are allowed, or what is yours, or what belongs to you inherently.
When we form any idea of having sinned, believing in separation, we are actually saying that we no longer qualify. If we have become sinful or guilty, instead of innocent, we have kind of "dropped out" of the running. We've positioned ourselves as not worthy or not capable or not of a quality sufficiently high or appropriate enough to meet the "requirements". By changing the premise to "I'm sinful", the logical conclusion is that you are no longer worthy. And the only sense of unworthiness is a sense of sinfulness against God.
Those who are innocent do meet the requirements of heaven, and so are entitled to heaven. They are entitled to the inheritance of God, and everything belongs to them. But when they attack themselves, they undermine their authority or "permission to access" the benefits which correlate to innocence. By stepping out of innocence we step out of deserving the love of God. At least, we believe this is the case.
If you believe you have sinned, are criminal, are evil or guilty, have done something wrong, messed up, or failed in some way, you will regard yourself as a failure. This is a view of yourself as weak and frail, powerless, hopeless, lost, alone, valueless, incapable, ineffective, not deserving freedom or love, and generally feeling horrible about yourself.
Feeling "unworthy" is kind of a logical conclusion based on the supposed evidence of what you think you did, or what you failed to do. If you see yourself as innocent you see yourself as deserving all of heaven. If you see yourself as guilty you see yourself as deserving all of hell.
This ties in very strongly to the victim role. If you feel unworthy, you will feel deflated, defective, lacking, having nothing much to offer, having very low "value", having no rights and no freedoms. You will feel like a prisoner, as though everyone else gets to decide your fate, as if you have no say in your own life. You'll feel like a kind of slave, undeserving of having any of your needs met, yet feeling very much in need.
Impoverished and empty, you'll regard yourself as not worth being given any attention, or anything. You'll also be afraid all the time because you'll see the whole world as defining your fate on a whim. Secretly this is an attempt to project self-blame onto the world, believing it is blaming you. The world will now seem like it's taking everything away from you and having power over you, because that's what YOU are doing to yourself.
If your value is so low, you will regard yourself as having failed, and therefore as being a failure. If you are a failure, you will feel like there is no point in trying to do anything, because not only do you see yourself as very likely to fail, you'll believe you have already failed before you even begin. This will stop you from doing many things on the basis that you "can't", rooted in some belief that "no-one wants me." Secretly this is your belief that YOU don't want you, projected and reflected back at you.
Of course, being unworthy, you have to believe no-one loves you. That everyone is against you and can "use you" for whatever purposes they see fit, for their own gains, with no regard for yours. This of course is a state that also results from such things as abuse, violence, attack, sexual assault, trauma and so on.
It can leave you feeling helpless and powerless and very "low", like you don't mean anything and have no value. That, even in your own eyes, you don't deserve anything because you aren't worth anything. Like something to be discarded and thrown away which no-one wants. Of course this is how YOU feel about yourself, because it's really you who has decided you are worthless. But by asserting "you're not worth anything" to the world, it reflects back to you from the outside in. A projection of self-hate.
Clearly when you're in such a state, although it feels unfair, and imposed from outside of you, much more likely you are actually the one who has decided that you are unworthy. You have in some way depleted your own idea of your own value. And we're not so much talking here about self-esteem as we are about God-esteem.
The only real value is the value God has of you, regarding your true nature. And so really the only thing in your mind that you care about is whether or not you qualify or meet God's "standards". Whether you are worthy of his love. Whether you deserve forgiveness or punishment. If you believe you are a weak and miseable valueless sinner who isn't worth anything and should be punished and hurt, then you are trying to decide for God what God thinks of you.
You'll do this on the basis of what you think you did. ie, which sins you think you committed, the reasons why you are guilty, the faults and lacks and insufficiencies of your personality or body or mind. The various value systems you yourself have invented and then judged yourself harshly by. Systems which God doesn't even use, because he simply ALWAYS finds you worthy of him.
If you are feeling unworthy, it's really kind of a severe case of a pity party. It's self-inflicted, just as the secret of salvation says. It might seem like it was induced or enforced by someone outside of you but really you went along with it and believed it. You allowed it to affect you and decided to comply with it, because deep down something far worse than other people condemning you is YOU condemning yourself. Only you can hurt yourself so deeply. And it's really just a matter of a lack of self-love.
