Chapter 24 ~ Specialness

ACIM helps me to reach and maintain a State of Peace.  In this State, the mind is Quiet and able to remember God.  To learn this Course requires willingness to question every value that I hold.  My values have the Power to direct every decision I make; for decisions are the outcome of belief.

Specialness as a substitute for Love.  Love, and Everything of God, multiplies Eternally.  Anything that is not Love is attack.  Make no mistake about it.  If I am not Peaceful, I have chosen attack.

Specialness takes many forms.  It sets me "apart" and "above" others.  Attack on those who seem "beneath" the special one is "natural" and "just."  Specialness is the grand illusion of what I am, and makes the body valuable and worth preserving.  Specialness must be defended in a world separated from God, because illusions can and do attack.  He who is "worse" than me must be attacked.  Specialness is triumph, and my victory is my brother's shame and defeat. Specialness never shares.  It depends on goals that I alone can reach.

Would it be possible to hate my brother if I were like him?  Could I attack him if I realized our journey is the same, we take it together and it has the same goal? Would I not help him reach his goal in every way I could, if I knew his success was mine?  Love has no meaning if the goal is triumph over my brother.

My brother is my friend because we are One in the Father.  There is no "separation" between us.  Could I attack my brother if I chose to see no specialness of any kind between us?  The fear of my brother comes from my unrecognized belief in separation and specialness.  Every twinge of malice, every stab of hate, every wish to be separate comes from the belief in specialness.

My specialness (the writer speaking here) comes from my unique upbringing in a violent, alcoholic, poor, wrong-side-of-the-tracks home.  This is what I have used to claim victimhood and put blame on any past, present and future problems.  This is my specialness.  For instance, to my brother I might say, "You would not understand me, you have not had the misfortunes and terrible upbringing I have had"........do I see the specialness?  It is not only specialness because I am Donald Trump, the Queen of England or a star athlete.  It is also the special problems I choose to define myself within this world of separation.

There will never be Peace among the special, but my brother is my friend because we are One.  Only the special could have enemies.  Difference of any kind imposes levels of "reality" and a need to judge that cannot be escaped.  What is "different" calls for judgment.  Judgment comes from thinking I am incapable of being like what I condemn, and sinless by comparison.

"Exclusiveness" and "specialness" is what I strive for in my separated world.

In salvation, I have no purpose that my brother does not also share. My brother and I are the same. I might oppose this Course because it teaches me that I am not special, which may be very difficult for me to accept at this time.  Eventually I will come to Know it.

The Treachery of Specialness.   Love makes no comparisons; comparison is an ego device.  Specialness always makes comparisons.  In the world of illusions I search for and clutch all the "lack" I seem to find in myself or another.  When it is lack I perceive in another, I seem to stand tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and unsullied....by comparison with what I see.  I look good when I compare myself to those "lesser" than me.  Yet what I do not understand is, when I do this, it is only myself I alienate.

I have a function in salvation: forgiveness.  Pursuit of my function will bring me Joy.  Do not let illusions of myself be dearer to me than Truth.  The idea of "sin" requires belief in specialness.   Perhaps I believe I am special because I am not a thief, adulterer, murderer, glutton, addict, drunk, etc.

I AM NOT SPECIAL.  If I think I am,  I will block myself from Truth.  What can Truth tell me, when it is my specialness I listen to?  I can defend my specialness but if I do, I will not hear the Voice for God beside it.  The price I pay for specialness is Heaven.

My brother stands beside me with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to me.  Do not let the dream of specialness stand between us.  My brother is the enemy to my specialness, but with Truth he is friend to what is Real in me.

I am like to God as God is to Himself.  God is not special, for He would not keep one part of Himself to Himself.  He gives All to His Son.  I am the Son of God, Complete and Whole; but I am not special.  Heaven does not know specialness.

The body, created as witness to a world of separation from God, is my hiding place where God cannot enter and no one is welcome except my tiny self.  It is the place where I hide my secrets and keep myself separate from my brother.  Safe from God, yet safe for everlasting conflict.  The body is the gate of hell I closed upon myself to rule in madness and loneliness in my special kingdom apart from God, away from Truth and salvation.

I threw away the key to Heaven, but God placed it in my brother whose Holy hands offer it to me when I forgive him for what he did not do.  My plans have failed and will forever fail to bring me Peace and Joy of any kind.  I travel through despair, until I am ready to learn it is just an illusion of despair.

The death of specialness is not my death, but my Awakening into Eternal Life.  I emerge from an illusion of what I am, to accepting myself as God Created me:  His Holy, Beloved Son.

Forgiving Specialness.  Forgiveness is the end of specialness and the release from all illusion.  I start by forgiving one illusion at a time, any small or large upset, any person or situation in which I feel anything but Love.  Anything other than Love, requires forgiveness.

Ego is vulnerable and open to attack....just a word that I do not like, a little whisper, a circumstance that does not suit me, or an event that I did not anticipate.....can upset my world and hurl it into chaos.  It can be thrown off balance by anything.  What rests on nothing can never be stable and will rock, turn and whirl about with every breeze.

Without a foundation, nothing is secure.  Would God have left His Son in such a state?  Truth is not frail and illusions can do nothing to interfere with Truth.  The Son of God is resting Safe in Heaven, dreaming of exile to a world separated from God; a world of illusion and specialness.  Specialness is the hell I choose to call home.  The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a World of Loveliness they do not see.  Freedom, Peace and Joy stand before me, yet I do not See.

God would no more condemn His Son to hell and damnation than He would condemn Himself.  God calls me to join His Will.  He knows that death is not my will, but while I choose death He must say, "Thy will be done."  God would never oppose the will of His Son.

Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of Peace.  Who can judge a brother and still perceive the savior in him?  The pursuit of specialness will always bring pain.

