Twenty Four

Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained. It is not necessary to tell Him what to do. He will not fail. Where He can enter, there He is already. And can it be He cannot enter where He wills to be? Peace will be yours *because* it is His Will. Can you believe a shadow can hold back the Will that holds the universe secure? God does not wait upon illusions to let Him be Himself. No more His Son. They *are*. And what illusion that idly seems to drift between them has the power to defeat what is Their will? 2 To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. It is the *outcome* of belief and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness. There *is* no substitute for peace. What God creates *has* no alternative. The truth arises from what He *knows*. And your decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all creation rose in His Mind *because* of what He knows.

Love is extension. To withhold the smallest gift is not to know love's purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back but one belief, one offering, and love is gone because you asked a substitute to take its place. And now must war, the substitute for peace, come with the one alternative that you can choose for love. Your choosing it has given it all the reality it seems to have. Beliefs will never openly attack each other, because conflicting outcomes are impossible. But an unrecognized belief is a decision to war in secret, where the results of conflict are kept unknown and never brought to reason to be considered sensible or not. And many senseless outcomes have been reached, and meaningless decisions have been made and kept hidden to become beliefs, now given power to direct all subsequent decisions. Mistake you not the power of these hidden warriors to disrupt your peace. For it *is* at their mercy while you decide to leave it there. The secret enemies of peace, your least decision to choose attack instead of love, unrecognized and swift to challenge you to combat and to violence far more inclusive than you think, are there by your election. Do not deny their presence nor their terrible results. All that can be denied is their *reality*, but not their outcome. All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. This takes many forms but always clashes with the reality of God's creation and with the grandeur which He gave His Son. What else could justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his and whom He knows? Only the special could have enemies, for they are different and not the same. And difference of any kind imposes orders of reality and a need to judge that cannot be escaped. What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself. But what is different *calls* for judgment, and this must come from someone “better,” someone incapable of being like what he condemns, “above” it, sinless by comparison with it. And thus does specialness become a means and end at once. For specialness not only sets apart but serves as grounds from which attack on those who seem “beneath” the special one is “natural” and “just.” The special ones feel weak and frail *because* of differences, for what would make them special *is* their enemy. Yet they protect its enmity and call it “friend.” On its behalf they fight against the universe, for nothing in the world they value more. Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions. Here is the grand illusion of what you are and what your brother is. And here is what must make the body dear and worth preserving. Specialness must be *defended*. Illusions *can* attack it, and they *do*. For what your brother must become to *keep* your specialness *is* an illusion. He who is “worse” than you must be attacked so that your specialness can live on his defeat. For specialness is triumph, and its victory is his defeat and shame. How can he live with all your sins upon him? And who must be his conqueror but you? Would it be possible for you to hate your brother if you were like him? Could you attack him if you realized you journey with him to a goal that is the same? Would you not help him reach it in every way you could if his attainment of it were perceived as yours? You *are* his enemy in specialness; his friend in a shared purpose. Specialness can never share, for it depends on goals that you alone can reach. And he must never reach them, or your goal is jeopardized. Can love have meaning where the goal is triumph? And what decision can be made for this that will not hurt you? Your brother is your friend *because* his Father created him like you. There *is* no difference. You have been given to each other that love might be extended, not cut off from one another. What you *keep* is lost to you. God gave you both Himself, and to remember this is now the only purpose that you share. And so it is the only one you *have*. Could you attack each other if you chose to see no specialness of any kind between you? Look fairly at whatever makes you give each other only partial welcome or would let you think that you are better off apart. Is it not always your belief your specialness is *limited* by your relationship? And is not this the “enemy” that makes you both illusions to each other? The fear of God and of each other comes from each unrecognized belief in specialness. For each demands the other bow to it *against* his will. And God Himself must honor it or suffer vengeance. Every twinge of malice or stab of hate or wish to separate arises here. For here the purpose which you share becomes obscured from both of you. You would oppose this course because it teaches you you are *alike*. You have no purpose that is not the same and none your Father does not share with you. For your relationship has been made clean of special goals. And would you now *defeat* the goal of holiness that Heaven gave it? What perspective can the special have that does not change with every seeming blow, each slight, or fancied judgment on itself? Those who are special *must* defend illusions against the truth. For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of God? You love your brother not while it is this you would defend against him. This is what *he* attacks and *you* protect. Here is the ground of battle which you wage against him. Here must he be your enemy and not your friend. Never can there be peace among the different. He is your friend *because* you are the same.