We have to own up to this because really it's not God who is thinking of you as a miserable sinner or a worthless piece of shit. It's you. It's your self-talk and your self-attack. It's your self-destructiveness. Which when you think about it is quite weird because there you are, feeling utterly shit about yourself, while simultaneously having the total freedom and power to choose to feel that way. And you must've made a wrong decision because you're not at peace.
Taking ownership of your decision to reject God's evaluation of you, and your attempt to overthrow his will, and to ignore his unconditional love, is the only way out of it. You have to be willing to see that you are the one who has decided that your value is extremely low. That you're so worthless you pretty much just deserve to die, because no-one would want you. But hey, even if it seems true that no-one DOES want you, that's their problem and not yours. And it has nothing to do with whether YOU want you.
While you may think well, I can't do this or that because I am a failure and no-one would want me or anything I do, it's really you telling yourself this. It's you not wanting what you do. It's you being hard on yourself. And you shouldn't even be giving other people power over you to decide for you whether you are worthy or not. It's none of their business. God is the only one in the privileged position to determine your real value, and he finds you to be permanently worthy forever. It's not even really up to you.
You can't therefore really obliterate your value or worth, or decide that you deserve to die against God's will. You can pretend to do this, and you can believe in it, but even underneath your utter self-hate there is total self-love. You can't change what is really true of you, no matter how hard you try to destroy yourself. God has guaranteed your sinlessness forever. Your value is inestimable and infinite. And you are worthy and qualify for everything he has to offer. You qualified in your creation!
So if you're feeling low, down, bad about yourself, unworthy, not good enough, undeserving, a failure, weak, powerless, barely worth wiping a shoe on, recognize that this can't be true of you. It's absolutely not true in God's eyes. And it doesn't even matter what other people think of you or how they fail to properly value you. Everyone should be loving you, unless they themselves have failed to love themselves. It says nothing about your worth.
You have to decide to accept your perfection, your innocence, your value, your worth to God, your infinite credibility, your integrity, your divine honor, your holiness and your entitlement to the Kingdom of God. And that means you have to put aside all of the abuse and hurt and pain and misery and reasons "why" you deserve suffering. God does not will that you suffer, and nor should you.
"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be."
"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."
"But you COULD not make YOURSELF unworthy because YOU ARE THE TREASURE OF GOD. What HE values IS valuable. There CAN be no question of its worth, because its value lies in God's sharing Himself with it and ESTABLISHING ITS VALUE FOREVER."
"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."
"You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy."
"He always teaches you the inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the Love of Him for whom He speaks."
"The Atonement is the only gift which is worthy of being offered to the Altar of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the Altar itself. It was created perfect, and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God IS lonely without His SOULS, and THEY are lonely without Him."
"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."
If you are immortal, you cannot suffer. You cannot be hurt, damaged, offended, upset, sad, unhappy, depressed, lacking joy, unloved, abused, made sick, killed, harmed, bruised, wounded, angered, nothing. You can only be immortal.
So what does that mean, in light of what seems to be "you suffering"? Even "your suffering" cannot be truly happening to you. YOU cannot be suffering. Your immortal self CANNOT be experiencing suffering. You cannot suffer. So who is suffering?
"Spirit is in a state of grace forever."
So when you seem to be suffering, let's say you feel hurt because someone called you a "stinky fart face", can it really be that you ACTUALLY are hurt? And if you FEEL hurt by this, is this "you feeling hurt" actually really happening? Even if you feel it, even if it seems "it applies to me", even if it seems it was targeted "at you", even if its "highly personal and reminds me of the time I kept farting in church", CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that YOUR IMMORTAL SELF is actually experiencing this or believing it?
It must be that even when under attack, "you" that feels attacked is some kind of fictional construct. It can't REALLY be your immortal self that is attacked. Your immortal self cannot be sad or upset or feeling betrayed or victimized. It's impossible for your real self to feel anything but joy and love and happiness. So when you have an "I feel hurt" moment, even if it involves HEAVY emotions, and terrible pain, and totally seems to be all about YOU and how you feel... CAN IT BE?
It cannot ever be really your true identity that is suffering. Even if you seem to "hurt yourself", you are not hurting yourself. You can't BE hurt. So who or what are you hurting? If you even decide to kill yourself, YOU cannot be killed. So what is dying?
"You are immortal and you cannot die."
WHO or what is being killed? Sure enough it is the body that is involved. But in addition, how is it that there seems to be a sensation that it's YOU that is going down with the ship? WHO or what is under attack? Is this taking place IN YOUR MIND?
