 We continue today with chapter 24, specialness versus sinlessness. Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself. Faith is invested in yourself alone. Everything else becomes your enemy, feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of destruction. Whatever gentleness it offers is but deception, but its hate is real. In danger of destruction it must kill, and you are drawn to it to kill it first. In such a guilt's attraction, here is death and thrown to savior, crucifixion is now redemption, and salvation can only mean destruction of the world except yourself. What could the purpose of the body be but specialness? And it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. It was conceived to make you frail and helpless. The goal of separation is its curse, yet bodies have no goal. Purpose is of the mind, and minds can change as they desire. What they are and all their attributes, they cannot change. But what they hold as purpose can be changed, and body states must shift accordingly. Of itself, the body can do nothing. See it as a means to hurt, and it is hurt. See it as a means to heal, and it is healed. You can but hurt yourself. This has been oft repeated but is difficult to grasp as yet. To minds intend on specialness it is impossible, yet to those who wish to heal and not to attack, it is quite obvious. The purpose of attack is in the mind, and its effects are felt, but where it is. Nor is the mind limited. So it must it be that harmful purpose hurts the mind as one. Nothing could make less sense to specialness. Nothing could make more sense to miracles. For miracles are merely change of purpose from hurt to healing. This shift in purpose does, quote, endanger specialness, but only in the sense that all illusions are, quote, threatened by the truth. They will not stand before it, yet what comfort has ever been in them that you would keep the gift your father asked from him and give it there instead. Given to him, the universe is yours. Offered to them, no gifts can be returned. What 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. Earlier I said consider not the means by which salvation is attained, nor how to reach it, but do consider and consider well whether it is your wish that you might see your brother sinless. To specialness, the answer must be no. A sinless brother is its enemy, while sin, if it were possible, would be its friend. Your brother's sin would justify itself and give it meaning that the truth denies. All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real. If he is sinful, then is your reality not real, but just a dream of specialness that lasts an instant, crumbling into dust. Do not defend this senseless dream in which God is bereft of what he loves and you remain beyond salvation. Only 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. Your specialness seems safe because of it, and thus you saved what you appointed to be your Savior and crucified the one whom God has given you instead. So are you bound with him, for you are one. And so is specialness his, quote, enemy, as yours and yours as well. And from the workbook, Lesson 187, I bless the world because I bless myself. No one can give unless he has. In fact, giving is the proof of having. We have made this point before. What seems to make it hard to credit is not this. No one can doubt that you must first possess what you would give. It is the second phase on which the world and true perception differ. Having had and given, then the world asserts that you have lost what you possessed. The truth maintains that giving will increase what you possess. How is this possible? For it is sure that if you give a finite thing away, your body's eyes will not perceive it yours. Yet we have learned that things but represent the thoughts that make them. And you do not lack for proof that when you give ideas away, you strengthen them in your own mind. Perhaps the form in which the thought seems to appear is changed in giving. Yet it must return to him who gives. Nor can the form it takes be less acceptable. It must be more. Ideas must first belong to you before you give them. If you are to save the world, you first accept salvation for yourself. But you will not believe that this is done until you see the miracles it brings to everyone you look upon. Hearing is the idea of giving clarified and giving meaning. Now you can perceive that by your giving is your store increased. Protect all things you value by the act of giving them away and you are sure that you will never lose them. What you thought you did not have is thereby proven yours. Yet value not its form, for this will change and grow unrecognizable in time. However much you try to keep it safe, no form endures. It is the thought behind the form of things that lives unchangeable. Give gladly. You can only gain thereby. The thought remains and grows in strength as it is reinforced by giving. Thoughts extend as they are shared, for they cannot be lost. There is no giver and receiver in the sense the world conceives of them. There is a giver who retains another who will give as well. And both must gain in this exchange, for each will have the thought in form most helpful to him. What he seems to lose is always something he will value less than what will surely be returned to him. Never forget you give but to yourself. Who understands what giving means must laugh at the idea of sacrifice? Nor can he fail to recognize the many forms which sacrifice may take. He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter they are healed. Illusion recognized must disappear, except not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers, when you choose to see all suffering as what it is. The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take, and sacrifice is an idea so mad that sanity dismisses it at once. Never believe that you can sacrifice. There is no place for sacrifice in what has any value. If the thought occurs, its very presence proves that error has arisen, and correction must be made. Your blessing will correct it. Given first to you, it now is yours to give as well. No form of sacrifice and suffering can long endure before the face of one who has forgiven and has blessed himself. The lilies that your brother offers you are laid upon your altar, with the ones you offer him beside them. Who could fear to look upon such lovely holiness? The great illusion of the fear of God diminishes to nothingness before the purity that you will look on here. Be not afraid to look. The blessedness you will behold will take away all thought of form, and leave instead the perfect gift forever there. Forever to increase, forever yours, forever given away. Now are we one in thought, for fear has gone. And here before the altar to one God, one Father, one Creator, and one thought, we stand together as one Son of God. Not separate from him who is our source, not distant from one brother who is part of our one self whose innocence has joined us all as one. We stand in blessedness and give as we receive. The name of God is on our lips. And as we look within, we see the purity of heaven shine in our reflection of our Father's love. Now are we blessed, and now we bless the world. What we have looked upon, we would extend, for we would see it everywhere. We would behold it shining with the grace of God in everyone. We would not have it be withheld from anything we look upon. And to ensure this holy sight is ours, we offer it to everything we see. For where we see it, it will be returned to us in form of lilies we can lay upon our altar, making it a home for innocence itself. Who dwells in us and offers us His holiness as ours. Amen.