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 measure of your specialness instead. Against the littleness you see in him, you stand as tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and unsullied by comparison with what you see. Nor do you understand it is *yourself* 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 a 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 this base. For sin arose from it 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 His Son like to itself and not like unto Him. His “special” sons are many, *never* one, each one in exile from himself and Him of Whom they are a part. 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 “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 which 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 “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 “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 they think they see *is* an illusion. 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 “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 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. 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 *both* can understand, and one which 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 unto you. It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But only 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 which have reached this final obstacle that 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 both in silent blessing and in peace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands outside. Leave all 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 for Him alone. And it is this you fear, for if He is not special, then He willed His Son 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 both of you 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 only specialness could make the truth of God and you *as* one seem anything but Heaven and 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 love's 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 “threat” of love. The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the prison-house which 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 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 your awaking into life eternal. You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the acceptance of yourself as God created you.

Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusions can be forgiven, and then they disappear. Forgiveness is release from *all* illusions, and that is why it is impossible but partly to forgive. No one who clings to one illusion can see himself as sinless, for he holds one error to himself as lovely still. And so he calls it “unforgivable” and makes it sin. How can he then *give* his forgiveness wholly, when he would not receive it for himself? For it is sure he would receive it wholly the instant that he gave it so. And thus his secret guilt would disappear, forgiven by himself. Whatever form of specialness you cherish, you have made sin. Inviolate it stands, strongly defended with all your puny might against the Will of God. And thus it stands against yourself; *your* enemy, not God's. So does it seem to split you off from God and make you separate from Him as its defender. You would protect what God created not. And yet this idol that seems to *give* you power has taken it away. For you have given your brother's birthright to it, leaving him alone and unforgiven and yourself in sin beside him, both in misery before the idol that can save you not. It is not *you* that is so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world and hurls it into chaos. Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved \[and undisturbed\]. But specialness is *not* the truth in you. *It* can be thrown off balance by anything. What rests on nothing *never* can be stable. However large and overblown it seems to be, it still must rock and turn and whirl about with every breeze. Without foundation nothing is secure. Would God have left His Son in such a state, where safety has no meaning? No, His Son is safe, resting on Him. It is your specialness that is attacked by everything that walks and breathes or creeps or crawls or even lives at all. Nothing is safe from its attack, and it is safe from nothing. It will forever more be unforgiving, for that is what it *is*—a secret vow that what God wants for you will never be and that you will oppose His Will forever. Nor is it possible the two can ever be the same while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them and makes them “enemies.” God asks for your forgiveness. He would have no separation, like an alien will, rise between what He wills for you and what you will. They *are* the same, for neither one wills specialness. How could they will the death of love itself? Yet they are powerless to make attack upon illusions. They are not bodies; as One mind they wait for all illusions to be brought to them and left behind. Salvation challenges not even death. And God Himself, Who knows that death is not your will, must say, “Thy will be done” because *you* think it *is*. Forgive the great Creator of the universe, the Source of life, of love and holiness, the perfect Father of a perfect Son, for your illusions of your specialness. Here is the hell you chose to be your home. He chose not this for you. Ask not He enter this. The way is barred to love and to salvation. Yet if you would release your brother from the depths of hell, you have forgiven Him Whose Will it is you rest forever in the arms of peace in perfect safety and without the heat and malice of one thought of specialness to mar your rest. Forgive the Holy One the specialness He could not give and which you made instead. The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there beside the bier on which they sleep and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death. Yet they hear nothing. They are lost in dreams of specialness. They hate the call that would awaken them, and they curse God because He did not make their dream reality. Curse God and die, but not by Him Who made not death, but only in the dream. Open your eyes a little; see the savior God gave to you that you might look on him and give him back his birthright. It is *yours.* The slaves of specialness will yet be free. Such is the Will of God and of His Son. Would God condemn *Himself* to hell and to damnation? And do *you* will that this be done unto your savior? God calls to you from him to join His Will to save you *both* from hell. Look on the print of nails upon his hands that he holds out for your forgiveness. God asks your mercy on His Son and on Himself. Deny them not. They ask of you but that your will be done. They seek your love that you may love yourself. Love not your specialness instead of them. The print of nails are on your hands as well. Forgive your Father. It was not His Will that you be crucified.

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. And such is guilt's attraction. Here is death enthroned as 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 means to hurt, and it is hurt. See it as 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 intent on specialness, it is impossible. Yet to those who wish to heal and not attack, it is quite obvious. The purpose of attack is in the *mind*, and its effects are felt but where it *is*. Nor is mind limited; so 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* “endanger” specialness, but only in the sense that all illusions are “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 asks 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. Long ago we 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 sins 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 which 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 which 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 seemed 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 “enemy” and *yours* as well.