Specialness versus Sinlessness.  In specialness I can only trust myself. My faith is invested in myself alone.  Everything else becomes my enemy ~ feared, attacked, deadly, dangerous, hated, unworthy.  Whatever gentleness specialness offers is only deception, for underneath is hate and rage.

What purpose could the body have but specialness?  It was conceived to make me frail and helpless, as was everything in a world separated from God.  Purpose is of the mind, and the body's purpose can be changed.  Allow God to tell me His Purpose for the body in the plan of Atonement:  Communication. 

When I am not entirely Peaceful, when I suffer pain of any kind, it is because I have perceived sin in my brother and have rejoiced and accepted it.

When I conceived a world separated from God, He immediately offered the remedy.  He placed my salvation in my brother, and my brother's in me.  But if I appoint specialness as my salvation, I will crucify us both.

The Christ in Me.  The Christ (the Sonship healed and United) in me is very Still and Quiet.  He looks on what He Loves and knows me as Himself.  The Power of a wish or the Power of desire, is the same Power whether it be used for illusions or for Truth.  One deludes, the other heals.

However lovely it may seem, however delicately it offers the hope of Peace and the escape from pain, no matter how it is disguised, specialness will only give me condemnation.  Here the maker of the dream believes that what he has made is happening to him.

In my world of illusion, Peace can only arise from forgiveness.  The Christ in me looks only on Truth and sees no sin.  Identify with Him, not with illusions.  With His eyes, ears, hands and feet, I will see Gentle sights and sounds, I will see the Beauty of the hand that holds his brother's, the Loveliness of the feet that walk beside him.

If I let my specialness direct the way, my brother and I will both walk in danger; each intent, in the dark forest of the sightless, to lead the other to a precipice and hurl him over.  What can specialness delight in except to kill? What does it look for except the sight of death?  Where does it lead but to destruction?  Is it Joy to look on decay and madness and believe this wretched corpse is me?  Be glad the body is an illusion.  For if what it showed me was True, there would be no hope.

The Christ in me is Still and Quiet.  He holds all His brothers in Himself.  He gives Vision for my sightless eyes and sings to me of Heaven.

Salvation from Fear.  God placed my salvation in my brother and his in me.   He will save me from my dreams of fear and terror.  I am not separate from my brother or from my Father.

Everything God Created He lays Lovingly before me, His Son.  All Thought in God's Mind is in my own.  God does not change His Mind about His Son with the changing circumstances or because His Son thought himself in a world apart from the Father.

God gives my world a new purpose:  the healing of His Son.  It is the only purpose God sees for the dream-world and thus the only one it has.  When I use the world to prove that I am separated from God, I will not escape its laws of violence and death.  Yet it is given me to go beyond the world's laws.

Look on my brother and see my salvation.  See in him the whole reversal of the laws that seem to rule the dream-world.  In his Freedom is mine.  In his Innocence is mine.  Any sin I seem to see in him will keep us both in hell.

Holiness is quite impartial; one judgment is made for all It looks on.  Do not allow specialness to hide the face of Christ in my brother.  See in him what he is that my own deliverance will be at hand.

Do not continue to wander senselessly when I have another choice.  My specialness will disappear before the Will of God, Who Loves each part of Himself with equal Love. Only the Christ in me can see my brother Truly.

I am now asked to pursue God's Goal.  I will need much less vigilance, very little effort and even less time.  With the Power of God maintaining the goal, there will be success.  God's yoke is easy and His burden light, yet it seems to be the more difficult choice at first.  "Sacrifice" I understand, but a tiny willingness, a nod to God, a greeting to the Christ in me, I find a wearisome, tedious, heavy burden.  God asks no sacrifice or strain.  He gives me the plan and all the Power of Heaven with the Might of Truth to provide the means, AND He guarantees the goal's effortless accomplishment.  How could it be difficult?

The Meeting Place.  Anyone invested in the world will defend it bitterly because he wants it to be Truth.  No effort is too great, no cost too much, no price too extravagant to save his specialness from the least slight, the tiniest attack, the whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or anything but the deepest reverence.

What is this parody of creation?  How can I know my worth while specialness claims me instead? What the Father creates is Safe. No false idea can touch It.  What is Immortal cannot be attacked.

The test of everything on earth is simply this, "what is it for?"  The answer makes it what it is for me.  It has no meaning of itself.  I give it reality (Heaven or hell, ego or Son of God, illusion or Reality) according to the purpose I desire.

ACIM makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be learned.  What is mine will come to me when I am ready.  Perception seems to teach me what I see, yet perception only witnesses to what I taught myself.  It is the outward picture of the inward condition, an image (a world separated from God) that I desire to be True.

Look at myself and I will see a body.  Look at this body in a different light and it looks different.  Without a light, it seems to be gone.  Yet I am assured it is there because I can still "feel" it with my hands and "hear" it move.  Here is an image that I desired to be my "self."  A thing that would show me what separation from God would be like.  It is a theory of myself with no provisions for Eternity.  It grows and flourishes, then withers and dies.  I cannot imagine myself without it, yet I brand it sinful and hate its acts and judge it evil (maybe not myself, but always the other!).  And my specialness whispers, "here is my own beloved son, in whom I am well pleased," and the son serves its creator's purpose:  to perceive a world without God.

Such is the travesty on God's Creation.  The body testifies to the idea that made it and speaks for this idea's "reality" and "truth."  Thus two sons are made who seem to walk the earth, never uniting, always to be apart.  One I perceive outside myself, the other rests within.  The Son of God retains His Father's Will; the son of man wishes for an alien will and perceives it so; his perception serves his wish and gives it the appearance of Truth.

My perception can serve another goal.  I can make a different choice and use all that I made for a different purpose.  What I see with Heaven will show me Truth.