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October - December, 2008

Specialness — A Disguised Gift of Fear

Tomas Vieira

Whenever we try to be special, to get something from someone, or harbor an attachment to an outcome or thing, we will experience pain and suffering and usually cruelty towards the other party and self.

Recently, I was trying to make myself ‘special’ to someone when I realized that the more I tried, the worst I felt. Trying to be special always involves seeing yourself and the other as individuals, different; more special than others. This immediately produces fear because the hidden belief behind specialness is that we are alone and need to get and protect what we want, though this agenda is often hidden beneath the driving desire to win over the other. The exhilarating emotions of trying to be special, the fantasies that play-out in the mind all disguise a growing fear of loss.

This growing fear eventually surfaces as a need to defend against that fear. The ego, being insane and working from its mantra of seek and do not find, then begins to subtly judge (or attack) the other in the absurd notion that finding fault in him/her will somehow protect them from the very fear that began within their own ego mind.

Typical of the ego, it makes up a fear and then sees (projects) it outside in the other and justifies attack as a means of defending a potential loss. This can manifest as seeing fault in another and trying to correct them. So back to my story, I was actually trying to hurt someone I cared deeply for. Is this madness or what?

There is no way out of here. The paradigm is now a closed circle. We (ego) begin by seeing the fault outside, then by making it real in the mind, we follow with attack which leads to defense from the other which seemingly confirms the initial fear and generates more fear and round and round we go! The internal altar of worship to God has been displaced by the idol of fear.

A Course in Miracles in Lesson 170, titled ‘There is no cruelty in God and none in me’ clearly explains this mistaken belief.

1. “No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion from fear.

“How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped.”

The lesson goes on to explain the ultimate fear behind this is the fear of God Himself; the fear of a God of vengeance who is after us for our ‘sins.’ We still believe that we are guilty and, conscious or not, every time we attack or defend, we generate guilt and believe God will persecute us. This of course is ridiculous as this seeming life is just a dream, one that is over already. All we have to do is wake up to who we are to see that we are already home, safe, beloved.

I only discovered my mistake when I came to my knees begging for the peace of God. I was so over myself and prayed for right-mindedness. I prayed for the correct perception so that I could return to peace. Having turned my life over to the Peace of God, I was shocked to find that here was the ego again, trying to hurt me.

And then I saw it clearly! I saw how the ego in its deception used the desire for specialness to make up fantasies which, if followed through, would have turned out to be conditions for a future generation of pain, suffering and sacrifice.

Love is free and limitless, given freely without restriction or expectation. We all know sexual love and emotional love but know nothing of Conscious Love; the Love that is given solely to mirror back the perfection of the other. Conscious Love is about practicing giving is receiving; this is the only way we can know this experientially. There is no room for ‘getting’ here. Conscious Love does not see error and abandon a brother. It seeks not to correct error thereby compounding the mistaken belief that we are separate individuals. Conscious Love does not judge and does not seek to place limits on self or others. In the mirroring back of the perfection of the other is our memory of Who and What we are restored.

Having already learned and practiced this with Nouk, I was dumbstruck to find myself lapsing back into specialness. I supposedly teach this stuff!!

When we lapse into specialness, we are unable to see the beauty and perfection of our brother, thereby increasing the fear in us that we are alone and isolated, with a vengeful God after us.

As the Course states, at any instant we can be reborn and given life again. All we need do is forgive ourselves for the mistake we made and ask the Holy Spirit to shine away what was never there! Here’s to the end of specialness.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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