Your own strength

From ACIM workbook lesson 48:
"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength. The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, though not necessarily in a place you recognize as yet, you have remembered God, and let His strength take the place of your weakness. The instant you are willing to do this there is indeed nothing to fear."

This is perhaps one of the hardest lessons to learn. Certainly for a person like me, who has had it as a hardcore, unshakable tenet in his life that your own strength is the only thing you can ever count on. The only thing you must ever count on.

Giving up your own strength for a "higher power" was seen by me as a weak position. A ridiculous position. A patently, obviously, wrong position.

And yet consider that what seems to the ego like a "higher power" is in actuality your own real self. And that even the strongest person in the world is ridiculously weak. A few days in the wrong temperature or without water, and he is dead.

It that's not enough, even if you could build your power to god-like proportions, it would still only be the power to move illusions around.

I am one of the strongest people I know. And yet I have found in my subconscious absolutely ridiculous amounts of fear. So it's clear that "strength" in the ego sense is no solution at all. It's not easy, but I'm giving it up in favor of the Higher Self.