Is it possible, that when there is a sensation of hurt or upset feeling or guilt etc, that the feeling ITSELF brings with it a kind of illusion or "sense of" "self"? Could it be that when you are feeling guilty, and you feel like a target, and it feels like everyone can see you and knows you are there, and you are "self conscious" in public, and you want to hide from everyone because you feel like they KNOW your inner guilty secret.... is it perhaps that the guilt ITSELF brings a sense of "centric identity"? Is not anything other than love, a sense of selfishness, and thus a sense of ego?
Some years ago some stuff happened and I had a large amount of guilt because of it. And because of this guilt, I felt ashamed and took it with me everywhere I went. And I felt constantly threatened. Anywhere especially in public, which I avoided, it felt like I had a target on my back, that EVERYONE knew that I was guilty, and they could see this guilty self, and MY experience of this guilty self was a feeling of being very "self conscious". Nervous about what I AM. Feeling like I am "evil" or "bad". Feeling certain that I AM THE GUILT. And that everyone was pointing a finger at me.
It would then happen that if people would attack me, or call me names, or accuse me or whatever, I would feel like "this guilty self" is vulnerable AND attackable. If they would accuse me of something, they were accusing THIS guilty self of it, and IT was self conscious, and IT felt attackable and vulnerable, and IT believed that it deserved punishment and that IT was the ACTUAL target of what people were putting out there. So when they called me by name, and then hurled an abuse, this "guilty self" felt like it was ABOUT IT, personally, and that they were directly addressing this guilty self.
But then after a time and much healing, this guilt was gone. And then I noticed that when these same people were being the same way they seemed to be before, it clearly did not appear to be ABOUT ME, and it was not targeting "that self", that guilty self, that was in me before. And that guilty self and its sense of being "self conscious" ie in fear, was not there to "receive" the attack. It did not exist, so they could not AIM their attack AT it. And so "I", my identity, which was no longer bound up with the guilt, saw myself as NOT being the target of their expressions. And so I felt invulnerable and could now recognize that they were attacking themselves. What happened to the sense of SELF that was present IN THE GUILT?
See, whatever you make TRUE of you you will believe is WHAT YOU ARE, and in effect WHO you are. So if you believe of yourself, "I am guilty", you will believe this DEFINES you. And now you ARE guilt. And this guilt has components of ego in it. And ego is selfish. Ego is a kind of "self centeredness", a self-important self-interest.
If the absence of separation means that there is pervasive light everywhere throughout the universe, then ego is a massive CONDENSING of that, down to a point, such as a star, so that all you are now left with is masses of darkness and a tiny CENTER of a point of light. And this "all that's left" little concentration of "self" now seems to be separated off and small and weak and vulnerable. That littleness is the sense of EGO, and it is experienced like a focus on yourself alone, in isolation.
Everything about ego is about becoming small, little, contracted, compressed, diminished, weakened, self-focused, self-centered, selfish, self-attacking, self-important, self aggrandizing, delusions of grandeur, etc. This condensing produces a kind of "sense" of "me", distinguished from the rest, broken off and separate. This sense of self is "self conscious" ie made of CONCERN for self and FEAR of its own weakness and littleness. The "self conscious" self is in fear and looks out frightened of the world that threatens it. The more EGO you have, the more ego stuff you have, baggage, dark feelings, guilts and hurts, the MORE you feel self centered and like this stuff "is a self". A sense of "separated me", cut off from the rest and not sharing.
It brings with it a kind of "focal point", a contracted little fearful corner of the mind, and the more this little corner withdraws and hides and tries to be even smaller and weaker, the MORE the sense of artificial "self" increases. Because the amount of selfishness is going up, the amount of self importance is going up, the amount of superiority/inferiority complex is going up, and this all produces what SEEMS LIKE a sense of "there is something here", "I am something", "I am all these feelings", "I am these thoughts". You become identified with FORM.
The whole egotism, the attitude, inherently has this bunching up, crunching together, condensing, tightening, contracting kind of thing about it, and this SENSE of this happening FEELS like the formation of a hot-spot in the mind that seems like "where something is, moreso than the rest", or "self interest". A sense of an island within the mind. A "self".
