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Chapter 25: Undoing the Spell of Specialness

6. Divine Essence’s Eyes, Ears, Hands and Feet

Divine Essence in you is very still. It beholds what It loves, and knows It as Itself. And thus does It rejoice at what It sees, because It knows that this is One with It, and with Its Creator.

Specialness, too, takes a kind of joy in what it perceives, although neither its joy nor what it looks upon is true. Yet whatever you seek for will become a source of joy as you conceive it. What you wish for is true for you. Nor is it possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that it is so. Wishing seems to make real for those who wish, as surely as does willing create. The power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as Love extends Itself in Reality and Truth. The difference is that one deludes, while the other heals in this world, and creates in the Realm of Heaven.

There is no dream of specialness, however hidden or disguised its form, however lovely it may seem to be, however much it delicately offers the hope of peace and the escape from pain, in which you suffer not your own condemnation. For in dreams, effect and cause are interchanged. For here the maker of the dream believes that what they made is happening to them. They do not realize that, like certain birds building their nests, the dreamer picked a thread from here, a scrap from there, and wove a picture, but out of nothing. For the parts do not belong together, and the entirety contributes nothing to the parts to give them meaning.

Where could your Peace arise but from forgiveness of this? Divine Essence in you beholds only the Truth, and sees no condemnation that could need forgiveness. Divine Essence is at peace because It sees no error that has not already been corrected in Atonement. Identify with It, and what has It that you have not? It is your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet. How gentle are the sights It sees, the sounds It hears. How beautiful Its Hands that hold the hands of the Children of the Divine, and how lovingly It walks beside them, showing them what can be seen and heard, and where there is nothing to see and no sound to hear.

Yet let your specialness direct the way you walk with your sisters and brothers, and you will follow as in a dream. And each will seem to walk in danger, each one intent, in the dark forest of the sightless, unlit but by the shifting, tiny gleams that spark an instant from the attraction of guilt and then go out, to lead the other to a nameless precipice and hurl them over it. For what can specialness delight in but, in the end, to eliminate what it perceives is not special like itself? What does it seek for ultimately but the sense of triumph? Where does it lead but to a belief in the dismantling of wholeness?

Yet think not that specialness – the insane wish to be apart from all that truly is – looked upon your brother or sister first, nor judged, despised, and rejected them prior to doing so with you. The flaws its eyes look upon in them, and delight to look upon, it looked upon first in you, and looks on still with its distorted sense of joy.

Is it joy to look upon decay and madness, and believe that this crumbling thing of death, with flesh already loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like yourself? Rejoice that in Reality you have no eyes of separateness and specialness with which to look, no ears to listen, no hands to grasp nor feet to guide. Be glad that only Divine Essence can lend you Its Eyes and Ears, Hands and Feet while you have need of them in darkness and dreams. They are illusions, too, as much as yours. And yet, because They serve a different purpose, the Strength Their Purpose holds is given Them. And what They see and hear and hold and lead is given Light, that you may lead as you are led.

Divine Essence in you is very still. It knows where you are going, and It leads you there in Gentleness and Blessing all the Way. Its Love for the Divine replaces all the fear you thought you perceived within yourself. Its Holiness shows you Itself in them whose hands you hold, and whom you walk with to It. And what you see is like yourself. For what but Divine Essence is there to see and hear and love, and follow to your Home? It beheld you first, and recognized that you were not complete as you perceived yourself here. And so It sought for your Completion in each living thing that It beholds and loves. And seeks It still, that each might offer you the Love of the Divine.

Divine Essence is quiet for It knows that Love is in you, now, and safely held in you by those same Hands that hold your sisters and brothers’ in your own. Divine Essence’s Hands hold all Its sisters and brothers in Itself. It gives them Vision for their sightless eyes, and sings to them of Heaven, that their ears may hear no more the sounds of battle and of death. It reaches through them, holding out Its Hands that everyone may bless all living things, and see their holiness. And It rejoices that these sights are yours to see with It and share Its Joy. It offers you Its perfect Oneness and lack of specialness, that you may awaken all living things from the dream of death, receiving from each one the Gift of Life that your forgiveness offers to your Self.

The Vision of Divine Essence is all there is to see. The Song of Divine Essence is all there is to hear. The Hands of Divine Essence are all there are to hold. There is no journey except to walk with It.

You who have striven to be content with specialness, and who have sought “salvation” in a war with Love, consider this: The holy Creator of Heaven has Itself come to you to offer you your own Completion. What is Its is yours, because in your Completion is Its Own. The Divine, Who willed not to be without Its Children, could never will that you be without your sisters and brothers or Its perfect Creation in Which we dwell together forever. And would It give a brother or sister to be in relationship with you except they be as perfect as yourself, and just as like to It in Holiness as you must be?

There must be doubt before there can be conflict. And every doubt must be about yourself. Divine Essence has no doubt, and from Its Certainty Its Quiet comes. It will exchange Its Certainty for all your doubts, if you accept Its Oneness with you, and accept that this Oneness is endless, timeless, and within your grasp because your hands are Its. Divine Essence is within you, yet It walks beside and before you, leading the Way that It must go to find Itself complete. Its Quietness becomes your Certainty. And when Certainty has come, there is no doubt.