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Chapter 20: Beyond the Obstacles to Peace

8. The Fourth Obstacle to Peace: The Fear of the Divine

What will you perceive without the fear of death? What will you feel and think and will when sin and guilt and pain hold no attraction for you? Very simply, you will remember your Creator. The Creator of Life, the Source of Everything that has Being, the Creator of the Universe, and of the Universe of Universes, and of Everything that is even beyond them, will you remember. And as this Memory rises in your mind, you will see that Peace must still surmount a final obstacle, after which is awakening complete, and the Child of the Divine entirely restored to Sanity. For here, at the fourth obstacle to Peace, your world does end.

The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the Face of Divine Essence—the Presence and Vision of the perfect Essence of the Divine in all things. Yet, as Divine Essence’s Face rises beyond this obstacle, shining with Joy because It is eternally in Its Creator’s Love, Peace will lightly brush the veil aside and you will run to meet the Divine, and to join again with It at last in the Totality of yourself. This dark veil seemed to make the Face of Divine Essence Itself like something repulsive to be recoiled from in horror, and the bright Rays of Its Creator’s Love that light Its Face with Glory appear as streams of blood. This veil now fades in the blazing Light beyond it when the fear of death is gone.

This is the darkest veil, upheld by the belief in death, and protected by its attraction. The dedication to death and to its sovereignty is merely the solemn vow, the promise made in secret to the ego, never to lift this final veil, not to approach it, or even to suspect that it is there. This is the secret bargain made with the ego to keep what is beyond this veil forever blotted out and unremembered. Here is your promise never to allow Union to call you out of separation. Here is the great amnesia in which the Memory of the Divine seems quite forgotten. Here is the cleavage of yourself from your Self. Here is the fear of the Divine, which was the first step in your dissociation from Reality and is therefore the last Step in your awakening from all illusion.

Perceive how the belief in death would seem to “save” you from the undoing of delusion that this Step will bring. For if fear of death is gone, then what can you still fear but Life and Its Source? It is the attraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel, and tyrannical. Yet who you truly are is no more afraid of death than of the ego. These have simply become your chosen allies. For in your secret alliance with them you once agreed never to let the veil over your fear of the Divine be lifted, which would enable you to behold the Face of Divine Essence and unite again in your Creator.

Every obstacle that Peace must flow across is surmounted in just the same way: the fear that constructed the veil or obstacle yields to the Love beyond, and then the fear is gone. And so it is with this.

The impulse to abandon Peace and drive the Holy Spirit from your awareness fades in the Presence of the quiet Recognition that you love your Creator and all that comes from It. The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the Spirit, Which you love as you could never love the body. And the appeal of death is lost forever as Love’s Attraction stirs and calls to you. From beyond each of these obstacles to Peace, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the Power of the Attraction of what is beyond. Your fascination with fear seemed to be holding the veils in place. Yet when you heard the Voice of Love beyond them, you answered, and they disappeared.

And now you stand in seeming terror before what you swore never to perceive. Your eyes look down rather than up, remembering your promise to your “allies.” The “loveliness” of sin, the appeal of guilt, the “holy” waxen image of death, and the ego’s fear that you swore in blood not to desert when separation was chosen and your mind became split, all rise and bid you not to raise your eyes. For you realize that if you behold what is beyond this final obstacle, and let the veil be lifted, the world of illusions will be gone forever. All of your “allies,” your “protectors,” and your “dwelling” will vanish. Nothing that you perceive now will you remember then.

It seems to you that the world will utterly reject you if you just raise your eyes beyond this last veil. Yet all that will occur is that you will leave the world behind forever. And this will be the reintegration of your mind and reestablishment of your true will. Therefore perceive this last obstacle clearly, and you will never again believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond you, of forces you cannot control, and of thoughts that come to you against your will.

Yet it is your will to behold this. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear nor the cold sweat of seeming death, can stand against your will. What attracts you from beyond the veil is deep within you, and you are completely One with It.

Remember that you came this far with your sisters and brothers, together. And it was surely not the ego that led you here. No obstacle to Peace can be surmounted through its help. It does not open up its secrets and bid you perceive them and go beyond them. It would not have you see its weakness and learn it has no power to keep you from the Truth. The Guide Who brought you here remains with you, and when you raise your eyes, you will be ready to perceive with equanimity what once was the source of terror. But first lift up your eyes and behold your sisters and brothers in Innocence, born of complete forgiveness of each other’s illusions through the eyes of faith.

Everyone who has accepted the Atonement for themself and learned that illusions are not real will perceive without terror what previously was the fear of the Divine. Everyone who stands before this final obstacle is joined, for they could not have come to this place unless their sisters and brothers walked beside them. And everyone who dares to perceive this obstacle must have complete forgiveness of their sisters and brothers in their heart. Stand you here a while, and tremble not. You will be ready. Let us join together in a Holy Instant here in this Place where Spirit’s Purpose, given in the Holy Instant, has led you. And let us join in faith that Spirit, Who brought us here together, will offer you the Vision of Divine Essence that you both need and are, and that you will accept It, for my love and Its.

Nor is it possible to perceive this too soon. This is the Place to which everyone must come when they are ready. Once they have found their holy relationship, they are ready. But merely to reach a place is not enough. A journey without a purpose is still meaningless. And even when such a journey is over it will seem to make no sense without a purpose. How can you know that it is over unless you realize its purpose has been accomplished? Here, with the journey’s End before you, you will see its Purpose. And here at the journey’s End you will choose whether to behold this final obstacle and go beyond it, or wander on only to return and have the opportunity again to choose to go beyond.