OrEd-T-24.2-Specialness, a Sub. for Love

3. Love is extension. To give the smallest gift is to know love's purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back only one belief, one offering, and love is gone, because I asked a substitute to take its place. The substitute for peace is war. War comes with the alternative that I choose for love. And choosing the alternative gives it all the reality it seems to have.

4. Conflicting outcomes are impossible, so beliefs will never openly attack each other. But an unrecognized belief is a decision to war in secret, where the results of conflict are kept hidden, 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 influence all subsequent decisions. These hidden warriors have the power to disrupt my peace. While I decide to keep the belief, my peace is at their mercy. My smallest decision to choose attack instead of love calls forth these secret enemies. They are swift to challenge me to combat and to violence far more inclusive than I realize. I must not deny their presence nor their terrible results. All that can be denied is their reality.

5. The special are different from their brothers, so only they could have enemies. Their differences make orders of reality, and also the need to judge. Specialness is cherished as a hidden belief, unrecognized yet defended. This takes many forms, but it always clashes with the reality of God's creation, and with the grandeur He gave His Son.

6. Differences call for judgment from "above"--someone "better," different from what he judges, and sinless by comparison. Specialness becomes a means and an end at the same time. For it separates, and is grounds for attack as "natural" and "just", on those who seem beneath the special one. The special ones feel weak because of differences, for what would make them special is their enemy. Yet they protect and call it "friend", and nothing in the world they value more. Yet, what God created cannot be attacked, for everything in the universe is alike. Who could hate someone whose Self is his, and who knows God?

7. Specialness is the great dictator of wrong decisions. This is the grand illusion of what I am and what my brother is, and it makes the body dear and worth preserving. So the body must be defended, for illusions can, and do attack specialness and the body. For me to keep my specialness, my brother must become "worse" than me, and be attacked so my specialness can live on his defeat. My brother cannot live with all my sins upon him, and I am his conquerer. My specialness is triumphant.

8. Specialness can never share, for it depends on goals that only I can reach. And my brother must never reach them, or my goal is jeopardized. If I were like him, it would not be possible for me to hate my brother. I could not attack him if I realized we journey together to the same goal. I would help him to reach it in every way I could, for his attainment of the goal is perceived as mine. I am his friend in a shared purpose. But I am his enemy in specialness. Love can have no meaning where the goal is triumph. Any decision made for triumph will hurt me. My brother is my friend because his Father created him like me. There is no difference. We have been given to each other that love might be extended, and not cut off from one another. God gave Himself to both of us. Remembering this now is the only purpose that we share, and the only purpose we have.

9. I will consider what makes me give only partial welcome to my brother, or lets me think we are better off apart. We couldn't attack each other if we chose not to see any kind of specialness between us. We always believe that our specialness is limited by our relationship. And this is the "enemy" that makes us both illusions to each other.

10. Every seeming insult, judgement, or slight, changes the perspective of the special. The fear of God and of each other comes from all unrecognized beliefs in specialness. For we demand that each other bow to our specialness against his will. Every twinge of malice, stab of hate, or wish to separate arises here. Here our shared purpose becomes obscured. We would oppose this course because it teaches us we are alike. Yet, we have no purpose that is not the same, and that our Father shares with us. For our relationship has been made clean of special goals, and we would not defeat the goal of holiness that Heaven gave it.

11. There can never be peace among the different. Those who are special must defend their illusions against the truth, for specialness is an attack upon the Will of God. While I defend against him, I do not love my brother. My specialness is what he attacks and I protect. This is the battle we are in against each other. Here my brother is my enemy, not my friend. Yet, he is my friend, because in truth we are the same.