The Christ in you is very still. He looks on what He loves and knows it as Himself. And thus does He rejoice at what He sees because He knows that it is one with Him and with His Father. Specialness, too, takes joy in what it sees, although it is not true. Yet what you seek for *is* a source of joy as you conceive it. What you wish is true for you. Nor is it possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that it is so. Wishing *makes* real, as surely as does will create. The power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as does love extend itself, except that one deludes; the other heals. There is no dream of specialness—however hidden or disguised the form; however lovely it may seem to be; however much it delicately offers the hope of peace and the escape from pain—in which you suffer not your condemnation. In dreams, effect and cause are interchanged, for here the maker of the dream believes that what he made is happening to him. He does not realize he picked a thread from here, a scrap from there, and wove a picture out of nothing. For the parts do not belong together, and the whole contributes nothing to the parts to give them meaning. Where could your peace arise *but* from forgiveness? The Christ in you looks only on the truth and sees no condemnation that could *need* forgiveness. He is at peace *because* He sees no sin. Identify with Him, and what has He that you have not? He is your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet. How gentle are the sights He sees, the sounds He hears. How beautiful His hand that holds His brother's, and how lovingly He walks beside him, showing him what can be seen and heard and where he will see nothing and there is no sound to hear. Yet let your specialness direct his way, and *you* will follow. And *both* will walk in danger, each intent, in the dark forest of the sightless, unlit but by the shifting tiny gleams that spark an instant from the fireflies of sin and then go out, to lead the other to a nameless precipice and hurl him over it. For what can specialness delight in but to kill? What does it seek for but the sight of death? Where does it lead but to destruction? Yet think not that it looked upon your brother first, nor hated him before it hated you. The sin its eyes behold in him and love to look upon, it saw in *you* and looks on still with joy. Yet *is* it joy to look upon decay and madness and believe this crumbling thing, with flesh already loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like yourself? Rejoice you *have* no eyes with which to see, no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that only Christ can lend you His while you have need of them. They are illusions too, as much as yours. And yet, because they serve a different purpose, the strength their purpose holds is given them. And what they see and hear and hold and lead is given light that you may lead as you were led. The Christ in you is very still. He knows where you are going, and He leads you there in gentleness and blessing all the way. His love for God replaces all the fear you thought you saw within yourself. His holiness shows you Himself in him whose hand you hold and whom you lead to Him. And what you see is like yourself. For what but Christ is there to see and hear and love and follow home? He looked upon you first but recognized that you were not complete. And so He sought for your completion in each living thing that He beholds and loves. And seeks it still, that each might offer you the Love of God. Yet is He quiet, for He knows that love is in you now and safely held in you by that same hand that holds your brother's in your own. Christ's hand holds all His brothers in Himself. He gives them vision for their sightless eyes and sings to them of Heaven that their ears may hear no more the sound of battle and of death. He reaches through them, holding out His hand that everyone may bless all living things and see their holiness. And He rejoices that these sights are yours to look upon with Him and share His joy. His perfect lack of specialness He offers you that you may save all living things from death, receiving from each one the gift of life that your forgiveness offers to your Self. The sight of Christ is all there is to see. The song of Christ is all there is to hear. The hand of Christ is all there is to hold. There *is* no journey but to walk with Him. You who would be content with specialness and seek salvation in a war with love, consider this: the holy Lord of Heaven has Himself come down to you to offer you your own completion. What is His is yours because in your completion is His Own. He Who willed not to be without His Son could never will that you be brotherless. And would He give a brother unto you except he be as perfect as yourself and just as like to Him in holiness as *you* must be? There must be doubt before there can be conflict. And every doubt must be about yourself. Christ has no doubt, and from His certainty His quiet comes. He will exchange His certainty for all your doubts if you agree that He is one with you and that this Oneness is endless, timeless, and within your grasp *because* your hands are His. He is within you, yet He walks beside you and before, leading the way that He must go to find Himself complete. His quietness becomes your certainty. And where is doubt when certainty has come?

