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 that 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.
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.
Your brother is your friend because his Father created him like you. There is no difference. You have been given to your brother that love might be extended, not cut off from him. What you keep is lost to you. God gave you and your brother Himself, and to remember this is now the only purpose that you share. And so it is the only one you have. (A Course in Miracles, T-24.I.3;5:1-3;7:1-6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)
As long as we believe we are a body we will make wrong decisions. The body is the ego’s central image of specialness. It is what appears to make our self unique, different from everybody and every thing. Under the ego’s dictates, we will defend the body and our special identity at all costs, even unto death. While we identify with the body we will perceive our brother as a body, separate from us. We will not perceive him as he is—part of our one Self, united with us as God’s Son.
The ego always judges to maintain the illusion of differences, of specialness. It engages in constantly categorizing our brother according to how the body appears, what it does and says. These categories are established by “memories” of past experiences used to judge good or bad, helpful of harmful, friend or foe. It judgments are never based on the present, because the ego is unaware of the presence of eternal Love.
To free ourselves from the ego’s dictates, we must choose to follow the Holy Spirit’s lead. By practicing frequent pausing to welcome the peace of God within our mind, we make way for the Holy Spirit’s true perception to replace the false perceptions of the ego. This is a practice that will lead us Home to the Heaven of God’s Love. We will learn to the truth in our brother as our Friend.
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