In the early section of the text we learn of the influence of the ego in our minds and are encouraged to think of the ego almost as a detached entity. We then proceed to blame it for our lapses in loving behavior. It seems convenient to say, "I just had an ego attack" There is nothing wrong with this in the beginning, as it enables us to divorce ourselves from our attack thoughts and actions and not increase our feelings of guilt. As we review the results of our faulty judgments we can decide to forgive ourselves for an ego attack, realizing that we will surely get the opportunity on the next occasion of 'choosing once again'. Through listening more to the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit we begin to experience longer periods of peace. The Miracle of seeing our brother sinless opens up possibilities we have never before considered.
After we have worked with the Course for a while, we begin to see the ego as far more extensive than we originally believed. No longer is it just a separate nagging voice leading us astray. In the Goal of Specialness (Text Chapter 24) we learn that the ego is everything that we think we are; everything that makes us unique and special. Our body, our brain our personality even our dreams and memories are part of that specialness.
The whole world we see emanates from the belief in our own specialness. We have structured this world exactly as we wanted it and it owes it's existence to us. Everything we see as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, sad or happy is evaluated from the possible affect it would have on our own specialness.
Everybody has a dread of being ordinary. We want to leave our mark in some way so that our stay was not in vain. We may want to be remembered as a wonderful example of a good Miracle student or a great teacher of truth, or we may even want to be hated and loathed as a Hitler. It doesn't matter which is chosen, as long as we are noticed and remembered. We would hate to think that as separate individuals, we are as nothing in this passing parade of illusions. An illusion is an illusion, is an illusion. What point is there in being remembered in a dream of separation? There is nothing real here!
However, deep within our mind, ever since we first drew breath, we have been searching for God. We may have thought we were searching for something else but it was God nevertheless. Being separate from the awareness of that love is the basis of all depression and every pain we have ever experienced.
In the ego's reasoning the only way we could maintain our specialness would be to deny this powerful "attraction of love for love" with a substitute and unstable ego god. In our mind we projected a stern god, from our own image, who judged and meted out punishment for the least offence. He knew right from wrong and we had better learn which was which, pretty fast, or we would suffer the wrath of an angry god.

"Dear God, I have a useful suggestion."

As children we prayed to the ego's god usually only when we wanted something, hoping that he would give us what we desired. We made endless bargains with him promising to be better boys and girls, if he would grant us the particular favor we wanted at the time. Mostly he didn't seem to answer our requests and our fear of him was reinforced. We thought that was god's way of disapproving of what we had done and punishing us, as we justly deserved.
We were taught to pray for others and make 'useful suggestions' to god. We prayed for our departed loved ones hoping god would 'deal' with them better that he would have done without our advice. The extent of our arrogant belief in our own specialness knew no bounds and was best demonstrated in the act of prayer when we believed that we could somehow influence the Creator of everything that is.
We prayed that our god would fix up the world so it would conform to our perception of what the world should be like, while pondering on what sort of incompetent god would let it become so messed up in the first place. When we thought more about it, our prayers were starting to look pretty silly. We reasoned that if God was Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent there was no chance that we could convince Him that we had a better idea of the way things should be. Our only option was to project a different, special and separate god in order to reinforce our own need to be special and separate.

"Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything." T-3.V.6.

