November 18, 2014

Grandeur is love which can be and is returned. Grandiosity is pride which is never returned as it is self-serving. Grandeur and grandiosity are denials of each other. As Grandeur is Truth, it is always true and does not vacillate. When Grandeur slips from our awareness, we have allowed our minds to replace it with something else we have made up and chosen to believe about ourselves. We have chosen to believe some form of littleness about who we are and thus devalued ourselves in our own minds. Grandiosity becomes a posturing that our egoic thought system uses to evaluate ourselves as less than we really are. It involves comparison and posturing. It involves mistaken judgments. Our egoic thought system deceives us into believing less of ourselves than we really are. Illusions are deceptions regardless of what they are. And deceptions never tell the truth nor come anywhere close to Grandeur. They merely keep us distracted from the reality of the Grandeur we truly are.

We may then be deceived by the egoic thought that recognizing our Grandeur is arrogant. Can accepting God’s evaluation of us be arrogant? Can accepting what is true be in any way arrogant? Surely believing that any valuation of ourselves we have made is truer than God’s valuation of us must be arrogance. Do we know better than God that we are less than God’s valuation of us? This idea must certainly be insanity! And so it is. The grandiose idea that we know better than our Source and Creator is grandiosity. Grandiosity is delusional because the egoic thought system we have aligned our minds with uses it to replace our Grandeur although what God creates cannot be replaced. God’s Grandeur is total and we cannot be missing from it.

We are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No thought or thought system can alter this truth no matter how much value we have placed in that mistaken idea. No one else can fill our part of the Mind of God. While we ae unaware of our place in the Mind of God, Spirit holds our place there, holds our extensions and creations there and waits for our return to the awareness of who we really are. The Voice for God reminds us continually of our true place in the Mind of God and the Grandeur of our true nature. We cannot in any way replace our Grandeur as we cannot replace ourselves in the Mind of God. The One who knows our value would not have it any other way. Listen to the Voice for God, Spirit, and no longer question its message. Its valuation of us is indisputable. We are who it tells us we are, the One holy Child of God, One with God our Source. Let this valuation rest in you and allow your mind to be raised to its undeniable place in the Mind of God. Let go of the littleness you have believed in for so long and be free to soar in the Realm of Heaven, our One home. Accept now the truth about your Grandeur.

November 11, 2014

Grandeur versus grandiosity. Are they similar or are they different? Let’s look at Grandeur first. Grandeur is of God. It is a creation of God and is therefore real. The word itself brings a sense of comfort and reassurance to my mind. Because Grandeur is of God, it is also within us. Grandeur is an integral part of our Divine nature. It is impossible to separate it from us and so it is of us all. I was very fortunate in my college years to work my summers in the back country of Yosemite National Park. It was a dream job for me, and I have always cherished my time there and the people I worked with and served. The mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, trees, and wildlife are so magnificent that words fail me to describe it all. All of it is so compelling and beautiful. All of it is imbued with power, life, peacefulness, completeness and abundance. It is a system that works together to form a complete life system – an ecosystem. And I felt that I was also an integral part of that system, so inseparable from the system that I remained connected to it when I returned to school in the fall. I experienced a love that had no bounds through this incredible environment. It has always remained with me to this day. This is Grandeur.

What about grandiosity? What is it as the Course defines it? The first word that comes to my mind is grandstanding. Grandiosity is an empty inflated sense of importance that lacks any sense of genuineness or permanence. Grandiosity is definitely of the egoic thought system. It is the ego’s answer to the Grandeur that is in us. Grandiosity is imbued with competitiveness. It puts up a false front and just when we buy into it, it deflates, it crumbles, and it leaves us feeling little and betrayed. It has no lasting power beneath it. Any completeness and peacefulness it may bring is fleeting as it fades into a sense of lack ad littleness. This is its goal and so keeps our minds distracted from our true essence and the awareness of who we really are. Just when we begin to feel comfortable with grandiosity’s essence, the rug is pulled out from under the security we felt and we fall into a state of uneasiness and loneliness. Perhaps even depression. We may feel the question, “What’s it all for?” This is exactly where the egoic thought system wants us; to block our awareness of who we really are.

