Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 21: Seeing Reality
4. Entering the Ark of Peace
Nothing can seem to hurt you unless you give it the power to do so. You have given power as the laws of this world interpret giving, believing that as you give, you lose. It is actually not up to you to give power at all. Power is of the Divine, given by It, and reawakened in you by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that as you truly give you gain. Spirit gives no power to the belief in error, and therefore it has none. Nor to error’s results, as this world looks on them: sickness, pain, misery, and death. These things have not occurred in Reality nor in the Real World, because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would It keep you free of them and all things you have mistakenly believed can hurt you in any way.
Being without illusion of who and what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives everything to the Divine, Who has already given and received all that is, and has neither received nor given the false. Error has no place in Heaven, where its results are impossible, and can no more enter than can their source. And therein is your need to see your sisters and brothers as the perfect creations they are. In them is Heaven. Perceive separation and flaw in them instead of Perfection and Innocence, and Heaven is lost to you. But see them as they are, and what is yours shines from them to you.
Your Awakener gives you only Love. But what you would receive of It is up to you. Your sisters and brothers have the power to see beyond all your errors, and therein is their own awakening. And so it is with yours. Awakening is a lesson in giving as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the reawakening of the Laws of the Divine in minds that have established other laws, and given these laws seeming power to enforce what the Divine created not. These insane laws were made to guarantee not only that you would err, but also to give your mistakes power over you by accepting guilt as your just due for their seeming results. What could this be but madness? And is it this that you would perceive within your awakener from madness?
Your sisters and brothers are as free from this madness in their reality as you are, and in the Freedom that you see in them you see your own. For this you truly share. What the Divine has given follows Its Laws, and Its alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow Its Laws to experience the results of any other source. Those who choose Freedom will experience only Its Results. Their Power is of the Divine. And they will give this Power only to what the Divine has given to share with them. Nothing but this can touch them, for they see only this, sharing their Power according to the Will of the Divine. And thus their Freedom is established and maintained, and upheld through all temptations to imprison and to be imprisoned.
It is of those who know Freedom that you should ask what Freedom is. Look not to the earthbound bird to see how the soaring bird soars. Those with little wings have not yet accepted for themselves the Power to share Freedom with you. The Innocent give as they have received. See, then, the Power of Innocence within your sisters and brothers, and share with them the Power of the Release from the belief in error and guilt that you previously offered them.
To each who walks this Earth in seeming solitude are awakeners given, whose unique function here is to release those they journey with, and so to free themselves. In the world of separation each holy relationship is appointed separately, though they are all the same. And those who know they are all the same do not need awakening. Each one finds their awakeners when they are ready to behold the Face of Divine Essence and see only Innocence. The Plan is not of your making, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given you to learn and fulfill. For Spirit, Who knows the rest, will see to the rest without your help. But think not that It does not need your part to help It with the rest. For in your part is all of the Plan, for without your part is no part complete, nor can the Whole be completed.
The Ark of Peace is entered hand in hand. Each holy relationship must enter here to learn its unique function in the Plan of Atonement, now that the relationship shares Spirit’s Purpose. And as this Purpose is fulfilled a new world – the Real World – rises in which only Innocence can enter, and where the Children of the Divine can be without fear. And here in the Ark of Peace will they rest a while, to forget imprisonment and to remember Freedom.
How can the Children of the Divine enter, to rest and to remember, without you? Except you be there, they are not complete, and it is their Completion that they remember there. This is the Purpose given you. Think not that your forgiveness of each other serves only you. For the whole new world rests in the hands of those in every holy relationship who enter here to rest. And as they rest, the Face of Divine Essence shines on them, and they remember the Laws of the Divine, forgetting all the rest, and yearning only to have Its Laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their sisters and brothers. Think you, when this has been achieved, that you will be without all your sisters and brothers? You could no more leave one of them outside the Ark of Peace than I could leave you, and forget part of myself.
You may wonder how you can be at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done before the Way to Peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to you. But ask yourself if it is possible that the Divine would have a Plan for your awakening that does not work. Once you accept Its Plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you, without your effort. Spirit will go before you making smooth your Path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. Everything you need will be given you. Every seeming difficulty will melt away as you call forth the miracle it hides. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only Purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will Its Fulfillment be. The Divine’s Guarantee will be fulfilled regardless of the appearance of all obstacles, for It rests on Certainty, and not contingency. It rests on you. And what can be more certain than the Child of the Divine?