Before your brother's holiness the world is still and peace descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete that not one trace of conflict still remains to haunt you in the darkness of the night. He is your savior from the dreams of fear. He is the healing of your sense of sacrifice and fear that what you have will scatter with the wind and turn to dust. In him is your assurance God is here and with you *now*. While he is what he is, you can be sure that God is knowable and *will* be known to you. For He could never leave His own creation. And the sign that this is so lies in your brother, offered you that all your doubts about yourself may disappear before his holiness. See in him God's creation. For in him, his Father waits for your acknowledgment that He created you as part of Him. Without you there would be a lack in God, a Heaven incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe and no reality. For what God wills is whole and part of Him because His Will is One. Nothing alive that is not part of Him, and nothing *is* but is alive in Him. Your brother's holiness shows you that God is one with him and you—that what he has is yours *because* you are not separate from him nor from his Father. Nothing is lost to you in all the universe. Nothing that God created has He failed to lay before you lovingly as yours forever. And no thought within His Mind is absent from your own. It is His Will you share His Love for you and look upon yourself as lovingly as He conceived of you before the world began and as He knows you still. God changes not His Mind about His Son with passing circumstance, which has no meaning in eternity where He abides and you with Him. Your brother *is* as He created him. And it is this that saves you from a world that He created not. Forget not that the healing of God's Son is all the world is *for*. That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it and thus the only one it has. Until you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time, and all appearances, you will not know the Father nor yourself. For you will use the world for what is not its purpose and will not escape its laws of violence and death. Yet it is given you to be beyond its laws in *all* respects, in *every* way, and *every* circumstance, in *all* temptation to perceive what is not there and *all* belief God's Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not. Look on your brother and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that seem to rule this world. See in his freedom *yours*, for such it is. Let not his specialness obscure the truth in him, for not one law of death you bind him to will *you* escape. And not one sin you see in him but keeps you *both* in hell. Yet will his perfect sinlessness *release* you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives and shares His Being. It is *His* sinlessness that eyes which see can look upon. It is *His* loveliness they see in everything. And it is *He* they look for everywhere and find no sight nor place nor time where He is not. Within your brother's holiness, the perfect frame for your salvation and the world's, is set the shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives and you along with him. Let not your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face of Christ from him, and you as well. And let the fear of God no longer hold the vision you were meant to see from you. Your brother's body shows not Christ to you. He *is* set forth within his holiness. Choose, then, his body or his holiness as what you *want* to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon. Yet will you choose in countless situations and through time which seems to have no end until the truth be your decision. For eternity is not regained by still one more denial of Christ in him. And where is your salvation if he is but a body? Where is your peace but in his holiness? And where is God Himself but in that part of Him He set forever in your brother's holiness that you might see the truth about yourself set forth at last in terms you recognized and understood? Your brother's holiness is sacrament and benediction unto you. His errors cannot withhold God's blessing from himself nor you who see him truly. His mistakes can cause delay, which it is given you to take from him that both may end a journey that has never been begun and needs no end. What never was is not a part of you. Yet you will *think* it is until you realize that it is not a part of him who stands beside you. He is the mirror of yourself wherein you see the judgment you have laid on both of you. The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body and beholds him not. See him as what he *is* that your deliverance may not be long. A senseless wandering, without a purpose and without accomplishment of any kind, is all the other choice can offer you. Futility of function not fulfilled will haunt you while your brother lies asleep, till what has been assigned to you is done and he is risen from the past. He who condemned himself, and you as well, is given you to save from condemnation along with you. And *both* shall see God's glory in His Son, whom you mistook as flesh and bound to laws that have no power over him at all. Would you not gladly realize these laws are not for you? Then see him not as prisoner to them. It cannot be what governs part of God holds not for all the rest. You place yourself under the laws you see as ruling him. Think, then, how great the Love of God for you must be that He has given you a part of Him to save from pain and give you happiness. And never doubt but that your specialness will disappear before the Will of God, Who loves each part of Him with equal love \[and care\]. The Christ in you *can* see your brother truly. Would *you* decide against the holiness He sees? Specialness is the function which you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion and every window barred against the light. Always attacked and always furious, with anger always fully justified, you have pursued this goal with vigilance you never thought to yield and effort that you never thought to cease. And all this grim determination was for this—you wanted specialness to be the *truth*. Now you are merely asked that you pursue another goal with far less vigilance—with little effort and with little time and with the power of God maintaining it and promising success. Yet of the two, it is *this* one you find more difficult. The “sacrifice” of self you understand, nor do you deem this cost too heavy. But a tiny willingness, a nod to God, a greeting to the Christ in you, you find a burden wearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet to the dedication to the truth as God established it no sacrifice is asked, no strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide the means and *guarantee* the goal's accomplishment. You who believe it easier to see your brother's body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging against the Christ and setting forth for you the purpose that you can attain and what you cannot do. Forget not that this judgment must apply to what you do with *it* as your ally. For what you do through Christ it does not know. To Him this judgment makes no sense at all, for only what His Father wills is possible, and there is no alternative for Him to see. Out of His lack of conflict comes your peace. And from His purpose comes the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.

