T. 24. V. 2 – 5. Jesus: “There is no dream of specialness, however hidden or disguised the form, however lovely it may seem to be, however much it delicately offers the hope of peace and the escape from pain, in which you suffer not your condemnation!
In the ego’s dreams, effect and cause are interchanged, for here the maker of the dream believes that what he made is happening to him. He does not realize he picked a thread from here, a scrap from there, and wove a picture out of what was really nothing.
For the parts do not belong together, and the whole can contribute nothing to the parts to give them meaning! Where could your peace arise but from forgiveness of all this?
The Christ in you looks only on the truth, and sees no condemnation that could need forgiveness. He is at peace because He sees no sin. Identify with Him, and what has He that you have not? Let Him be your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet! How gentle are the sights He sees, the sounds He hears. How beautiful His hand that holds His brother’s, and how lovingly He walks beside him, showing him the love that can indeed be seen and heard, and leading him away from where he will see nothing and there is no sound to hear.
Yet let your specialness direct your brother’s way, and you will follow. And both will walk in danger, each intent, in the dark forest of the sightless, unlit but by the shifting tiny gleams that spark an instant from the fireflies of sin and then go out, to lead the other to a nameless precipice and hurl him over it. For what can specialness delight in but to kill? What does it seek for but the sight of death? Where does it lead but to destruction?
Think not that it looked upon your brother first, nor hated him before it hated you! The sin its eyes behold in him and love to look upon, it first saw in you, and looks on still with joy. Yet is it really joy to look upon decay and madness, and believe this crumbling thing, with flesh already loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like yourself?
Rejoice that in your specialness you have no eyes with which to really see; you have no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that only Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them. They are illusions, too, as much as yours. And yet because they serve a different purpose, the strength their purpose holds is given them. And what they see and hear and hold and lead is given light, that you may lead as you were led.”