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Chapter 20: Beyond the Obstacles to Peace

2. The First Obstacle to Peace: The Impulse to Abandon Peace

The first obstacle that Peace must flow across is your impulse to abandon It. For Peace cannot extend unless you first keep It. You are the center from which It radiates, to call your sisters and brothers in. You are Its home, Its tranquil dwelling-place, from which It gently reaches out, but never leaving you. If you leave Peace without a home, how can It abide within the Children of the Divine? If It would spread across the whole world, It must begin with you. And, from you, reach to everyone who calls, and bring them Rest by joining you.

Why would you leave Peace without a home? What do you think that It must dispossess to dwell in you? What seems to be the cost for Peace that you still judge too high to pay?

The little barriers of sand that are the body still stand between you and your sisters and brothers. Would you reinforce them now? You are not asked to let perception of them go for yourself alone. Divine Essence asks it of you, for Itself. It would bring Peace to everyone. And how can It do this except through you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier stand between your sisters and brothers and the awakening of you and them?

It is this little remnant of separation you cherish still against each other that is the first obstacle the Peace in you encounters in Its going forth. This little wall that has been instilled with disdain and even hatred by the separated ones would still oppose the Will of the Divine, and keep It limited. The Holy Spirit’s Purpose rests in Peace within you. Yet if you are still unwilling to let It join you wholly, if you still oppose the Will of the Divine just a little, then that little is a limit you would place upon the Whole. The Divine’s Will is One, not many. It has no opposition, for there is nothing beside It.

And yet what you would still contain for yourself behind your little barrier, and keep separate from each other, can seem to be mightier than the eternal Universe. For its purpose as the ego perceives it is to hold back the Universe and Its Creator. This little wall would hide the Purpose of Heaven, and keep It from Heaven. Would you thrust awakening away from the Giver of Awakening? For awakener you have become. Peace could no more depart from you than from the Divine. But you can think that you have abandoned It, believing that the cost asked of you to choose Peace is too great. But Peace, as Everything real, has no cost. It only gives.

Fear not this little obstacle. It cannot obstruct the Will of the Divine. Peace will flow across it, and join you without hindrance. Awakening cannot be withheld from you because it is your Purpose. You cannot will apart from this, and your wishes cannot hold Heaven back. You have no Purpose apart from each other, or apart from the One you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you.

The little wall will so quietly disappear beneath the Wings of Peace! For Peace will send Its Messengers from you to all the world. And barriers will fall away before their coming, as easily as those that you would interpose will be surmounted. To overcome one illusion or the entire world of illusions is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of your relationship, without this barrier, is every miracle contained.

There are no levels or orders of magnitude in miracles, for miracles are all the same. Each is a gentle shifting over from the attraction of guilt to the Appeal of Love. How can this fail to be accomplished wherever it is undertaken? Guilt can raise no real barriers against it. And all that seems to stand between you must fade away because of the Appeal you answered. And from you who answered, It Who answered you calls. Its Home is in your holy relationship. Do not attempt to stand between It and Its holy Purpose, for this Purpose is yours. Just let It quietly extend the miracle of your relationship to everyone contained in it, as it was given.

There is a Hush in Heaven, a happy Expectancy, a little Pause of Gladness, in Acknowledgment of the journey’s End. For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. No illusions stand between you. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The Sun has risen over it. How can a shadow keep you from the Sun? No more can you be kept by shadows from the Light in which illusions end. Each and every miracle is the end of an illusion. Such was the journey, such its Ending. For in the Goal of Truth, which you accepted, must all illusions end.

The little, senseless wish to abandon Peace – Which you invited in – and push It out, must produce conflict. This little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon anything as you perceive the world. For the world of illusions has no purpose in your mind now. Before the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you, the world seemed to have a mighty purpose: the fixed and unchangeable dedication to the belief in separation and sin and its results. Now the belief that caused that world is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in Love’s Appeal.

This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in separation and sin, is all that remains of what once seemed to be the world. It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to Peace. Its pointless wandering and random impulses make its results appear to be more erratic and unpredictable than before. Yet what could be more unstable than a tightly-organized delusional system? Its seeming stability is its pervasive weakness, which extends to everything in it. The variability that the little remnant now induces merely indicates its limited results.

How can a little feather obstruct the great Wings of Peace? Can it oppose an eagle’s flight, or hinder the advance of summer? Can it interfere with the effects of summer’s sun upon a garden that in winter was covered by the snow? Just see how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return. And part with it in gladness, not regret. For it is nothing in itself, and stood for nothing real even when you had greater faith in its protection. Heaven’s Thanks go with you as you decide to greet the summer sun rather than let your gaze remain fixed upon a disappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter’s cold.