 We continue today with chapter 24, the treachery of specialness. 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 major of your specialness instead. Against the littleness you see in Him you stand as tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and uncelled by comparison with what you see, nor do you understand it is your self 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 the 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 the space, for sin arose from it out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all. Here is the self-made, quote, Savior, the, quote, 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, and each one in exile from Himself and Him of whom they are apart. 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, quote, 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 that 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, quote, 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, quote, 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 that they think they see is an illusion. What would obey? 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, quote, 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 changed 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 and your brother both can understand and one that 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 to you. It is not God who has condemned His Son, but 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 that have reached this final obstacle which 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 and your brother in silent blessing and in peace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands outside. Leave all your 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 alone for Him. And it is this, you fear, for if He is not special, then He will His Son to 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 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. 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 the 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. 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's love 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, quote, threat of love. The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the prison house that 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 the 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 you are awaking into eternal life. You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the acceptance of yourself as God created you. And from the workbook lesson 185, I want the peace of God to say these words as nothing but to mean these words as everything. If you could but mean them for just an instant there would be no further sorrow possible for you in any form, in any place or time. Heaven would be completely given back to full awareness, memory of God entirely restored, the resurrection of all creation fully recognized. No one can mean these words and not be healed. He cannot play with dreams nor think he is himself a dream. He cannot make a hell and think it real. He wants the peace of God and it is given him. For that is all he wants and that is all he will receive. Many have said these words but few indeed have meant them. You have but to look upon the world you see around you to be sure how very few they are. The world would be completely changed should any two agree these words express the only thing they want. Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the will of God. For minds can only join in truth. In dreams no two can share the same intent. To each the hero of the dream is different. The outcome wanted not the same for both. Loser and gainer merely shift about in changing patterns as the ratio of gain to loss and loss to gain takes on a different aspect or another form. Yet compromise alone a dream can bring. Sometimes it takes the form of union but only the form. The meaning must escape the dream for compromising is the goal of dreaming. Minds cannot unite in dreams. They merely bargain. And what bargain can give them the peace of God? Illusions come to take his place and what he means is lost to sleeping minds intent on compromise each to his gain and to another's loss. To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams. For no one means these words who wants illusions and who therefore seeks the means which bring illusions. He has looked on them and found them wanting. Now he seeks to go beyond them recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him and he has learned their only difference is one of form for one will bring the same despair and misery as do the rest. The mind which means that all it wants his peace must join with other minds for that is how peace is obtained. And when the wish for peace is genuine the means for finding it is given in a form each mind that seeks for it in honesty can understand. Whatever form the lesson takes is planned for him in such a way that he cannot mistake it if his asking is sincere. But if he asked without sincerity there is no form in which the lesson will meet with acceptance and be truly learned. Let us today devote our practicing to recognizing that we really mean the words we say. We want the peace of God. This is no idle wish. These words do not request another dream be given us. They do not ask for compromise nor try to make another bargain in the hope that there may yet be one that can succeed where all the rest have failed. To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer but are one in nothingness. Today, devote your practice periods to careful searching of your mind to find the dreams you cherish still. What do you ask for in your heart? Forget the words you use in making your request. Consider about what you believe will comfort you and bring you happiness. But be you not dismayed by lingering illusions for their form is not what matters now. Let not some dreams be more acceptable reserving shame and secrecy for others. They are one. And being one, one question should be asked of all of them. Is this what I would have in place of heaven and the peace of God? This is the choice you make. Be not deceived that it is otherwise. No compromise is possible in this. You choose God's peace or you have asked for dreams and dreams will come as you requested them yet will God's peace come just as certainly and to remain with you forever. It will not be gone with every twist and turning of the road to reappear unrecognized in forms with shift and change with every step you take. You want the peace of God and so do all who seem to seek for dreams for them as well as for yourself. You ask but this when you make this request with deep sincerity for thus you reach to what they really want and join your own intent with what they seek above all things perhaps unknown to them but sure to you. You have been weak at times uncertain in your purpose and unsure of what you wanted where to look for it and where to turn for help in the attempt. Help has been given you and would you not avail yourself of it by sharing it? No one who truly seeks the peace of God can fail to find it for he merely asked that he deceive himself no longer by denying to himself what is God's will. Who can remain unsatisfied who asked for what he has already? Who could be unanswered who request an answer which is his to give? The peace of God is yours. For you was peace created given you by its creator and established as his own eternal gift. How can you fail when you but ask for what he wills for you? And how could your request be limited to you alone? No gift of God can be unshared. It is this attribute that sets the gifts of God apart from every dream that ever seemed to take the place of truth. No one can lose and everyone must gain whenever any gift of God has been requested and received by anyone. God gives but to unite. To take away is meaningless to him. And when it is as meaningless to you you can be sure you share one will with him and he with you. And you will also know you share one will with all your brothers whose intent is yours. It is this one intent we seek today uniting our desires with the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to sever, but which still remains as God created it. With help like this beside us, can we fail today as we request the peace of God be given us? Amen.