43 In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain. Anxiety, despair, guilt, and attack all enter into it, broken into by periods in which they
seem to be gone. All these must be understood for what they are. Whatever form they take, they are always an attack on the self to make the
other guilty. We have spoken of this before, but there are some aspects of what is really being attempted that we have not touched upon.
44 Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is
always directed against God. For the ego would have you see Him, and Him
alone, as guilty, leaving the Sonship open to attack and unprotected from it. The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. It does not
appear to be a weapon, but if you consider
how you value it and
why, you will realize what it must be. The special love relationship is the ego's most boasted gift, and one which has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The "dynamics" of the ego are clearest here, for counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies which center around it are often quite open. Here they are usually judged to be acceptable and even natural. No one considers it bizarre to love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate is sin merely feel guilty and do not correct it.
45 This
is the "natural" condition of the separation, and those who learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the
unnatural ones. For this world
is the opposite of Heaven, being
made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as
union. Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love's place, love is perceived as separation and
exclusion.
46 It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego's hatred triumphs. For the special relationship is the
renunciation of the love of God and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness which He denied. It is essential to the preservation of the ego that you believe this specialness is not hell, but Heaven. For the ego would never have you see that separation can
only be loss, being the one condition in which Heaven
cannot be.
47 To everyone Heaven is completion. There can be no disagreement on this because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in
complete disagreement on what completion
is and
how it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that completion lies first in union and then in the extension of union. To the ego, completion lies in triumph and in the extension of the "victory" even to the final triumph over God. In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with
it. This
is its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the ego
cannot interfere,
must be hell.
48 The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined "best" of both worlds has merely led to fantasies of both and to the inability to perceive either one as it is. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which union is
excluded, and the basis for the
attempt at union rests on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, "Seek but do not find?"
49 Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the ego fosters in the special relationship. This "self" seeks the relationship to make itself complete. Yet when it
finds the special relationship in which it thinks it can accomplish this, it gives itself
away and tries to "trade" itself for the self of another. This is not union, for there is no increase and no extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice the self he does not want for one he thinks he would prefer. And he feels guilty for the "sin" of taking and of giving nothing of value in return. For how much value
can he place upon a self that he would give away to get a better one?
50 The "better" self the ego seeks is always one that is
more special. And whoever seems to possess a special self is "loved" for what can be taken
from him. Where both partners see this special self in each other, the ego sees "a union made in Heaven." For neither one will recognize that he has asked for hell, and so he will not interfere with the ego's illusion of Heaven, which it offered him to
interfere with Heaven. Yet if all illusions are of fear, and they
can be of nothing else, the illusion of Heaven is nothing more than an "attractive" form of fear in which the guilt is buried deep and rises in the form of "love."
51 The appeal of hell lies only in the terrible attraction of guilt, which the ego holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies in
every special relationship, for only the deprived could
value specialness. The demand for specialness and the perception of the giving of specialness as an act of love would make love
hateful. And the real purpose of the special relationship, in strict accordance with the ego's goals, is to destroy reality and substitute illusion. For the ego is
itself an illusion, and only illusions
can be the witnesses to its "reality."
52 If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would you
want it? Let us not think of its fearful nature nor of the guilt it must entail nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of the whole religion of the separation and of the total context in which it is thought to occur. The central theme in its litany to sacrifice is that God must die so
you can live. And it is this theme which is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death of
your self, you think you can attack another self and snatch it from the other to replace the self which you despise. And you despise it because you do not think it offers the specialness which you demand. And
hating it, you have made it little and unworthy because you are
afraid of it.
53 How can you grant unlimited power to what you think you have attacked? So fearful has the truth become to you that
unless it is weak and little, [and unworthy of value,] you would not dare to look upon it. You think it safer to endow the little self which you have made with power you
wrested from truth, triumphing over it and leaving it helpless. See how
exactly is this ritual enacted in the special relationship. An altar is erected in between two separate people on which each seeks to kill his self and on his body raise another self which takes its power from his death. Over and over and over this ritual is enacted. And it is
never completed nor ever
will be completed. For the ritual of completion
cannot complete, and life arises not from death, nor Heaven from hell.
54 Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is
content and not form of
any kind. The special relationship is a
ritual of form, aimed at the raising of the form to take the place of God at the
expense of content. There
is no meaning in the form, and there will never be. The special relationship must be recognized for what it is—a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God and invested in His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content and love has lost its meaning. Would you
want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? For if it
were possible, you would have made
yourself helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You
cannot change His Mind.
55 No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the wholeness of God have any influence at all upon it. See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him and by worshiping them to obscure
their tininess and His
greatness. In the name of your completion, you do not
want this. For every idol which you raise to place before Him stands before
you in place of what you
are.
56 Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are not fearful because they are not
true. They but seem to be fearful to the extent to which you fail to recognize them for what they are, and you
will fail to do this to the extent to which you
want them to be true. And to the same extent you are
denying truth, and so are making yourself unable to make the simple choice between truth and illusion, God and fantasy. Remember this and you will have no difficulty in perceiving the decision as just what it
is and nothing more.
57 The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the
fantasy of destruction of love's meaning. And unless love's meaning is
restored to you, you cannot know yourself, who
shares its meaning. Separation is only the decision
not to know yourself. Its whole thought system is a carefully contrived learning experience designed to lead
away from truth and into fantasy. Yet for every learning that would hurt you, God offers you correction and complete escape from
all its consequences. The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here is truth
separated from illusion and not confused with it at all.
58 How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For
only fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally unreal. This year is thus the time to make the easiest decision that ever confronted you and also the
only one. You will cross the bridge into reality simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side and nothing
at all is here. It is impossible
not to make the natural decision as this is realized.
