Spiritual Paranoia

"Once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear.  You cannot then believe that fear is caused without [from outside your own mind]. And God, Whom you had thought to banish, can be welcomed back within the holy mind He never left." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 196, 8:3-5

Welcoming God back into the holy mind He[She] never left??  God is in my mind, and has always been????!!!!!????  These are very frightening thoughts to all of us.  For we find so much objectionable in our minds and thoughts... things we would never want anyone else to know about, much less God!  What is God, some kind of spirit lurking in the recesses of our minds, attempting to overtake us?  If God is IN our minds, then what is this other stuff???  And how can it be there if God is All, and everywhere and everything???

These thoughts, or something like them, arise in all our minds when we get too close to the Truth.  Our spiritual paranoia is such that we would rather die as weak and sinful mortals than acknowledge the grandeur of our true Being in God, as reflections and extensions of the Infinite.  We would rather live with the illusion that we are at the mercy of the world around us, that we are powerless and subject to all the laws the world evangelizes:  the laws of health, of diet, of economics, of 'nice' relationships and people, of judgment and punishment and guilt, of cause and effect as the material laws proclaim them.  As ACIM puts it, "The thing you dread the most is your salvation.  You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your own strength and freedom.  Yet salvation lies in them." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 196, 9:4 & 7-8

This can be quite terrifying.  "When you realize once and for all that it is you that you fear, the mind perceives itself as split."  Both bondage and salvation, both in my own mind!  Yikes, what hope is there, then?  Won't it always be just this war of the worlds????

If we want to know the Truth enough to come this far, then it is easy to see the certainty of outcome.  The very nature of mental constructs and thought forms is that they are illusory... not real.  They are phantasms of the mind, as all fear is.  What is real is eternal and formless, and resides in the Mind of God, which extends ItSelf to all that Is, eternally whole and loving and calm, strong and free, infinite in Truth and in Being.  We are One with this Mind, and so sanity and Truth are in us, and we are always free to return to this Awareness of Self.  Or we can continue to make up scary stories and pretend to be bound by them.

So remember, when we find ourselves in the grip of such spiritual paranoia, it is a very good sign.  It means we are very close to reclaiming our power... to realizing that we are the terrorist, and the healer. 

"This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you.  Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:
          I am responsible for what I see.
          I choose the feelings I experience,
         And I decide upon the goal I would achieve.
         And everything that seems to happen to me, I ask for,
         And receive as I have asked.
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you.  Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 21, Section II, 2:1-7