Are we willing to settle for grandiosity? Are we willing to settle for that empty feeling of something that is supposed to be grand but somehow never quite feels adequate? I think if we were honest with ourselves we would realize that grandiosity feels quite empty and unfulfilling. While the egoic thought system’s answer to Grandeur is grandiosity, it is really only a distraction. The Grandeur within us is God’s answer to the ego’s grandiosity and it is the only true answer. Grandiosity cannot remain in the light of Grandeur. Like the mountains of Yosemite, all else fades away in the presence of Grandeur. I am so grateful for the four summers I spent in Yosemite experiencing the incredible Grandeur of God’s creation. At that time I was questioning who I was and who God was, too. Being in the midst of that Grandeur of God’s presence was a deep spiritual experience for me. I may not have understood much about the spiritual nature of humanity at that time, but I felt that deep spiritual connection with all of creation through my time in that place. I truly felt One with all creation there and I certainly felt the love of Spirit in that place. And then I carried it with me wherever I went after. The sense of that Grandeur never left me and later I would understand what I experienced through the lessons of the Course. Little did I know that the Course was just coming into the world during that time.

Put aside the feelings of grandiosity that keep you from the awareness of the Grandeur within you. What you seek you already are. Let the presence of Spirit within you rise up and remind you of the whole complete and limitless One we all are. We have never lost the Grandeur of who we all are in Oneness. Spirit is within us waiting for us to allow it to point us in the right direction where we will find our true divine nature and share it with all creation. Let it well up in you, overflowing as you share it with the world. We are truly the Divine Grandeur of creation.

November 4, 2014

The purpose of the Course is to guide us to the reawakening of the awareness of who we really are. We have forgotten who we really are and have developed a perception of ourselves based on the idea that we are separate from each other and God. Our perception of ourselves is much more complicated than the reality of who we are. In our belief in separation we have made up a much more complicated yet limited idea of who we are. And we choose to believe this misperception of ourselves. We have the divine ability to create within us, yet we choose to create less than who we are. Because we create like ourselves, what we create from a belief that we are “less than”, we create “less than.” If we create from a belief than we are One with God, whole, complete and limitless, we will create like God; whole, complete and limitless.

Our divine nature is love. We are love as God is love. And so when we create from a belief that we are love, we will create and extend like ourselves. We will create or extend love. What a world we can imagine if there was nothing but love in it. Yet, the world is a world of love for that is all there really is. We believe that the absence of love is possible, so we think we see its absence. However, since anything other than love is impossible, anything unloving we think we see is a mistaken perception. It merely reflects our belief that what s unloving exists. So much of our thinking is generated by our egoic thought system, which is based in our belief that we are separate that we see a world that seems to be lacking in love. What if we were to let go of our attachment to our belief in the lack of loving and approach it from a belief that there is an abundance of love in this world?

God is love. And so we are love. The divine truth about us is that we are the limitless abundance of love. And while we are existing in this world of perception, the world of form, we are charged with sharing that limitless love with all we encounter. This is where we experience the truth about ourselves and reawaken our awareness of who we really are. Every relationship, every encounter, every experience is an opportunity to see ourselves and each other as love; who we really are. If we believe we are love, we will attract love. If we believe we are unloving, we will attract unlovingness to ourselves. Our divine nature remains strong within us, waiting for us to reawaken to the awareness that that is who we are. It never goes away. It never becomes damaged. Our divine nature simply waits for us to be ready to invite its awareness back into our minds.

How do we do this? How do we make this shift in thinking? Such as shift appears to be difficult if not impossible when we approach it with our egoic mind that believes we are separate and therefor “less.” There is another force within us that is there solely for the purpose of guiding our minds back to the awareness of who we really are. The Holy Spirit dwells within each and every one of us. Spirit recognizes and knows who we really are. Spirit holds that divine nature within us, calling to us to remember. Spirit’s voice is familiar. Spirit’s message is familiar. The ancient song of truth about who we are is calling from within us, reminding us of who we really are. As we let go of the insistent din of the voice of our egoic thought system and turn our attraction to Spirit, the Voice for God, we are reminded of our One divine nature. We feel love well up within us like a never ending stream. Love and peace bubble up within us as we recognize who we really are. We also recognize this same sense of love and peace within each other. What more could we want than to share this joy with one another? Remember, it’s the simple willingness to allow Spirit to guide us in remembering who we really are that brings us back to the experience of the limitless love we really are. Remember then that whenever we question our value to say, “My idea of God and who I am is incomplete without including me and all others in the idea of God and me.” Ask today and the abundance of limitless love shines from within the depths of your being and know who you and all your brothers and sisters really are.

October 28, 2014

We have two evaluations of who we are floating around in our minds. And, we choose which one we believe. Spirit looks on us with love and evaluates us based on who we really are. This evaluation is always in our minds because Spirit is always in our minds. Another evaluation in our minds is made by our egoiuc thought system. The egoic thought system, though mistaken and incorrect, is there because we have chosen to accept it there and believe it even though it leads us to believe that we are the exact oppos8te of who we really are. We have chosen to go with the egoic thought system’s evaluation that we are separate and limited, lacking and headed for destruction. We have spent a lifetime building the case for this limited idea of who we are. Is it any wonder we feel that life is out to “get” us? Our constant obsession with this idea keeps us distracted from the truth about who we are that remains within our minds, yet blocked from our awareness.