When the guilt goes, when the self attack goes, when the sin is gone, the egotism is gone, and all this tightened contracted littleness "dissipates" and stops being so focused, and without the focus on a tiny little huddled-in-a-corner-hiding sense of identity and truth, that sense of being "separated off" and "a separate identity" goes with it. It just disappears. But that isn't the end of YOU, because your sense of self EXPANDS and moves towards the UNLIMITED, universal, endless holy christ self that you really are.
So who is it that suffers? Who is it that can BE hurt and FEEL vulnerable? It is not your immortal christ self. It is not the real you. But it can seem to be a SENSE of "you" because part of your mind gets caught up in the contraction and withdrawal into "a center", into a little prison, a bodily identity, an identification with locality in space-time. And the more ego-stuff you have in your mind, the more intensely that your mind forms into a huddle of tightly-held-onto stuff, creating an IMPRESSION of you being kind of snagged or caught up on this collection of ego material. And being localized around a "point" it makes you feel like you are this little separated off dot of identity.
It is kind of like.... the suffering, ITSELF, suffers. Just as how fear is self-fulfilling. The guilt ITSELF brings with it a feeling of separate self. Any ego emotions, be it anger or sadness or grief or loss or lack or abandonment or unworthiness or sinfulness or fear or whatever, all brings with it SELFISHNESS, which is isolation and contraction and that attempt to GET AWAY FROM everything else, producing an increasing sense that you are "this something" in the middle of the ocean of mind. And this "sense of self" always feels vulnerable and threatened and unsafe. But this sense of self is PART OF the ego material that's in the mind, and without it your mind DOES NOT experience being a target.
Without the guilt, you cannot feel this. Without the unworthiness or loathing, you cannot feel this. Your mind is elastic and sort of snaps-back into its expanded, non-localized state, spread out evenly and smoothly instead of tightened and restricted and limited. When the guilt goes, YOU stop feeling like "you" are susceptible and attackable. You stop feeling like YOU are guilty. And that sense of "contracted self" goes.
Your sense of identity stops being "caught up in" the "truth" that the guilt expresses. Because if you believe "I AM guilty" then this will set you up to experience that you AND the guilt ARE ONE. And now you ARE guilt. And in the guilt is your "self", your identity. And you will not want to let it go if you believe that letting it go will be the loss of who and what you are. So there is a kind of addiction to the ego materials and an unwillingness to see YOUR SELF as being something NOT associated with, or identified with, the ego materials. e.g. with the guilt. "I am guilty" will feel like you are MADE OF guilt. That it is fundamentally your nature.
So who is suffering? Who is hurt? Who is it that is having loss? Who is sad? Who is unworthy? Who is afraid? THOSE THINGS, combined with your mind, produce a sense of identity, or identification WITH those things, that makes YOU feel and perceive that it is YOU that is those things. That they APPLY to you. Because you think they are PART of your makeup. But it is those things themselves that bring with them the sense of artificial SELF, that is the ego, the selfish self-centered self, the hoarding possessing self, the playing small self. And without YOUR CONSENT, without your BELIEF, that these things are true of you, that sense of little self cannot remain. Because true self is expansive and infinite.
You seem to suffer because you identify WITH and AS ego stuff. Which temporarily makes you believe YOU are being attacked and YOU are the guilty one suffering. But it is really "the ego", the non-existent fictional self, the selfishenss, that is the guilty one. IT feels like IT is guilty, made of guilt. And when you WITHDRAW your allegiance from THE GUILT, that sense of "its about me" goes with it. And then you recognize that your REAL self, your immortal self, was NEVER guilty. It CANNOT BE guilty. And your immortal self doesn't have that sense of self-consciousness, self-concern, self-importance and selfishness.
You can think you are suffering, but you aren't. In a way, it is the ego that is suffering. Ego = suffering. You can think you are "the little self that suffers", but it is NOT really you. Your mind can get CAUGHT IN the trap of the ego viewpoints, which bring with them a sense of self-focus and self-worship and vulnerability, but you are not ever really those things. It is the ego that suffers because the ego IS suffering. It is the ego that has guilt because the ego IS guilt. Without guilt there is no ego. Without a bodily identity there is no body. Without sin there is no world of sin. And without death there is no world.
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
So when you feel like "I am guilty" or "I am anything" other than as God created you, know that you are lost in the ego and are feeling ego stuff and ego stuff feels this way and the sense of artificial "me", self importance, being self-absorbed, selfish, comes with that territory. And it is that vulnerable, sensitive false self that seems to be the target of the suffering, NOT your immortal self. And once you dis-identify from that EGOTISM, the whole ego thought system, you let go of these false accusations and the falsely accused goes with it. And all that is left is your immortal spirit. Your true identity in God which can never be attacked.
