Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 20: Beyond the Obstacles to Peace

4. The Second Obstacle to Peace: The Belief that the Body is Valuable for What It Offers

This Course said that Peace must first surmount the obstacle of your impulse to abandon It. This means that where the attraction of guilt holds sway, Peace is not wholly wanted. The second obstacle that Peace must flow across, and closely related to the first, is the belief that the body is valuable for what you believe it offers in itself. For here is the attraction of guilt made manifest in the body, and perceived in it. This is the value that you think Peace would rob you of. This is what you believe that It would dispossess, and leave you comfortless. And it is for this that you would deny a home to Peace.

Ask yourself honestly if this “sacrifice” you feel to be too great to make, too much to ask of you, is really a sacrifice, or perhaps simply a release? What has the body really given you that justifies your strange belief that in it lies your “salvation”—the relief for whatever you, identifying yourself as a body, believe you need? When you answer this you will see that the belief in the body as means of “saving” you is the belief in death as salvation, because the body itself will not last, and about this there is no disagreement. Here is the focus of the perception of atonement as the elimination of anything that seems to keep the ego’s “needs” from being relieved. Here too is the source of the idea that Love must be feared.

The Holy Spirit’s Messengers are sent far beyond the body, calling the mind to join in holy Connection with your sisters and brothers and be at peace. Such is the Message that I gave them for you. It is only the messengers of fear that look upon the body, for they look for what can suffer. Is it a sacrifice or is it a release to be removed from what can seem to suffer?

The Holy Spirit does not demand that you “sacrifice” the hope of the body’s pleasures. The body has no hope of true pleasure. But neither can it bring you fear of pain. Its fleeting pleasures are just another form of pain, which can only be the pain you impose on it by attempting to use it as anything but a means of communication in Service of the Holy Spirit. When the desire for using the body as a means for fleeting pleasure is removed from it, so is all pain. And pain is the only “sacrifice” the Holy Spirit asks. And this It would remove.

Peace is extended from you only to the Eternal in all. And It reaches out from the Eternal in you and flows across all else. The second obstacle to Peace is no more solid than the first. For your true will is neither to abandon Peace nor to limit It. What are these obstacles that you would interpose between Peace and Its going forth but barriers you place between your will and its accomplishment? You want true connection with others, not the feast of fear. You want awakening, not the pain of guilt. And you want the Realm of Heaven, not a little mound of clay, to be your home.

In your holy relationship is the whole Divine Family. The Children of the Divine have not lost Communion with their Creator, nor with themselves. When you agreed to join each other, you acknowledged that this is so. This has no cost, but it does have release from cost. You have paid very dearly for your illusions. And nothing you have paid for brought you Peace. Be glad that Heaven cannot be sacrificed, and that sacrifice cannot be asked of you.

There is nothing that can be placed as an obstacle to our union, for in all relationships you have invited Spirit into and allowed to become holy I am there already. We will surmount all obstacles together, for we stand within the Gate of Heaven, and not outside. How easily the Gate is opened from within to let Peace through to bless the tired world! Can it be difficult for us to walk past barriers together when you have joined the Limitless? The end of guilt is in your hands to give. Would you stop now to look out of habit for guilt in each other? Let me be to you the symbol of the end of guilt, and behold each other as you would see me. Forgive me for all the sins you think the Children of the Divine have committed. And in the Light of your forgiveness they will remember who they are, and forget what never was.

I ask for your forgiveness, for if you or our brothers or sisters are guilty, so must I be. And if I surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were with me. Would you perceive in me the symbol of guilt or the end of guilt, remembering that what I signify to you, you perceive within yourself? From your holy relationships, Truth proclaims the Truth, and Love beholds Itself. Awakening flows from deep within the Home you offer to our Creator and to me. And we are there together in the quiet Communion in which the Creator and Its Creation are joined.

Come to the holy Union of the Creator and Its Child in you, who have been faithful to the Call. And keep you not apart from what is offered you with Gratitude, for giving Peace Its Home in Heaven. Send forth to all the world the happy Message of the end of guilt, and all the world will answer. Think of your Happiness as everyone offers you witness of the end of the belief in separation and sin, and shows you that their power is gone forever. Where can guilt be when the belief in separation and sin is gone? And where is death when its great advocate is heard no more?

Forgive me your illusions and release me from punishment for what I have not done. And extend this to all our sisters and brothers. So will you learn the Freedom that I taught, by teaching Freedom to each other, and so releasing me. I am within your holy relationships, and would not be imprisoned behind the obstacles you raise to Freedom to bar my way to you, because it is not possible to keep away one who is there already. And in this One it is possible that our communion, where we are already joined, will be the focus of the new perception that will bring Light to all the world, contained in you.