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Chapter 25: Undoing the Spell of Specialness

3. The Mad Dreams of Specialness

Comparison must be an ego device, for Love makes none. Specialness always makes comparisons. It is established by a lack perceived in another, and maintained by searching for and keeping clearly in view all lacks it can perceive. This does it seek, and this it looks upon. And always whom it thus diminishes would be your awakener had you not chosen to make of them a tiny measure of your specialness instead. And in your eyes, guided by the ego, you seem to stand tall and stately, clean and honest, and pure and unsullied in comparison with the littleness you look upon. Nor do you understand that it is yourself that you diminish thus.

Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of Peace. Who can attack their Awakener and cut It down, and still recognize Its strong Support? Who can detract from their Awakener’s Omnipotence and still share Its Power? And who can use their Awakener as the gauge of littleness, and be released from limits?

You have a function in awakening, a part in the Divine’s Plan of Atonement. Its pursuit will bring you Joy. But the pursuit of specialness must bring you pain. For specialness is a goal that would defeat awakening, and thus run counter to the Will of the Divine. To value specialness is to esteem an alien will, and one that does not exist, to which illusions of yourself are dearer than the Truth.

Specialness is the idea of separation believed to be made real. Separation is impossible even to imagine without this base. For separation and the belief in unforgivable error or sin arose from specialness out of nothingness, an “evil” flower with no roots at all. Here is the self-made savior, the creator who creates unlike the Creator, and which made its children like to itself, and not like unto the Divine. Its special children are many, never one, each one in exile from itself and from their maker of whom they are a part. Nor do these special ones love the Oneness that created them as One with It. They chose their specialness instead of Heaven and instead of Peace, and wrapped it carefully in the frightening myth of permanent banishment from the Divine, to keep it “safe” from Truth.

Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the Divine’s Gift of Love, Which cannot be betrayed. Whatever serves the purpose of specialness must be given it to imprison or to kill. Every “gift” that bears its seal offers treachery to both giver and receiver. Every glance from eyes it veils looks on scenes of desolation. Every believer in its potency seeks for bargains and for compromise that would establish fear as Love’s substitute, and serve it faithfully. And every relationship that holds the purpose of specialness dear clings to attack as the weapon of “protection” and the great defender of all illusions from the “threat” of Reality.

The hope of specialness makes it seem possible that the Divine made the body as the prison house that keeps Its Children from It. For specialness demands a special place the Divine cannot enter; a hiding-place where none is welcome but your tiny self. Nothing is sacred here except what you believe is yours and yours alone, apart and separate from all your sisters and brothers, protected from all intrusions of sanity upon illusions, protected from the Divine, and protected for conflict everlasting. Here are the gates of dreams of hell you closed upon yourself, to rule in madness and in loneliness your special kingdom apart from the Divine, away from Truth, Love and Reality, and from awakening.

Be thankful that, in spite of these mad dreams, you are not “special,” for if you were, you would not be Child of the Divine. If you think you are special, and would defend your belief in specialness against the Truth of what you really are, how can you know the Truth? What Answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your specialness that asks and answers itself, and to which you listen? Let not its tiny answer, soundless in the Harmony that resonates eternally from the Divine to you in loving Praise of what you are, be what you listen to. Let the vast Song of Honor and of Love for what you are resound and be heard in place of the “mightiness” of the specialness you have cherished. For you must strain your ears to hear its soundless voice, and if you do, the Call of the Divine Itself will be soundless to you.

You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice of the Divine beside it. They speak a different language, and are received by different ears. To every special one a different message is the truth, and one with different meaning. Yet how can Truth be different to each one? The special messages the special hear convince them that they are different and apart, each protected from Love and at home in their special guilt, while Love waits and does not see their specialness or guilt at all. Divine Essence’s Vision they consider their enemy, for It sees not what they would look upon. And It would show them that the specialness they think they perceive is an illusion.

What could be seen instead of looking upon this illusion? The shining Radiance of the Children of the Divine, so like their Creator that the Memory of It springs instantly to mind. And with this Memory, the Children remember their own creations, as like to them as they are to their Creator. And all the world they made, and all their seeming specialness, and all the mistakes and guilt they held in its defense against themselves, will vanish as their mind accepts the Truth about themselves, and It returns to take the place of their specialness.

This is the only “cost” of Truth: You will no longer perceive what never was, or hear what makes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive in exchange the Memory that you both have and are Everything?

You who have chained your awakener to your specialness, and given specialness their place instead of taking your place in the holy relationship, remember this: they have not lost the Power to forgive you all the unforgivable mistakes you think you placed between them and the function of awakening given them for you. Nor can you change their function, any more than you can change the Truth in them and in yourself. But be you certain that the Truth is just the same in both. It cannot give different messages, for It has only one Meaning. And this Meaning is one you both can love and know, and one that brings Release to both of you. Here stand your sisters and brothers with the Key to Heaven in their hand, held out to you. Let not the dream of specialness remain between you. What is One is joined in Truth.

Think of the Loveliness that you will see within yourself when you have beheld your sisters and brothers as friend. They are not the friend of specialness because of who they are, but only friend to what is real in you. Not one attack you thought you made on them has taken from them the Gift that the Divine would have them give to you. Their need to give It is as great as yours to receive It. Let them forgive you all your dreams of specialness, and make you whole in mind and one with them. They wait for your forgiveness only that they may return it unto you. The Divine has not condemned Its Children. But those who believe in specialness believe that they have, to save their specialness and banish their Self.

You have come too far along the Way of Truth to falter now. Just one step more, and every vestige of the fear of the Divine will melt away in Love. Your sisters and brothers’ specialness and yours are enemies, bound in hate to kill one another and deny that they are the same. Yet it is not illusions that have reached this final obstacle that seems to make the Divine and Its Heaven so remote that They cannot be reached. Here in this Holy Place does Truth stand waiting to receive you and your companions in silent Blessing, and in Peace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands outside.

Leave all illusions of yourself outside of this Holy Place, to which you come in hope and honesty. Here in this Place are your awakeners from your specialness. They need your acceptance of them as part of you, as you of theirs. You are as alike to the Divine as the Divine is to Itself. The Divine is not special, for It would not keep one Part of what It is unto Itself, kept for Itself alone, and not given to Its Children. And it is this you fear. For if the Divine is not special, then It willed Its Children be like It. And so your sisters and brothers are like you, not special, but possessed of Everything, including you. Give them only what they both are and have, remembering that the Divine gave Itself to both of you in equal Love, that both might share the Universe with It Who chose that Love could never be divided and kept separate from what It is and must forever be.

You are your sisters and brothers’ as they are yours. Part of Love was not denied to them or you. But can it be that you have lost because they are complete? What has been given them makes you complete, as It does them. Because the Divine gave Itself, Its Love gave you to them and them to you. What is the same as the Divine is One with It. And only specialness could make the Truth of the Divine and you as One seem anything but Heaven, and the Hope of Peace at last in sight.

The Key to the Gate of Heaven that you discarded in a moment of madness the Divine gave to your sisters and brothers, whose holy hands would offer It to you when you were ready to accept Its Plan for your awakening in place of yours. Given your madness, how could this readiness be reached save through the sight of all your misery, and the awareness that your plan has failed, and will forever fail to bring you peace and joy of any kind? Through this despair you travel now, yet it is only the illusion of despair. The death of specialness is not your death, but your awakening into Life eternal. You merely emerge from an illusion of what you are, to the acceptance of yourself as the Divine created you.