Love IS extension. To withhold the smallest gift is not to know love's purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back but ONE belief, ONE offering, and love is gone, because you asked a substitute to take its place. And now must war, the SUBSTITUTE for peace, come with the one alternative that you CAN choose for love. Your CHOOSING it has given it ALL the reality it seems to have. Beliefs will never OPENLY attack each other, because conflicting outcomes ARE impossible. But an UNRECOGNIZED belief is a decision to war in secret, where the results of conflict are kept unknown and NEVER brought to reason, to be considered sensible or not.
And many senseless outcomes HAVE been reached, and meaningless decisions have been made and kept hidden, to become beliefs now GIVEN power to direct all subsequent decisions. Mistake you not the power of these hidden warriors to disrupt your peace. For it IS at their mercy while you decide to leave it there. The secret enemies of peace, your least decisions to choose attack instead of love, unrecognized and swift to challenge YOU to combat and to violence far more inclusive than you think, are there by your election. Do not deny their presence, nor their terrible results. All that can BE denied is their REALITY, but NOT their outcome.
All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is FAITH IN SPECIALNESS. This takes many forms, but ALWAYS clashes with the reality of God's creation, and with the grandeur which He gave His Son. What else COULD justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his, and which He KNOWS? Only the special COULD have enemies, for they are different, and NOT the same. And difference of ANY kind imposes orders of reality, and a need to judge that cannot BE escaped. What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself.
But what is different CALLS for judgment, and this MUST come from someone "better," someone incapable of being like what he condemns, "above" it, sinless BY COMPARISON with it. And thus does specialness become a means and end at once. For specialness not only sets apart, but serves as grounds from which attack on those who seem "beneath" the special one is "natural" and "just." The special ones feel weak and frail BECAUSE of differences. For what would make them special IS their enemy. Yet they PROTECT its enmity, and call it "friend." On its behalf they fight against the universe, for nothing in the world they value more.
Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions. Here is the grand illusion of what you are and what your brother is. And here is what MUST make the body dear, and WORTH preserving. SPECIALNESS MUST BE DEFENDED. Illusions CAN attack it, and they DO. For what your brother MUST become, to KEEP your specialness, IS an illusion. He who is "worse" than you MUST be attacked, so that your specialness can live on his defeat. For specialness is triumph, and its victory IS his defeat and shame. How can he live, with all your sins upon him? And who MUST be his conqueror but you?
Would it be POSSIBLE for you to hate your brother if you were like him? COULD you attack him if you realized you journey WITH him, to a goal that is the SAME? Would you not help him reach it, in every way you could, if his attainment of it were yours? You ARE his enemy in specialness; his Friend in a SHARED purpose. Specialness can NEVER share, for it depends on goals that you ALONE can reach. And he must NEVER reach them, or YOUR goal is jeopardized. Can love HAVE meaning where the goal is triumph? And what decision CAN be made for this, that will NOT hurt you?
Your brother is your Friend BECAUSE his Father created him like you. There IS no difference. You have been GIVEN to each other that love might be extended, NOT cut off from one another. What you KEEP is lost to you. God gave you both Himself. And to remember this is now the ONLY purpose that you share. And so it is the only one you HAVE. Could you attack each other if you chose to see NO specialness of any kind between you? Look fairly at whatever makes you give each other partial welcome, or would let you think that you are better off apart. Is it not ALWAYS your belief your specialness is LIMITED by your relationship? And is not THIS the "enemy" that makes you both illusions to each other?
The fear of God and of each other comes from each unrecognized belief in specialness. For each demands the other bow to it AGAINST HIS WILL. And God Himself must honor it, or suffer vengeance. Every twinge of malice, or stab of hate, or wish to separate arises here. For here the purpose that you share becomes obscured from BOTH of you. You would oppose this course because it teaches you, YOU ARE ALIKE. You have NO purpose that is not the same. And none your Father does not share with you. For your relationship has been made clean of special goals. And would you now DEFEAT the goal of holiness that Heaven gave it?
What perspective can the special have that does NOT change with every seeming blow, each slight, or fancied judgment on itself? Those who are special MUST defend illusions against the truth. For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of God? You love your brother not while it is this you would defend AGAINST him. This is what HE attacks and YOU protect. Here is the ground of battle which you wage against him. Here MUST he be your enemy, and NOT your Friend. Never can there be peace among the different. He is your friend BECAUSE you are the same.
