To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Text Made Simple, we recommend that
you read the corresponding chapter and section in the Text of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
Read A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24, Section VII. (pages 514-517)
Specialness becomes ‘law’ to us when we desire specialness (seeing unique individuals) above being aware of our one, united Spirit of God’s Love. The Holy Spirit’s Voice gets drowned out when specialness is what we want to experience. Jesus tells us, “How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the specialness he wants to be the truth! His wish is law to 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.” (1:1-5)
The memory of God returns to us as we are willing to see past our stories of specialness to the constant, changeless Love in every brother. In this section we are told, “What is in him is changeless, and our changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing [holiness] in him (every brother), the memory of God returns to you.
We see our brother’s holiness when this is all we want to see. As we are willing, the barriers to the truth are removed, and the changeless Light and Love of God is all there is to see. The one Christ Mind is all there is to see. If we continue to focus on the ego story of our brother as a body, we will remain lost in illusions of specialness. We will feel guilty and unworthy for this wish for specialness.
We are now at a turning point — we are now learning to let go of our wish for specialness because we now know that it only brings us pain and sorrow. We see that it is the wish for death. We now practice daily seeing our brother’s holiness because that is all we want to see. We are now in a place of being willing to allow the memory of God’s oneness return to our conflicted minds.
Jesus tells us, “The test of everything on earth is simply this; “What is it for?” (6:1) It is helpful to ask of everything, “Am I using this (what I am thinking about what I am seeing) as a means to reinforce illusions of separation or to return to the awareness of God’s oneness?”
Jesus describes every brother in this way: “A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from; not born of size nor place 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.” (7:3-4 italics added)
In answer to this Jesus tells us, “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.” (8:5-10 italics added)
Here we see how important it is that we hand over all perception (all that we see through the body’s eyes) to our inner Teacher, Who lifts the veil of specialness to show us the eternal Light that is beyond what the body’s eyes can see and hear and touch. This is how we change all perception to the wish to see only the holiness of God. This is how we give a different purpose to everything we see through the body’s eyes.
Jesus tells us, “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.” (11:10-13)
The truth is that behind the veil of specialness, everyone in this world is God’s one, united Son. As we want to see the truth of everyone’s oneness with God, that is all we will see.
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