Comparison must be an ego device, for love makes none. Specialness
ALWAYS makes comparisons. It is established by a lack seen in another,
and maintained by searching for, and keeping clear in sight, all lacks
it can perceive. This does it seek, and this it looks upon. And always
whom it thus diminishes would be your Savior, had you not chosen to make
of him a tiny measure of your specialness instead. Against the
littleness you see in him you stand as tall and stately, clean and
honest, pure and unsullied, by comparison with what you see. Nor do you
understand it is YOURSELF that you diminish thus.

Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. Who can attack
his Savior and cut him down, yet RECOGNIZE his strong support? Who can
detract from his omnipotence, yet SHARE his power? And who can use him
as the gauge of littleness, and be RELEASED from limits? You have a
function in salvation. Its pursuit will bring you joy. But the pursuit
of specialness MUST bring you pain. Here is a goal that would defeat
salvation, and thus run counter to the Will of God. To value specialness
is to esteem an alien will to which illusions of yourself are dearer
than the truth.

Specialness is the idea of sin made real. Sin is impossible even to
imagine without this base. For sin arose from it, out of nothingness; an
evil flower with no roots at all. Here is the self-made “savior,” the
“creator” who creates unlike the Father, and which made His Son like to
itself, and not like unto Him. His “special” sons are many, NEVER
one, each one in exile from himself, and Him of Whom they are a part.
Nor do they love the Oneness Which created them as one with Him. They
chose their specialness instead of Heaven and instead of peace, and
wrapped it carefully in sin, to keep it “safe” from truth.

You are NOT special. If you think you are, and would defend your
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 to which you listen, and which asks and answers? Its
tiny answer, soundless in the melody which pours from God to you
eternally in loving praise of what you are, is all you listen to. And
that vast song of honor and of love for what you are seems silent and
unheard before its “mightiness.”You strain your ears to hear its
soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you.

You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for
God beside it. They speak a different language and they fall on different
ears. To every special one a different message, and one with different
meaning, is the truth. Yet how can truth be different to each one? The
special messages the special hear convince them they are different and
apart; each in his special sins and “safe” from love, which does not see
his specialness at all. Christ’s vision is their “enemy,” for it sees
not what they would look upon, and it would show them that the
specialness they think they see IS an illusion. What would they see
instead?

The shining radiance of the Son of God, so like his Father that the
memory of Him springs instantly to mind. And with this memory, the Son
remembers his own creations, as like to him as he is to his Father. And
all the world he made, and all his specialness, and all the sins he held
in its defense against himself, will vanish as his mind accepts the
truth about himself, as it returns to take their place. This is the only
“cost” of truth: You will no longer see what never was, nor hear what
makes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the
Love of God forever?

You who have chained your Savior to your specialness, and given it his
place, remember this: He has not lost the power to forgive you all the
sins you think you placed between him and the function of salvation
given him for you. Nor will you change his
function, any more than you can change the truth in him and in yourself.
But be you certain that the truth is just the same in both. It gives no
different messages, and has ONE meaning. And it is one you BOTH can
understand, and one which brings release to BOTH of you. Here stands
your brother, with the key to Heaven in his 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
looked on him as on a friend. He IS the enemy of specialness, but only
friend to what is real in you. Not one attack you thought you made on
him has taken from him the gift that God would have him give to you. His
need to give it is as great as yours to have it. Let him forgive you all
your specialness, and make you whole in mind and one with him. He waits
for your forgiveness only that he may return it unto you. It is not God
Who has condemned His Son. But only you, to save his specialness and
kill his Self.

You have come far along the way of truth; too far to falter now. Just
one step more, and every vestige of the fear of God will melt away in
love. Your brother’s specialness and yours ARE enemies, and bound in hate
to kill each other and deny they are the same. Yet it is not illusions
which have reached this final obstacle that seems to make God and His
Heaven so remote that they cannot be reached. Here in this holy place
does truth stand waiting to receive you both in silent blessing, and in
peace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands outside. Leave all
illusions of yourself outside this place, to which you come in hope and
honesty.

Here is your Savior FROM your specialness. He is in need of your
acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his. You are alike to
God as God is to Himself. He is not special, for He would not keep one
part of what He is unto Himself, not given to His Son but kept for Him
alone. And it is this you fear, for if He is not special, then He willed
His Son be like Him, and your brother IS like you. Not special, but
possessed of everything INCLUDING you.

Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to both of you in
equal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that
love could never be divided, and kept separate from what it is and must
forever be. You ARE your brother’s; part of
love was not denied to him. But can it be that YOU have lost because HE
is complete? What has been given him makes YOU complete, as it does him.
God’s Love gave you to him and him to you because He gave Himself. What
is the same as God is one with Him. And only specialness could make the
truth of God and you AS one seem anything but Heaven, and the hope of
peace at last in sight.

Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love. Whatever
serves its purpose must be given to kill. No gift that bears its seal
but offers treachery to giver AND receiver. Not one glance from eyes it
veils but looks on sight of death. Not one believer in its potency but
seeks for bargains and for compromise that would establish sin love’s
substitute, and serve it faithfully. And no relationship that holds its
purpose dear but clings to murder as safety’s weapon, and the great
defender of all illusions from the “threat” of love.

The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the
prison-house which keeps His Son from Him. For it demands a special
place God cannot enter, and a hiding-place where none is welcome but
your tiny self. Nothing is sacred here but unto you, and you alone,
apart and separate from all your brothers; safe from all intrusions of
sanity upon illusions; safe from God, and safe for conflict everlasting.
Here are the gates of hell you closed upon yourself, to rule in madness
and in loneliness your special kingdom, apart from God, away from truth
and from salvation.

The key you threw away God gave your brother, whose holy hands would
offer it to you when you were ready to accept His plan for your
salvation in place of yours. 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 but ILLUSION of
despair. The death of specialness is not YOUR death, but your awaking
into life eternal. You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the
acceptance of yourself as God created you.