"The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate (separate)."
"Ego" is just a label, for what seems to happen within a PART of your own mind, when that part of your mind BELIEVES in separation. It is a label for the mind's insanity, its confusion, its attempt to be separate.
This "ego" is nothing more than a "lack of light", or the seeming darkness that appears to be there when light is lacking. But the darkness itself is not the PRESENCE of a darkness, it is merely the ABSENCE of a light.
Like a shadow, the shadow only forms when there is a limitation on the light, ie a blockage. When something is denying the light, it produces a seeming area of darkness. You would be DECEIVED to believe that this darkness itself was the PRESENCE of something, as if to say that "darkness can hide the light", or that darkness has a POWER to CAUSE light to go away.
"Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide."
The idea that the darkness has "come alive", has a mind or will of its own, has an evil nature, has evil intentions, is an enemy, is working against you on its own, etc, can only be believed by a confused mind. This is a "temptation" to be deceived.
To believe that the appearance of darkness means the PRESENCE of a "real evil", is delusional. It would be like saying that the darkness of night has caused the sun to go away.
In truth, the darkness COMPLETELY DEPENDS on the sustained blockage of the light. It depends on light's seeming absence. If the light were to shine, the absence of light would end, and whatever seemed to be "in" or "as" the darkness would literally disappear instantly into nothing. Light ALWAYS dispels darkness.
"Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition."
When mind is confused, insane, split, at war with itself, believing in separation, is twisted, believes that true things are false and false things are true, it develops a system of thought which seems backwards or "evil". It seems opposite to God and to goodness. It seems mad and selfish and special and exclusive, a mindset of war and destruction and death.
When this part of your mind believes wrongly, it somewhat hallucinates that the darkness is there. It invests the darkness with belief. It tries to give the darkness the properties of God, such as permanence, life, existence, power, will, etc. This is an attempt to believe that darkness or evil "really exists".
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
This illusion of darkness, which is NOT anything because it is a LACK OF anything, seems to a deluded mind to have its own existence. It seems to come alive, to have a voice, to have power, to have evil intentions of death. This is what we call the "ego". It is an illusion of a separate self, some kind of alien will or separate mind that seems to have its own power.
But at no time does this illusion of an ego or a "real darkness" ever become anything more than the absence of light. It never stops being a mere shadow on a wall, a temporary appearance of something missing. It is not a self, it is the LACK of self. It is not a real entity, it is the ABSENCE OF a real entity. It is like an empty dark hole.
The key thing is that this seeming darkness only persists so long as the MIND is believing in separation. The darkness completely depends on the continuation of this belief. The mind is the seat of all power. The mind is USING its power to PRETEND to be powerless, in which it SEEMS that this "dark self" has power over it. But in truth the powerful mind is animating this dark self, using this dark self, making this dark self act out like a puppet on a string.
This taps into the secret of salvation - that you are doing this all to yourself. The ego is not doing anything on its own. There is merely a part of your mind which YOU - as your mind - are pitting AGAINST the rest of you. You are at war with yourself. You are the mind that is "being egoic". You have an attitude problem. You have a faulty belief. That part of your mind which is believing wrongly seems to be "ego-like". It's trying to be evil. It's a part of YOU that you are trying to convert into the "devil."
In absolute truth, however, this egotism is nothing but an hallucination, this darkness is nothing but a lack of anything, its world and its body are nothing but illusions of nothingness pretending to be something, and there is no real separation anywhere. In absolute truth, there is no such thing as a real ego, a real devil, a real evil, and nor is the body or the world real. This is all part of the dream of separation, in which YOUR MIND is trying to hide from the light.
We should then not think of the ego as a separate entity, or the presence of a real evil, or some enemy with a will of its own to be fought and overcome. You do not do "battle with" the devil. There is no real war going on here beyond your BELIEF. Literally a part of your mind is "doing it all to itself." A part of your mind is trying to be evil. It is mistaken, but you DO have to own up to it.
You, as the soul, or the utilizer of the whole of mind, must find a way to reintegrate ALL of your mind into one whole. This INCLUDES the part of mind that is being ego. It does not include "the ego" itself, because that's just a description of a temporary "bad attitude" that part of mind is having. When that SAME mind receives correction from the Holy Spirit for its bad attitude, that same mind becomes holy again and reunites with the rest.