In A Course in Miracles® we learned of a very different God, one who is inseparable from us and everyone of His Creations: a God who knows nothing of the duality world of good and evil and nothing of form and bodies. We made up the person we think we are, but God knows nothing of us as individuals as He could only know us as the perfect Son He created. All else is illusion. As Christ, His beloved Son, He loves us beyond our ability to imagine and this love never wavers. He did not leave us comfortless and through Jesus and the Holy Spirit representing the memory of Him in our minds, He has ensured our eventual reunion.
In the beginning when we find A Course in Miracles® we feel joyously filled with the Holy Spirit and elated to be on our spiritual pathway at last. We knew the way we walked before was leading nowhere and now we saw ourselves at last on our journey home. Everything seems so simple and uncomplicated and it is. However, even then we underestimated our ego and its demand for specialness. We manifested this illusionary world with the sole intention of experiencing our own specialness and there is no way we want to give it up. We look for a way of remaining on our chosen spiritual pathway without giving up our need to be special. As 'special' spiritual people we begin to see ourselves as more awake than our family, friends, and 'non Miracle' people. We break up many of our relationships, alienate close family members, sacrifice many 'pleasures' of the past and try to change our behavior because it is unbecoming for a holy person. Behavior means nothing and a phony holy demeanor is hardly necessary for a completely Holy Son of God. We may all want to become healers or to teach, give workshops write books and newsletters and this is a very acceptable way of learning the material as long as we do not elevate ourselves above our brothers. The teacher and the student are one. If we become upset at other Miracle students and teachers who love this material as much as we do but who have a different slant on interpretation, we have forgotten that "this Course is highly individualized".
Doing is so important to egos. The ego has wormed its way into our mind again. We reason that we have every right to expect special treatment from Jesus. After all, aren't we learning his Course, even teaching his Course, and are we not entitled to a favorable treatment.
Why do we think that 'working' for Jesus or his Course means that we should receive a much better passage through life, never expecting any health or money worries? To think so suggests that this world (made as an 'attack on God') could be made to work after all for Course students as 'special' people.
Some years ago Pam and I were giving a workshop in North Queensland and at that time Pam was recovering from a cold and had developed a hacking cough during the talks. Some well meaning Miracle students were quick to point out that she must have brought that on herself and reminded her that there must be something she was not looking at. There was no doubt they were right, as sickness surely is guilt acted out on to the body, but attacking the magic thoughts of others merely reinforces our own belief in magic.
Being a Course student cannot guarantee that the body would never get sick or eventually die. It is true a fully healed mind would not project sickness on to the body, but it is also true that a healed mind would not need a body at all and very few have reached that state. The body is the ego's manifestation. This is only a dream we are experiencing and we are the dreamers of everything going on in that dream. If somebody dreamt up a healthy body that would rarely be sick, it is not a sign that they are more 'spiritual', more' advanced' or more awake. It is simply their particular dream being played out. Their guilt would merely be projected somewhere else for a while. But the body is not of God and it's death is inevitable as it is laid aside when it's work is done.

I am a Son of God. And can I be another thing as well? Did God create the mortal and corruptible? What use has God's beloved Son for what must die? And yet a neutral thing does not see death, for thoughts of fear are not invested there, nor is a mockery of love bestowed upon it. Its neutrality protects it while it has a use. And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. It is not sick nor old nor hurt. It is but functionless, unneeded and cast off. W-pII.294.1.

We have not failed because we get sick. Getting sick just means we have temporarily forgotten who we are, and called on magic to prove the ego is real and God is not. Simply put, we need to recognize that our mind is not completely healed and not to despair because we have not yet reached Jesus' state of awakeness. We were merely trying to 'jump steps' as Ken Wapnick says. So while we are sick, and in a state of fear, we take the 'magic' appropriate for us to remove the 'magic' condition we ourselves orchestrated for our insane ego purposes. Once we take away the fear away from our belief in sickness by looking at it differently, we can no longer take our sickness or ourselves seriously.
Jesus in the Course asks us not to deny the world but work within its structures to wake up by realizing who we really are. The whole world was conceived with a magic thought and we will remain as long as we believe the body is valuable. We know that we value the body as long as we think we need to breathe, eat, drink and sleep and protect the body in any way. Jesus offers us a simple procedure to healing but reminds us of the cost, which we may not be willing to pay the recognition that the body (& our specialness) is NOTHING!

"Healing must occur in exact proportion to which the valuelessness of sickness is recognized. One need but say, "There is no gain at all to me in this" and he is healed. But to say this, one first must recognize certain facts. First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it. The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being the decision maker." M-5.II.1.

Nobody is special here; no matter how 'noble' or how 'valuable' our role appears to be. As long as we believe we are bodies, we will experience what our ego wants. Like health and sickness, prosperity or the lacks of it are not signs of 'spiritual advancement' from which we can draw conclusions or judge others or ourselves. To elevate or depreciate anybody because of the script we wrote makes no sense.

Specialness is always under threat

The problem is made more difficult because our own specialness seems to be threatened by everybody as they try to establish and maintain their own specialness. We therefore feel we need to spend every waking moment protecting the image of this personality we have made up and woe be tied those who threaten that specialness.
"It is not you who are so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos. Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved and undisturbed. But specialness is not the truth in you. It can be thrown off balance by anything. What rests on nothing never can be stable. However large and overblown it seems to be, it still must rock and turn and whirl about with every breeze".
T-24.III.3.