Spirit remains firmly planted within our minds, holding the knowledge of who we really are for us. Though we may continue blocking our awareness of this knowledge, it nevertheless remains within our minds gently calling to us to remember who we really are. Simply put, this is salvation – remembering who we really are – the Atonement. Our true natural state of being is joy and peace. If we are experiencing anything different we are not in our right mind – the Mind of God. We have mistakenly aligned our minds with the egoic thought system and placed our trust in the illusory idea of separation. This way of thinking pits ourselves, who we believe is separate, against another, who is really our Self and One with us. I pit me against myself. You pit you against yourself. Why? There can be no joy or peace in this, only confusion. And so we feel confused.

God’s will for us is salvation, that is, the knowledge of who we really are and the experience of love, joy and peace. And so this is our will, too, since God shares all with us as we are One with God. If this is God’s will for us it only makes sense that it would be possible if not easy for us to obtain it. We do not need to look far, for our brothers and sisters are everywhere. Every minute and every second gives us a chance to obtain the awareness we seek. Within every encounter and every experience lies an opportunity to see with the open eyes of Spirit beyond the appearance of the world to the truth of who we really are and thus experience the joy and peace we truly are. Only our stubborn attachment to the way we have always perceived and thought about ourselves and each other stands between confusion and joy.

Which evaluation do we align ourselves with? The Course tells us that whenever we question our value to say, “God is incomplete without me.” In truth, God is never incomplete and God is never without us as we are never without God. I might rephrase the previous quote as, “My idea of God is incomplete or incorrect without including me and all others in the idea of God.”   We are One with God. Or, we are God. Remember this when we find ourselves aligning with our egoic thought system. The egoic thoughts will fade from our minds. The truth about us is so holy that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of us. Choose then, your allegiance to who you really are, the One holy Child of God. Chose this in how you perceive each One you encounter. Take full advantage of each opportunity to see the holiness of another and thus yourself and step into the joy and peace of wholeness. Value who you really are by aligning with Spirit’s evaluation of who you are. There is no mistaking the completeness, limitlessness and divine nature of the One Holy Child of God you really are.

October 21, 2014

We all have Spirit within us. We are created complete and divine, but we don’t always recognize or accept that reality. Recognizing Spirit within us is our path back to the awareness of who we really are. Spirit gives rise to joy within us. This is always true. However, we aren’t always aware of joy within ourselves or others. We are not consistent in our reliance on Spirit to guide our perception. Joy is always available to us. It is our choice of what we offer to each other that limits or increases our receiving joy. Joy is not limited. We limit our receiving by what we think about ourselves and each other.

Are we willing to accept the truth about each other? Are we willing to allow Spirit to reveal the truth about another to us? Accepting our brothers and sisters as the Divine creations they really are is a reflection of the Divine creation we really are. As we have made a choice not to see ourselves whole and complete, Spirit reveals our wholeness and completeness in the Ones we encounter along our path. Everyone we encounter reflects who we think we are in some sense. If we are willing to allow Spirit to guide our perception and accept the truth about each other we will see the joy of Spirit reflected back to us. We are all One. Another’s joy and wholeness is our joy and wholeness. As we recognize wholeness and joy in each One, we add to our awareness of our own wholeness and joy, for wholeness and joy are shared. Wholeness and joy cannot be divided or separated, and thus must be recognized and extended in sharing. We remember our Oneness in the unity of sharing.

We are not yet awake, but are in the process of awakening. Spirit is our guide in this awakening. And Spirit speaks to us through each One we encounter. Spirit speaks in every voice we hear and acts in every action another takes. Voices and actions perceived with our egooic thought system will appear insane, but if we are willing to accept Spirit’s guidance, we will begin to hear Spirit’s message for us beyond the appearance of those words and actions. The perception that sounds insane cannot hurt us for that perception is nothing more than a mistaken thought. The Course has taught us that nothing unreal exists, nor can anything unreal threaten us. Spirit’s guidance translates all perception for us as we allow.

The healing of our mind begins with the acceptance of the truth about who our brothers and sisters really are. That acceptance reveals the truth about who we really are to us through Spirit’s joy and love radiating from our brothers and sisters. As we join in Oneness with each other, we recognize we are all One and that we are all the One Divine Child of God in that Unity. This is who we really are. This is where we recognize our wholeness, our completeness, our limitlessness, and our Divine nature. Accept each One today and join in the joy of who we really are. This is our journey.