In truth then we have to at least temporarily own up to being the one who is trying to be separate. That ego in us - that's just a part of our own mind which is not healed yet. It's filled with ambitions that are twisted and evil-like. It needs significant correction and purification. That part of mind is sick and needs to be resurrected. Or rather, needs to awaken again to the awareness of the light. The light will dispel its hallucinations of darkness, and with it "the ego" - the lack of anything - will vanish completely.
The ego therefore has no power or will of its own to cause itself to exist, to maintain its existence, to fight against reality, or to stop "you" from undoing it. Literally there IS NO SEPARATE EGO. It's just part of YOU. Part of your mind that has gone astray.
When you own up to this, you RECLAIM ALL POWER from it, and no longer GIVE it power over you. How can it have power over you at all when it was really YOU having power over yourself all along? All you were ever really doing was using this puppet to have power OVER YOURSELF. You played BOTH victim AND victimizer. All the while believing you were being victimized by something which "is not me doing it."
When you finally see that ego is nothing but YOUR own self attack, and that you are the one doing all of the attacking, where is an enemy then? When you have owned up entirely to being the one who is being the devil/ego, your mind can now choose again, decide better, embrace the true self, and undo the separateness of the split. Mind reintegrates with mind, you reclaim ALL the power as your own, and never again will you victimize yourself with this fantasy of an enemy.
Where is the ego when the light has come? Nowhere. What was the ego? It was just an illusion of nothing seeming to be something. What was it made of? The lack of anything real. What did it seem to be? The darkness come alive. What was it really? The absence of the light. Where is it now that there is light? Nowhere. What is the ego? Nothing at all. It never really existed.
"The ego depends SOLELY on your willingness to tolerate it. But if you are willing to look upon your grandeur, you CANNOT despair, and therefore you CANNOT want the ego."
"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son."
"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."
"This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid."
"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What was the ego? What the darkness was. Where was the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"
"My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away."
"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."
I think this runs somewhat against the expectations of many ACIM students, but at the physical and personality level we are all considerably different. No two bodies are identical. There are many many sub-types of human bodies, brains, nervous systems, outlooks, orientations, races, gender identities, etc. We are not all the same in terms of human bodies, never were, and never will be. Everything physical is, at best, similar, but not equal.
When there comes to be a social "norm" where we think there's a normal way to be, a normal type of person, a normal interaction style, a normal behaviour, a normal way to process information etc, it becomes a way to create a "closet". People start to feel ashamed for being different, ashamed for having difficulties matching up to the expected behaviour.
An obvious example is in the case of gay/queer people whereby, quite literally their bodies and brains are different. A gay person does not have the "wiring" to produce experiences of excitation and attraction to members of the opposite sex, or at least this "ability" is altered and in a different ratio. A trans-sexual person may have a wildly different sense of gender identity compared to their physical biology. There is science to confirm that gay people have different pheromones, different brain structures, different chemistry.
Another example is in terms of the differences between extroverted and introverted people, or those who are highly sensitive compared to those who are not. The extroverted people find release and stress-processing through social connection and external ways to work through things. This totally does not work for an introverted person who needs to go within, withdraw, process deeply and reflect. When either of these become an expected "norm" the other group becomes ashamed and repressed.
It's far better that we realize that on the physical and personality level, the human level, and to a degree in the mind as well since it is influenced by the brain wiring, that we are a collection of highly discordant, highly differentiated "persons". There is not a norm, there is not a standard, there is not a one-size-fits all, there is not a "we are all one" on this level. There is no such thing as physical oneness or physical equality. The idea of making the human race have a "physical oneness" must be completely destroyed. Oneness only works in the mind, not the body, and trying to make it work for bodies is insane and backwards.
I've been working with ACIM for over 20 years now and have gone through a lot of healing and transformation. But in spite of this, my body is still largely wired the same way it was years ago. It is still highly sensitive and introverted, my nervous system is still wired to process deeply rather than broadly, I still need down time to catch up with the processing, I still at times am shy and finding it harder to push out expressions and open up emotionally. These are physical traits rooted in how my brain is structured, regardless of my spiritual aspirations at the mind level. I work in abstracts and symbols and metaphors and subtle nuances, which is not true of most people.
