1. Grandeur is of God, and only of Him. 2Therefore it is in you. 3Whenever 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. 4When this occurs, even though it does not understand it, the ego believes that its “enemy” has struck, and attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its “protection.” 5Self-inflation is the only offering it can make. 6The grandiosity of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur of God. 7Which will you choose?
2. Grandiosity is always a cover for despair. 2It is without hope because it is not real. 3It is an attempt to counteract your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness is real. 4Without this belief grandiosity is meaningless, and you could not possibly want it. 5The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness, because it always involves attack. 6It is a delusional attempt to outdo, but not to undo. 7We said before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness and viciousness. 8It remains suspicious as long as you despair of yourself. 9It shifts to viciousness when you decide not to tolerate self-abasement and seek relief. 10Then it offers you the illusion of attack as a “solution.”
3. The ego does not understand the difference between grandeur and grandiosity, because it sees no difference between miracle impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. 2I told you that the ego is aware of threat to its existence, but makes no distinctions between these two very different kinds of threat. 3Its profound sense of vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment except in terms of attack. 4When the ego experiences threat, its only decision is whether to attack now or to withdraw to attack later. 5If you accept its offer of grandiosity it will attack immediately. 6If you do not, it will wait.
4. The ego is immobilized in the presence of God’s grandeur, because His grandeur establishes your freedom. 2Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because you will give up all investment in it. 3Grandeur is totally without illusions, and because it is real it is compellingly convincing. 4Yet the conviction of reality will not remain with you unless you do not allow the ego to attack it. 5The ego will make every effort to recover and mobilize its energies against your release. 6It 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. 7Yet your grandeur is not delusional because you did not make it. 8You 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.
5. From your grandeur you can only bless, because your grandeur is your abundance. 2By blessing you hold it in your mind, protecting it from illusions and keeping yourself in the Mind of God. 3Remember always that you cannot be anywhere except in the Mind of God. 4When you forget this, you will despair and you will attack.
6. The ego depends solely on your willingness to tolerate it. 2If you are willing to look upon your grandeur you cannot despair, and therefore you cannot want the ego. 3Your grandeur is God’s answer to the ego, because it is true. 4Littleness and grandeur cannot coexist, nor is it possible for them to alternate. 5Littleness and grandiosity can and must alternate, since both are untrue and are therefore on the same level. 6Being the level of shift, it is experienced as shifting and extremes are its essential characteristic.
7. Truth and littleness are denials of each other because grandeur is truth. 2Truth does not vacillate; it is always true. 3When grandeur slips away from you, you have replaced it with something you have made. 4Perhaps it is the belief in littleness; perhaps it is the belief in grandiosity. 5Yet it must be insane because it is not true. 6Your grandeur will never deceive you, but your illusions always will. 7Illusions are deceptions. 8You cannot triumph, but you are exalted. 9And in your exalted state you seek others like you and rejoice with them.
8. It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity, because love is returned and pride is not. 2Pride will not produce miracles, and will therefore deprive you of the true witnesses to your reality. 3Truth is not obscure nor hidden, but its obviousness to you lies in the joy you bring to its witnesses, who show it to you. 4They attest to your grandeur, but they cannot attest to pride because pride is not shared. 5God wants you to behold what He created because it is His joy.
9. Can your grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses to it? 2And what can be real that has no witnesses? 3What good can come of it? 4And if no good can come of it the Holy Spirit cannot use it. 5What He cannot transform to the Will of God does not exist at all. 6Grandiosity is delusional, because it is used to replace your grandeur. 7Yet what God has created cannot be replaced. 8God is incomplete without you because His grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing from it.
10. You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. 2No one else can fill your part in it, and while you leave your part of it empty your eternal place merely waits for your return. 3God, through His Voice, reminds you of it, and God Himself keeps your extensions safe within it. 4Yet you do not know them until you return to them. 5You cannot replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace yourself. 6God, Who knows your value, would not have it so, and so it is not so. 7Your value is in God’s Mind, and therefore not in yours alone. 8To accept yourself as God created you cannot be arrogance, because it is the denial of arrogance. 9To accept your littleness is arrogant, because it means that you believe your evaluation of yourself is truer than God’s.
11. Yet if truth is indivisible, your evaluation of yourself must be God’s. 2You did not establish your value and it needs no defense. 3Nothing can attack it nor prevail over it. 4It does not vary. 5It merely is. 6Ask the Holy Spirit what it is and He will tell you, but do not be afraid of His answer, because it comes from God. 7It is an exalted answer because of its Source, but the Source is true and so is Its answer. 8Listen and do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive. 9He would have you replace the ego’s belief in littleness with His Own exalted Answer to what you are, so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is.