12.03.06
Specialness - Part I (Aug 15, 1997)
Posted in Transcripts at 7:05 pm by miracles 
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Notes from a talk given by Linda and James Hale
Contents
The quotations from the Course are given in the second edition format. Although we have presented only the first few words of relevant quote we do consider them very important and request that you look them up.
The introduction to Chapter 24 of the Text, "The Goals of Specialness" states:
"To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold…" T-24.in.2:1-5
Exploring the concept of specialness confronts us with the challenge of looking at all that we value and all that we believe about what we are and the nature of the world we live in. As the introduction makes clear, each decision we make is a conclusion based on all that we believe.
Specialness is the foundation of the entire universe. As we proceed in our study and practice of the Course practice we discover more and more how specialness is an integral part of every aspect of the dream world the Son has made: the belief in differences, orders of reality, truth being different for each, individuality, comparison, inclusion and exclusion to name but a few. The Course urges us to face these myriad of ways in which specialness expresses itself through us, because until we do, we will not recognise that we have chosen conflict and hate to substitute for peace and love. As the Course starkly states:
"What is not love is murder." T-23.IV.1:10
We will not be able to understand the profundity of that statement until we look without fear at the whole issue of specialness.
How it began: The desire for special favour.
The original, and only, condition of Creation is total unity, in which there is no division between the Father and the Son. Creation is totally unified, forever extending itself as itself. There is no "other" in this perfectly indivisible realm.
The Course tells us that this unity appeared to fragment with the "tiny mad idea" of the Son, which according to myth, had its beginning in the desire for special favour:
"You were at peace until you asked for special favor…" T-13.III.10:2-3
This desire for something "other" than what is always, already perfectly given, propelled the Sonship into a dream of separation and fragmentation, in which the elusive "something" which will guarantee specialness is continually sought. The Son had to make this "something other", because God, being what He is, could not give it:
"To "single out" is to "make alone," and thus make lonely…" T-13.III.12:1-5
The ego cannot understand God, but it senses that the might of the Creator does not give credence to its mad endeavour. The eternal has not given eternal blessing to this insane dream. Hence the ego’s perennial anxiety and sense of precariousness:
"While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms must be delusional." T-4.II.8:8-9
The Course suggests that part of our forgiveness process includes forgiving God for not pandering to our specialness needs by making them real in His sight:
"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. " T-24.III.5:1-2
"Forgive the great Creator of the universe…" T-24.III.6:1-4
Indeed the last sentence of this second quote belies what we in fact consistently do, "ask Him to enter" and then blame Him for not doing as we ask.
Very simply it is our desire to be different. Our preference to be apart. Our wish to be God!
"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself…" T-24.VI.11:1-3
Of course none of this is possible. Indeed that is the fundamental message of the Course. Yet our attraction and desire to maintain such a belief governs all that seems to make up our world. You could in fact describe the Course process as one of gently bringing to our awareness our investment in specialness.
Ultimately it is maintained by a confusion of identity and the fear it elicits:
"The death of specialness is not your death…" T-24.II.14:4-5
How is it expressed and what does it do?
We are paying homage to specialness whenever we choose anything other than the inclusiveness of love to be the object of our desire and that choosing becomes a belief. In our belief we have substituted something other than love to be our fulfilment and completion.
"Hold back but one belief, one offering, and love is gone…" T-24.I.1:4-6
Love is totality, all, everything. To exclude love, substitute for it, deny it in any way, is to lose sight of it completely. It is a total package.
Specialness is integral to our seeming existence in this word. All our trials and tribulations are but examples of how we have bowed to our desire to be ourself rather than One Self. We have chosen a will other than God’s, believing it to be possible and also believing it to be preferable. In doing so we have denied our Father and His Authority, and instead, in the absence of any other, we have become our own authority, our own author. This has come at the cost of Peace for by desiring to be different we are unable (and unwilling) to recognise we are the same. In choosing to be different we have become like children on top of a hill playing "king of the castle" and are thus "forced" to defend our difference lest we be toppled from our place.
Specialness, as such is not really the issue although there are many times when it suits us to think so. In fact in coming to look at our specialness we may find quite an attraction and even an addiction to "self" examination, for the ego "loves" any study of itself and its works. However as we begin to notice it and hand it over to our companion (Jesus or HS) we also begin to feel a resistance. This resistance is not to the noticing of our specialness, but to the handing of it over, for to truly hand it over means we have judged it not. In not judging it, we have not made the error real and are thus beginning a process of withdrawing our belief in it.
