Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 25: Undoing the Spell of Specialness
1. The Unexamined Belief in Specialness
Remember that the motivation for this Course is the attainment and the keeping of the State of Peace. Given this State, the mind is quiet, and the Condition in which the Divine is remembered is attained. It is not necessary to tell the Divine what to do. It will not fail. Where It can enter, there It is already. And be assured that It can enter where It wills to be. Peace will be yours because It is the Divine’s Will.
Do you believe a shadow can obstruct the Will that holds the Universe secure? The Divine does not wait upon illusions to let It be Itself. Nor do Its Children. They simply are. And no illusion that idly seems to drift between them has power to hinder the Will of the Divine and Its Children.
To learn this Course requires your willingness to allow Spirit to evaluate with you every value that you hold. Any value kept hidden and obscure will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Each one has power to influence each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything you believe. Each one is the outcome of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt, and Freedom Innocence.
There is no substitute for Peace. What the Divine creates has no alternative. The Truth arises from what the Divine knows. And your decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all Creation arose in Its Mind because of what It knows.
Love is Extension. To offer even the smallest gift is to know Love’s Purpose. Love offers Everything forever. Hold back even one belief or value from Spirit’s Evaluation, or one miracle or gift you are guided to offer to anyone, and Love’s Presence will not be felt, because you asked a substitute to take Its Place. And now must conflict, the substitute for Peace, come with the one alternative that you can choose for Love, which is fear. Your choosing it gives it all the value it seems to have.
Beliefs will never openly attack each other because they are merely outcomes of the thought system you have chosen, and conflicting outcomes of the same thought system are impossible, being already inherent in the system that is their source. But an unrecognized belief or value that has not been given to Spirit to evaluate with you is a decision to battle in secret, where the results of conflict are kept unknown and not brought to Reason, to be considered sensible or not. And many senseless outcomes have been reached, and meaningless decisions have been made and kept hidden, to become beliefs now given power to influence all subsequent decisions.
Mistake you not the power of these hidden warriors to disrupt your peace. For your peace is at their mercy while you decide to leave it there. The secret adversaries of Peace – your smallest decisions to choose fear instead of Love, unrecognized and swift to challenge you to inner combat and violence far more inclusive than you think – are there by your choice. Do not deny their presence, nor their terrible results. All that can be truly denied is their reality, but not their outcome as beliefs while their influence is still cherished.
All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, not open to Spirit’s Evaluation, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. This takes many forms, but always clashes with the Reality of the Divine’s Creation and with the Grandeur the Creator gave Its Children. What else could seem to justify fear and attack? For who could reject and despise someone whose Self is theirs, and whom the Divine knows and loves? Only the special could have foes instead of friends, for they believe themselves to be different, and not one with all their sisters and brothers. And differences of any kind impose levels and orders of reality, and a need to assess and judge that cannot be escaped.
What the Divine created cannot be appraised and judged, for there is nothing in the Universe unlike Itself. But what is perceived as being different calls for human judgment, and this must come from someone in a “better” position to judge than that being judged, someone apart from what is judged and untainted in comparison with it. And thus does specialness become a means and end at once. For specialness not only sets apart, but serves as grounds from which judgment of those who are not as special as the special ones is “natural” and “just.”
But the special ones secretly feel weak and frail because of the differences they perceive which set them apart from what would make them strong in joining. For what would make them special – the ego – is their foe even though it doesn’t exist in Truth. Yet they protect its enmity and call it “friend.” On its behalf they fight against the universe, for while they remain outside of their right mind, nothing in the world do they value more than the specialness the ego seems to offer.
Specialness is the great dictator of all wrong decisions. Here is the grand illusion of what you and your sisters and brothers are. And here is what must make the body dear and worth preserving. Specialness must be defended. Illusions can attack it, and they do. For what your sisters and brothers must become for you to keep your specialness is an illusion. They who are judged to be not as special must be attacked so that another’s specialness can live on in their defeat. For specialness is triumph, and its victory is the other’s defeat and shame. How can the vanquished live with all the projections of unworthiness upon them? And who must be their conqueror but those who believe they are special?
It would be impossible for you to despise and reject your brother or sister if you knew that you were one with them. Could you attack them if you realized you journey with them to a Goal that you share? Would you not help them reach It in every way you could if you saw that their attainment of It was the same as yours? You are foes in specialness but friends in a shared Purpose. Specialness can never share, for it depends on special goals that can only be reached apart. And your sisters and brothers must never reach them or the attainment of your special goals would be jeopardized. Can Love have Meaning where the goal is triumph? And what decision can be made for this goal that will not hurt you?
Your sisters and brothers are your companions because your Creator created them like you. There is no difference between you. You have been given to each other that Love might be extended, not cut off from one another. What you keep for yourself is lost to you. The Divine gave Itself and Its perfect Creation to all Its Children. And to remember this is now the only Purpose that you share. And so It is the only one you have.
Could you fear or attack each other if you chose to see no specialness or differences of any kind between you? Observe fairly whatever makes you give each other partial welcome, or would let you think that you are better off apart. Is it not always your belief that what makes you special is limited by your relationship? And is not this the “foe” that makes you both illusions to each other?
The fear of the Divine and of each other comes from each unrecognized belief in specialness. For each such belief demands that someone give way to it against their will. And the Divine Itself must give way to the belief or suffer rejection. Every twinge of malice, or stab of hate, or wish to separate arises here. For here the Purpose that you share becomes obscured to both of you.
This Course would be opposed only because it teaches you that you are alike. Your only Purpose is the same, and One that your Creator shares with each of you equally. For your relationship has been made clean of special goals. And would you now defeat, because of your unrecognized belief in specialness, the Goal of Holiness that Heaven gave your relationship?
What perspective can the special have that does not change with every seeming blow, with each slight or fancied judgment on itself? Those who are special must defend illusions against the Truth in order to maintain their belief. For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of the Divine, Which wills Everything to all Its Children always? You love not your sisters and brothers while it is specialness you would defend against them. This is what you believe that they attack and that you rightfully protect. Here is the ground of battle that you wage against them.
Never can there be Peace among the fundamentally different. In specialness must your sisters and brothers be your foes, and not your friends and companions. In Truth they are your friends and companions because you are the same, and One.
