2. Special Relationships

If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt not enter? For separation is the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone. To be alone is to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack reality.(T15.V.2:3-7)

Let us examine this quote more carefully to really “get” its flawless logic as we explore the idea of special relationships. Examining each segment is an excellent way to ”digest” the Course.

If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality

If you take the whole Sonship, the one Son of God, and separate out a “special person”

and look to them to meet your imagined needs,

Make a list of what “you” are looking for in a special relationship. What are your imagined needs? Whose needs are these? Are they perhaps a child’s needs? You are the supernatural sinless Son of God Himself. A supernatural, sinless Son of God Himself does not have needs. So if you don’t have needs why would you be in a relationship? To be in service perhaps? Have you ever heard anyone say I want to be in a relationship so I can serve?

you are attempting to use separation to save

The ego tells us that we will be saved by separation. Remember, the ego convinced us that we had to get away from God or he would retaliate against us. He told us we could hide in this place called the universe. He enrolled us in the idea that being completely separate from God would save us from His “wrath”. We imagined we were separate from God and we were “saved”.

When you separate out one person to love in a special way you are trying to save yourself (complete, make whole, fix, fill a lack) by getting your imagined needs met. If you have needs you must be missing something. It can be found, as the ego counsels, outside of yourself.

you.

Who is the you that needs to be saved? Who is the you that is lacking? Who is the you that needs to be completed, made whole, fixed? The Son of God is whole and perfect. So which are you? The broken self or the perfect self?

How, then, could guilt not enter? For separation is the source of guilt,

We feel guilty because we think we separated from God. Without our belief that we separated from God there would be nothing to be guilty about. The act of separating out one person to love has guilt at its foundation.

and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone. To be alone is to be guilty.

“In the beginning” you separated yourself out from God for “special” love and felt guilty. Then instead of dealing with the initial lie that you had separated from God, you tried to fix the “problem” by attempting an external joining with another which is just a separation riddled with guilt in disguise.

For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack reality.

When you think, “I am alone”, you are attacking reality. When you attack reality you feel guilty and afraid and then you go out and try to “join” with someone based on your belief that you are alone. If you did not believe you were alone, you wouldn’t try to solve the problem with a relationship. Try telling that to the ego. So what do I do about relationships?

The way out of this endless nightmare is …

Turn all of your relationships over to the Holy Spirit.

The ego uses relationships to deny and hate your Self. The Holy Spirit will use relationships to help you learn to know and love your Self.

In the special relationship the child says, “What can I get?” In the holy relationship the adult says, “What can I give?”

In the special relationship the goal is illusion and ego perpetuation. In the holy relationship the goal is the mutual remembrance of truth and God.