OrEd-T-24.3-Treachery of Specialness.1
12. Specialness always makes comparisons. It is established by a lack seen in another, and maintained by searching for and keeping in clear sight all lacks it can perceive. Specialness seeks and looks on this. Comparison is an ego device, for love makes no comparisons. And always, the one it diminishes would be my savior, if I had not chosen to make him a tiny measure of my specialness instead. Against the littleness I see in him, I stand tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and unsullied by comparison with what I see in him. I do not understand that it is myself I diminish.
13. I cannot attack my savior, and recognize his strong support. I cannot detract from his omnipotence and still share his power. And I cannot use him as the measure of littleness, and be released from limits myself. The pursuit of specialness must bring me pain. Here is a goal that runs counter to the Will of God and wills to defeat salvation. To value specialness is to follow this alien will, where illusions of myself are loved more than the truth. The loss of peace is the cost of pursuing specialness. But, pursuit of my function in salvation will bring me joy.
14. Specialness is the idea of sin made real. Sin is impossible even to imagine without this base. For 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 Father, and which made God's Son like itself, and not like the Father. His "special" sons are many, never one, each in exile from Him of Whom they are a part, and from themselves. They do not 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.
15. I am not special. If I think I am special, and defend my specialness against the truth of what I am, then I cannot know the truth. Nothing that the Holy Spirit gives can reach me, for I listen to my specialness, which asks and answers its own questions. Its tiny answer is all I hear. Yet, there is a melody that pours from God to me eternally, a vast song of honor and loving praise for what I am, which makes the voice of specialness soundless. I strain my ears to hear the voice of specialness, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to me.
16. The two voices speak different languages, and they are heard by different ears. To each special one a different message with a different meaning, is given as the truth. Yet, how can truth be different for each one? The special messages that the special hear convince them they are different and apart--each in his special sins, "safe" from love. But love does not see specialness at all. Christ's vision is their "enemy," for it does not see what they would see. It would show them that the specialness they think they see is an illusion. They can defend their specialness, but they will never hear the Voice for God beside it. What could they see instead of specialness?
17. They could see the shining radiance of the Son of God, so like his Father that the memory of the Father 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 defense against himself, will vanish as his mind accepts the truth about himself as truth returns. This is the only cost of truth: I will no longer see what never was, nor hear what makes no sound. It is no sacrifice to give up nothing and to receive the love of God forever.
18. I who have chained my savior to my specialness, and given his place to it, must remember this: He has not lost the power to forgive me all the sins I think I placed between him and the function of salvation given him for me. Nor will I change his function, any more than I can change the truth in him and in myself. But I am certain that the truth is just the same in both. Truth does not give different messages and has only one meaning. And it is a meaning we both can understand, and which brings release to both of us. Here stands my brother with the key to Heaven in his hand held out to me. I will not let the dream of specialness remain between us. What is one is joined in truth.
