1. Comparison must be an ego device, for love makes none. 2Specialness always makes comparisons. 3It is established by a lack seen in another, and maintained by searching for, and keeping clear in sight, all lacks it can perceive. 4This does it seek, and this it looks upon. 5And always whom it thus diminishes would be your savior, had you not chosen to make of him a tiny measure of your specialness instead. 6Against the littleness you see in him you stand as tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and unsullied, by comparison with what you see. 7Nor do you understand it is yourself that you diminish thus.
2. Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. 2Who can attack his savior and cut him down, yet recognize his strong support? 3Who can detract from his omnipotence, yet share his power? 4And who can use him as the gauge of littleness, and be released from limits? 5You have a function in salvation. 6Its pursuit will bring you joy. 7But the pursuit of specialness must bring you pain. 8Here is a goal that would defeat salvation, and thus run counter to the Will of God. 9To value specialness is to esteem an alien will to which illusions of yourself are dearer than the truth.
3. Specialness is the idea of sin made real. 2Sin is impossible even to imagine without this base. 3For sin arose from it, out of nothingness; an evil flower with no roots at all. 4Here 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. 5His “special” sons are many, never one, each one in exile from himself, and Him of Whom they are a part. 6Nor do they love the Oneness which created them as one with Him. 7They chose their specialness instead of Heaven and instead of peace, and wrapped it carefully in sin, to keep it “safe” from truth.
4. You are not special. 2If you think you are, and would defend your specialness against the truth of what you really are, how can you know the truth? 3What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your specialness to which you listen, and which asks and answers? 4Its tiny answer, soundless in the melody that pours from God to you eternally in loving praise of what you are, is all you listen to. 5And that vast song of honor and of love for what you are seems silent and unheard before its “mightiness.” 6You strain your ears to hear its soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you.
5. You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for God beside it. 2They speak a different language and they fall on different ears. 3To every special one a different message, and one with different meaning, is the truth. 4Yet how can truth be different to each one? 5The 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. 6Christ’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.
6. What would they see instead? 2The shining radiance of the Son of God, so like his Father that the memory of Him springs instantly to mind. 3And with this memory, the Son remembers his own creations, as like to him as he is to his Father. 4And 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. 5This is the only “cost” of truth: You will no longer see what never was, nor hear what makes no sound. 6Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?
7. 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. 2Nor will you change his function, any more than you can change the truth in him and in yourself. 3But be you certain that the truth is just the same in both. 4It gives no different messages, and has one meaning. 5And it is one you and your brother both can understand, and one that brings release to both of you. 6Here stands your brother with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you. 7Let not the dream of specialness remain between you. 8What is one is joined in truth.
8. Think of the loveliness that you will see within yourself, when you have looked on him as on a friend. 2He is the enemy of specialness, but only friend to what is real in you. 3Not one attack you thought you made on him has taken from him the gift that God would have him give to you. 4His need to give it is as great as yours to have it. 5Let him forgive you all your specialness, and make you whole in mind and one with him. 6He waits for your forgiveness only that he may return it unto you. 7It is not God Who has condemned His Son, but you, to save his specialness and kill his Self.
9. You have come far along the way of truth; too far to falter now. 2Just one step more, and every vestige of the fear of God will melt away in love. 3Your brother’s specialness and yours are enemies, and bound in hate to kill each other and deny they are the same. 4Yet it is not illusions that have reached this final obstacle which seems to make God and His Heaven so remote that They cannot be reached. 5Here in this holy place does truth stand waiting to receive you and your brother in silent blessing, and in peace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands outside. 6Leave all illusions of yourself outside this place, to which you come in hope and honesty.
10. Here is your savior from your specialness. 2He is in need of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his. 3You are alike to God as God is to Himself. 4He 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. 5And it is this you fear, for if He is not special, then He willed His Son to be like Him, and your brother is like you. 6Not special, but possessed of everything, including you. 7Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to you and your brother 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.
11. You are your brother’s; part of love was not denied to him. 2But can it be that you have lost because he is complete? 3What has been given him makes you complete, as it does him. 4God’s Love gave you to him and him to you because He gave Himself. 5What is the same as God is one with Him. 6And only specialness could make the truth of God and you as one seem anything but Heaven, with the hope of peace at last in sight.
12. Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love. 2Whatever serves its purpose must be given to kill. 3No gift that bears its seal but offers treachery to giver and receiver. 4Not one glance from eyes it veils but looks on sight of death. 5Not one believer in its potency but seeks for bargains and for compromise that would establish sin love’s substitute, and serve it faithfully. 6And 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.
13. The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the prison house that keeps His Son from Him. 2For it demands a special place God cannot enter, and a hiding place where none is welcome but your tiny self. 3Nothing 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. 4Here 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.
14. 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 the place of yours. 2How 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? 3Through this despair you travel now, yet it is but illusion of despair. 4The death of specialness is not your death, but your awaking into life eternal. 5You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the acceptance of yourself as God created you.