1. Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself. 2Faith is invested in yourself alone. 3Everything else becomes your enemy; feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of destruction. 4Whatever gentleness it offers is but deception, but its hate is real. 5In danger of destruction it must kill, and you are drawn to it to kill it first. 6And such is guilt’s attraction. 7Here is death enthroned as savior; crucifixion is now redemption, and salvation can only mean destruction of the world, except yourself.
2. What could the purpose of the body be but specialness? 2And it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. 3It was conceived to make you frail and helpless. 4The goal of separation is its curse. 5Yet bodies have no goal. 6Purpose is of the mind. 7And minds can change as they desire. 8What they are, and all their attributes, they cannot change. 9But what they hold as purpose can be changed, and body states must shift accordingly. 10Of itself the body can do nothing. 11See it as means to hurt, and it is hurt. 12See it as means to heal, and it is healed.
3. You can but hurt yourself. 2This has been oft repeated, but is difficult to grasp as yet. 3To minds intent on specialness it is impossible. 4Yet to those who wish to heal and not attack, it is quite obvious. 5The purpose of attack is in the mind, and its effects are felt but where it is. 6Nor is the mind limited; so must it be that harmful purpose hurts the mind as one. 7Nothing could make less sense to specialness. 8Nothing could make more sense to miracles. 9For miracles are merely change of purpose from hurt to healing. 10This shift in purpose does “endanger” specialness, but only in the sense that all illusions are “threatened” by the truth. 11They will not stand before it. 12Yet what comfort has ever been in them, that you would keep the gift your Father asks from Him, and give it there instead? 13Given to Him, the universe is yours. 14Offered to them, no gifts can be returned. 15What you have given specialness has left you bankrupt and your treasure house barren and empty, with an open door inviting everything that would disturb your peace to enter and destroy.
4. Earlier I said consider not the means by which salvation is attained, nor how to reach it. 2But do consider, and consider well, whether it is your wish that you might see your brother sinless. 3To specialness the answer must be “no.” 4A sinless brother is its enemy, while sin, if it were possible, would be its friend. 5Your brother’s sin would justify itself, and give it meaning that the truth denies. 6All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. 7All that is false proclaims his sins as real. 8If he is sinful, then is your reality not real, but just a dream of specialness that lasts an instant, crumbling into dust.
5. Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation. 2Only this is certain in this shifting world that has no meaning in reality: When peace is not with you entirely, and when you suffer pain of any kind, you have beheld some sin within your brother, and have rejoiced at what you thought was there. 3Your specialness seemed safe because of it. 4And thus you saved what you appointed to be your savior, and crucified the one whom God has given you instead. 5So are you bound with him, for you are one. 6And so is specialness his “enemy,” and yours as well.