How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the specialness he wants to be the truth! His wish is law unto him, and he obeys. Nothing his specialness demands does he withhold. Nothing it needs does he deny to what he loves. And while it calls to him, he hears no other Voice. No effort is too great, no cost too much, no price too dear to save his specialness from the least slight, the tiniest attack, the whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or anything but deepest reverence. This is your son, beloved of you as you are to your Father. Yet it stands in place of your creations, who *are* son to you, that you might *share* the Fatherhood of God, not snatch it from Him. What is this son that you have made to be your strength? What is this child of earth on whom such love is lavished? What is this parody of God's creation that takes the place of yours? And where are *they*, now that the host of God has found another son which he prefers to them? The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your brother still contains all of creation, everything created and creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future or apparently gone by. What is in him is changeless, and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And nothing due him is not due to you. How can you know your worth while specialness claims you instead? How can you fail to know it is in his holiness? Seek not to make your specialness the truth, for if it were, you would be lost indeed. Be thankful, rather, it is given you to see his holiness *because* it is the truth. And what is true in him must be as true in you. Ask yourself this: can *you* protect the mind? The body, yes, a little—not from time, but temporarily. And much you think you save, you hurt. What would you save it *for*? For in that choice lie both its health and harm. Save it for show, as bait to catch another fish, to house your specialness in better style or weave a frame of loveliness around your hate, and you condemn it to decay and death. And if you see this purpose in your brother's, such is your condemnation of your own. Weave, rather then, a frame of holiness around him that the truth may shine on him and give you safety from decay. The Father keeps what He created safe. You cannot touch it with the false ideas you made because it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot *be* attacked; what is but temporal *has* no effect. Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and if that is true, its safety rests secure. If not, it has no purpose and is means for nothing. Whatever is perceived as means for truth shares in its holiness and rests in light as safely as itself. Nor will that light go out when it is gone. Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light in Heaven, where your creations recognize a gift from you, a sign that you have not forgotten them. The test of everything on earth is simply this: “What is it *for*?” The answer makes it what it is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it according to the purpose which you serve. Here you are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and end are one, and one with Him. This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity. To no one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means. Not till you go past learning to the Given; not till you make again a holy home for your creations is it understood. A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from—not born of size nor weight nor time nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim. This course makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be learned. Its scope does not exceed your own, except to say that what is yours will come to you when you are ready. Here are the means and purpose separate because they were so made and so perceived. And therefore do we deal with them as if they were. It is essential it be kept in mind that all perception still is upside down until its purpose has been understood. Perception does not *seem* to be a means. And it is this that makes it hard to grasp the whole extent to which it must depend on what you see it *for*. Perception seems to *teach* you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what *you* taught. It is the outward picture of a wish—an image that you *wanted* to be true. Look at yourself, and you will see a body. Look at this body in a different light, and it looks different. And without a light, it seems that it is gone. Yet you are reassured that it is there because you still can feel it with your hands and hear it move. Here is an image that you want to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It gives the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. It *proves* its own reality to you. Thus is the body made a theory of yourself with no provisions made for evidence beyond itself and no escape within its sight. Its course is sure when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you apart from it. You brand it sinful, and you hate its acts, judging it evil. Yet your specialness whispers, “Here is my own beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Thus does the “son” become the means to serve his “father's” purpose. Not identical, not even like, but still a means to offer to the “father” what he *wants.* Such is the travesty on God's creation. For as His Son's creation gave Him joy and witness to His love and shared His purpose, so does the body testify to the idea that made it and speak for its reality and truth. And thus are two sons made, and both appear to walk this earth without a meeting-place and no encounter. One do you see outside yourself, your own beloved son. The other rests within, His Father's Son, within your brother as he is in you. Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they go, nor even what they do. They have a different *purpose.* It is this that joins them to their like and separates each from all aspects with a different purpose. The Son of God retains His Father's Will. The son of man perceives an alien will and wishes it were so. And thus does his perception serve his wish by giving it appearances of truth. Yet can perception serve another goal. It is not bound to specialness but by your choice. And it *is* given you to make a different choice and use perception for a different purpose. And what you see will serve that purpose well and *prove* its own reality to you.