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.