You'll notice that as people work on spiritual awakening their body stays much the same. It may heal, it may seem more alive, it may seem healthier or younger, but it still has its accent, it still moves with similar mannerisms, there's still the same collection of language, there's the same eyes and mouth, the same height, the same weight, the same muscles and sense of motion. These things aren't really going to change because they're part of the body. Waking up more doesn't suddenly turn your body into a spiritual thing because it can't be that. It's a body, not a spirit.
Trying to expect bodies to be more spiritual is a spiritualisation of the physical, which is a form of level confusion. The physical can't be spiritual because it is not spirit. Trying to expect human physical persons to shed the wiring and uniqueness and differences that are hardwired into their physical makeup is highly unrealistic. Trying to act spiritual or look spiritual or trying to get the body to stop having its quirks is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.
I would say that to some degree I have become more understanding of, at peace with, and perhaps a bit more masterful of working WITH the limitations of my physicality, but I wouldn't say that the physical has stopped being the way it always was. My mind has changed and that perhaps means that I now operate the body differently, but it still largely looks similar, moves similar, processes information similarly as before. I still have high sensitivity and am easily overwhelmed with too much input. I still fart and pee and shit and sleep and all that.
I see sometimes that people expect that they're going to turn into a butterfly or something as they work on their spiritual path. Doing workbook lessons for example doing meditations, starts to seem like it's going to cause a persons perception to change so much that they become non-physical. And in other words, that they won't be able to function on the physical level anymore. And yet, there they are, using the same physical body and the same eyes and the same brain to physically perceive the same book which still looks exactly the same with the same physical pages as before. The physical stuff barely changes at all.
So I think it would be healthy for us to acknowledge that we each are working with a distinct, specific, limited, quirky, and DIFFERENT type of physical body to everyone else. And this physical body brings with it unique challenges, unique wiring, unique preferences, unique pros and cons, unique talents and limitations. We're NOT all the same on this level. And it's okay to sort of embrace the way that you are different, the kind of body device you are having to work with, and it's okay to treat "your self" with kindness and acknowledgement even if it does not work for other people.
If your body has needs, if your brain has needs, if certain types of interactions or relationships or environments or people or whatever don't work for you, that's fine. It's likely to do with how your body is wired. Yes you can change some things psychologically but the body itself cannot actually ever be whole, cannot be spiritual, cannot be like as swiss army knife, cannot do all things in all ways with all people and all situations, and does not have every ability that everyone else has.
Letting "yourself" off the hook for it to be okay to be NOT like other people, to have your own path, to go your own way, to do things in your own style, to have your own needs and boundaries, to dislike some things that other people like, to not want to participate in certain things that other people tout as ideal, is totally fine. Most of these "preferences" are totally rooted in how the physical body is made up and how the brain is connected, how the personality is structured and what that makes you feel comfortable with (or not).
We're all working on transcending these limits and things but we shouldn't be in denial that the body has its own very unique persuasion which is not very likely to completely match anyone else on the planet. I like most spiritual people want to 'become' or remember being the perfect soul that God created, my true self, my real self, but I highly highly doubt that this is going to change the nature, shape, color, style, orientation, workings, mannerisms, cycles, or character of my physical body in any significant way.
The body is an encounter suit. It's not you, but it IS a major limit and it does have major differences to other bodies. We can't pretend that's not true at this level. We're trying to rise above it and not identify with it and not use that to keep us from God, but at the same time we also don't want to get into people-pleasing and trying to fit into something that we are not comfortable with. It's okay to be different while you're working on trying to become "all the same" and "one" with everyone in spirit.
I've yet to see a single awakening person whose speaking voice suddenly sounds like it's a whole other person. Same accent, same intonations, same pacing, same emphasis, everything. That's not going to change anytime soon. We are not bodies, but bodies ARE bodies.
For me I am going to just be DIFFERENT, and NOT the same, until I can find a way to transcend the LEVEL of differences and be truly equal in mind and spirit. And I do not expect my body will ever suddenly turn into a rainbow, will not tolerate expectations to fit in with any body-oriented category, and will stick out like a sore thumb until the soreness is healed in my mind.
"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct" UrM5A1
"There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently, Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them as you were before." UrW155L1
"The tendency to invest the physical with non-physical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxiety-proneness." UrT1C12
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. " UrM9A6
"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2
"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you." UrT18I1
"The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which you would KEEP MINDS APART. For bodies cannot forgive. They can do only as the mind directs." UrT15H12