Now we can see, albeit dimly, that the great motivator of all our decisions is our choice to defend our belief in specialness. All that we seem to fight and overcome, those
"…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." T-24.I.2:6
Here lies the basic fabric for our world of terror and murder, of all the unfairness and treachery we believe we see, and the solution to its ultimate undoing. Jesus goes on the instruct us:
"Do not deny their presence nor their terrible results. All that can be denied is their reality, but not their outcome." T-24.I.2:7-8
Here we are again reminded not to deny our experiences here in this world we seem to inhabit. For it is only by calmly looking at these experiences with Jesus or the Holy Spirit beside us, that we can at last see the falsity of the beliefs behind them as we learn to identify their common underpinning in specialness.
Also integral to our belief in specialness and our desire to maintain it, is our need to judge. Jesus remarks:
"The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is curious that an ability so debilitating would be so deeply cherished." T-3.VI.5:6-7
Yet without judgement how could we maintain our specialness? Without comparison how can differences be seen? Without differences how can we hold to the ego’s first "law": "…that the truth is different for everyone?" [T-23.II.21]
And so we use judgement as an attack on the specialness we have "created" in another in order to defend the specialness we desire in ourself. Yet we also fear this judgment for at a fundamental level we know the "truth" we are defending is a lie.
Specialness is the root of all our cherished beliefs regardless of how pretty or proper they may seem to be. Regardless of how beautiful, how justified, how logical they seem to be for our belief in specialness is the denial of the very fact that the truth needs no defence. [T-26.VII.8:2 and many other places] The very fact that we think something needs defence tells us we have fallen under specialness’s spell and desired that which would belittle us.
"Everything that needs defense you do not want, for anything that needs defense will weaken you." T-22.V.1:12
Specialness is the limit we place on ourselves and on all our relationships. It is the great inhibitor to a shared goal:
"…for it depends on goals that you alone can reach." T-24.I.6:5
And thus are relationships made and broken , as the ego enters into temporary allegiances in order to achieve what it can for itself alone. Jesus asks us to look honestly at our relationships and see what it is that offers our brother "…only partial welcome…" and realise it is only our belief that our specialness is being limited. And so, as in all the dynamics of the world we relate and react to an illusion of our brother and thus ourselves, protecting at all times our specialness.
The belief in and maintenance of the idea of specialness serves a number of very important goals for the ego. Without them, the nothingness of what the world of separation seems to offer would become apparent very quickly and the Son of God would naturally choose against the ego as its teacher.
Whenever we cherish an idol of specialness we are saying that we prefer to be what we wish to be, rather than as reality necessitates. Specialness becomes our function or the means in the end of proving to ourselves that it is now real, and that a substitute has now indeed been made for God’s reality. Recall the previously quoted passage that specialness is the function we gave ourself in the grim determination to make specialness the truth.
The central symbol focused on in this determination is the body. The latter sections of Chapter 24 juxtapose the seeing of the body with the vision of Christ.
"He is the mirror of yourself…" T-24.VI.8:6-8
To see our brother only as a body is to let:
"…his specialness obscure the truth in him…[and]…not one law of death you bind him to will you escape." T-24.VI.5:3
In the ego’s interpretation, the body is the home of sin, guilt and fear. The reinterpretation or translation of this symbol into something which can serve us in our journey home, will be discussed in part II of this talk.
The totality of all we have made is seen as nothing more than the idle wish of children, who insist upon playing with sharp edged toys. Our wish to hold onto the idea we are separate, and in some sense special, is itself a sharp edged toy capable of causing pain in the realm of time, but incapable of affecting our reality as created by God.
Our will can only be known in relationship to our Source. God, being the eternal Creator, created us like Himself. When we chose to separate from Him in our belief, however, it was as if we threw that knowledge away. We chose to express our wish to be different, special and self-created, rather than accept our will to co-create with the Father.
"Wishes are not facts. To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient…" T-3.VI.11:5-8
While we are immersed in these childish games our attention is fixed "outside" in the world of form. We experience ourselves as special people, with a special past, with special relationships, seeking special goals and special solutions for our special problems. Specialness becomes our very function, the reason for our being here; so much so we do not question our fundamental premise: our self concept.