The Purpose of Special Relationships

Deep down in our subconscious we are ashamed and feel guilty of attempting to usurp God so we could pursue our individual specialness. We then reason that if God will not make us special, we must seek that specialness elsewhere. No matter how we attempt to disguise it, the establishment of our specialness remains our only purpose in life. We become so absorbed in it that we rarely have time to think of God that of course suits the ego's aim. Our apparent separation from Him has left us so guilty and afraid of His imagined 'retribution' we must attempt to remove all thought of Him with an endless list of distractions. It doesn't matter what they are or how holy they seem to be as long as they keep our minds completely occupied.
The ego's favorite distraction is our special relationships. In special relationships we attempt to get validation of our specialness, hoping that another person will remove our guilt and feelings of shame and unworthiness.
The Course says that everyone on earth has formed special relationships, so no one can avoid them even if they try. And why would we want to, when they provide a mirror of our projections, and eventually give us the opportunity of seeing our brother as ourself, at one with each other and at one with the whole Sonship.
Fortunately the Course offers us a way out, through the changing of our special relationships to Holy ones. The Course warns us that the disrupting nature of this new direction can be a fairly rocky time within the relationship and may extend for quite a while. The Course does not tell us that the transition will be easy as the purpose of the relationship has been dramatically changed from a self-serving special relationship to a totally different goal of a holy relationship. To those who value their specialness more than seeing their brother sinless, the logical course seems to be to break up the relationship at that time and pursue their specialness elsewhere. We can form other relationships as many times as we are able but eventually all special relationships reach a point of despair where they no longer meet our needs to be special. It is at that very low point when we have the opportunity of seeing our brother as the Christ and joining him in a holy relationship.
Only in a holy relationship are we truly invulnerable and only in a holy relationship do we cease to imprison the other and in doing so, free ourselves. Only the free can be totally invulnerable and at peace. The ultimate goal of A Course in Miracles® is to find the peace of God, when we will experience the happy dream where we will remain until all are ready to be lifted up by God as His one Son. The Course does not say we need to live in misery in the meantime, but promises that the constant exercise of forgiveness will give us peace here and now.
It seems incredible that our need for specialness is so strong that we would rather live in conflict than live in the peace of a holy relationship where there would be no more need for competition, a constant feature of all special relationships. To see one other person as yourself is a prerequisite to peace, and as we see it one brother we will simultaneously see it in all of our brothers.

"Even God is not special"

You are alike to God as God is to Himself. He is not special, for He would not keep one part of what He is unto Himself, not given to His Son but kept for Him alone. And it is this you fear, for if He is not special, then He willed His Son to be like Him, and your brother is like you. Not special, but possessed of everything, including you. . T-24.II.10.

Take away our ego and there would be nothing left of us but the Christ. God loves His Son with an indescribable love, the like of which we could not begin to understand, but He could never know of the split off personalities we believe we are. For God to enter the dream of duality would make Him as insane as we are. The choice for specialness comes only at a terrible cost in time, but not in eternity. In our insanity we chose our own specialness instead of oneness with our brothers and God. We choose the shadow instead of the substance.
Why do we still choose specialness instead of God? It seems insane, but here we all are, remaining in form by our strange and ongoing choices we continue to make. We think this is all we are, and place all our faith in our frail transitory body judging everything going on by how it will be affected, denying that the body will not last on this planet dedicated to death. We constantly choose separation believing that we are only these individual personalities occupying bodies we made up, instead of having faith in the glory of eternal life with God as His Son. It seems as though the ego has successfully eliminated all memory of God and the love we have for Him. In our entrenched ego state it is almost impossible to remember God and even the Course says we can not begin to understand the extent of that love, without the help of the holy spirit, as it would be too much for our childlike minds to comprehend.
The Goal of the Course is not to establish and increase our own specialness. The goal is simply peace. How do we accomplish this goal? The Course says, "Forgiveness is the end of specialness" T-24.III.1. True forgiveness as the Course explains it is not easy as it does entail total forgetting and letting go of all the grievances we love to hang on to as if it never happened (which it didn't!).
In my experience it requires considerable vigilance and constant practice and there are many times when we feel guilty about our failure to forgive. However, once the goal of peace is set in our hearts, each setback only gives us more resolve to choose once again, pick ourselves up and start all over again. The Course says forgiveness has to be learned.

"Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind, which cannot sin. As sin is an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as well" W-pI.121.6.

The desire to be special resulted in the making of this world. The removal of that final block to the awareness of love's presence through forgiveness will result in our glorious awaking from this dream of separation

Bill McDonald