"The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world…" T-31.V.14
Our concept of our self can be seen as tenable only in so far as it seems to have existence or reality. We pay a heavy penalty, however, for that belief. Individuality and uniqueness can only be gained at the expense of the unity of Truth. In the original game of one-upmanship, God, in the ego’s myth, was defeated. Individuality was the prize, and the belief in sin was its seemingly eternal consequence.
Specialness and its relationship to sin.
"The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation." T-4.III.3:2
It is thus a great circular argument that feeds upon itself. Not only has specialness given rise to sin but specialness provides the "proof" that sin, and thus itself, is real!
"Specialness is the idea of sin made real." T-24.II.3:1
Sin is the belief that we have committed the unpardonable, pulled off the impossible and are forever condemned for it. And what is this crime, this act, that we have committed? Sin holds that we have killed God for we have destroyed the Unity of Heaven. Specialness exists only because Unity has been destroyed Therefore without specialness there is no "crime" that we cannot be pardoned for. Here is where we see one of the prime reasons for the ego’s protection of our belief in specialness, for once we actually question its truth the whole foundation for our belief in sin must also come into question.
Without our belief in sin there would be no guilt and thus no fear and thus no reason to attempt to hide from our Father. We are told:
"They chose their specialness instead of Heaven and instead of peace, and wrapped it carefully in sin, to keep it "safe" from truth." T-24.II.3:7
And thus we see how intimately entwined our beliefs in specialness and sin are, for sin is the great protector of specialness, promoting such fear that we do not even "see" our investment in it, thus ensuring the circularity of the ego’s argument is hidden.
Once we do begin to see this investment however, the circle is weakened, eventually to break and dissolve into the nothingness from which it came.
To block the awareness of truth.
To gain an even deeper understanding of the purpose which specialness serves, it is perhaps helpful to return to the introduction of chapter 24 of the Text "The Goal of Specialness". Here we are reminded of what the purpose of the Course is, or, in otherwords, its plan for our salvation.
"Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace…" T-24.In.1:1-7
Therein lies the whole Course process.
If specialness were to write a course, how would it write the first two sentences?
"Forget not that the motivation for specialness is the attainment and keeping of the state of war. Given this state the mind is conflicted, and the condition in which God is remembered will never be attained."
Recall that the first motion of specialness is to attempt to introduce separateness and differences into unity and perfect equality. Differences ensure that conflict will result. Conflict, being the activity of choosing between and exclusion, is diametrically opposed to the condition love’s awareness–inclusion and peace. Conflict excludes the awareness of God and who we are from returning to our mind because of what it is. It can therefore be seen that the most fundamental purpose of specialness is to prevent the son of God from remembering who he truly is and where he has always been.
In this "forgetting" of God, we also forget the Son. That is why specialness is treacherous. It is the attempt to betray and obliterate truth. The substitute which is limited, changes and eventually dies is defended in preference to that which can know none of these things. The Son can only know Himself in relation to his Creator and his brother. By choosing against the remembrance of this eternal relationship, the son attempts to attack and murder reality.
"Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love…" T-24.II.12.
Alternative plan for salvation.
All these elements combined contribute to the ego’s plan for salvation. It would have us eternally deluded as to our true nature. We would never remember who we are, and our relationship to all of Creation. Due to our inherent incompleteness we would constantly search outside ourselves for the solution. Our sense of guilt and sinfulness would compel us to find someone who is "worse" than us and who we could blame for our condition. That search requires specifics, therefore a realm of separate bodies is guaranteed. Here the ego would be safe from any recollection of the totality and unity of love.
"Nothing is sacred here but unto you, and you alone…" T-24.II.13:3
This plan ensures the ego seems to exist; the condition which supports its apparent reality being pain misery, death and despair. The ego’s plan, by its very nature, must fail to bring peace and joy. Our awakening from this nightmare has started when we find ourselves beginning to be willing to look honestly on all the misery and apparent devastation of what we have made. It is only when we have reached that point of "disillusionment" that we begin to open to God’s plan for our salvation. What is involved in the process will be looked at in the next part of this talk.
It is perhaps appropriate to leave off on this note which speaks of transition, a transition which usually involves pain but which has in it the seeds of hope laid by and supported by eternal love.
"The key you threw away God gave your brother…" T-24.II.14.