Beth Geer Author (A Course In Miracles Teacher)

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A Course In Miracles: CHAPTER 19: THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

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A Course In Miracles 

CHAPTER 19: THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

I. Healing and Faith

 

            “We said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to truth peace is inevitable.”  (1:1)

 

            “Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God.  And he is healed because you offered faith to him, giving him to the Holy Spirit and releasing him from every demand your ego would make of him.  Thus do you see him free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share.”  (2:1-3)

 

            “It is obvious that a segment of the mind can see itself as separated from the Universal Purpose.  When this occurs the body becomes its weapon, used against this Purpose, to demonstrate the “fact” that separation has occurred.”  (3:4-5)

 

            “Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight to illusions.  For faithlessness is the perception of a brother as a body, and the body cannot be used for purposes of union.”  (4:1-2)

 

            “Your faithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and brought illusions, centered on the body, to stand between you.  And the body will seem to be sick, for you have made of it an “enemy” of healing and the opposite of truth.”  (4:5-6)

 

            “Truth is the absence of illusion; illusion the absence of truth.  Both cannot be together, nor perceived in the same place.”  (5:8-9)

 

            “The inevitable compromise is the belief that the body must be healed, and not the mind.”  (6:1)

 

            “Truth and illusion have no connection.”  (7:1)

 

            “The idea of separation produced the body and remains connected to it, making it sick because of the mind’s identification with it.  You think you are protecting the body by hiding this connection, for this concealment seems to keep your identification safe from the “attack” of truth.”  (7:7-8)

 

            “Faith is the acknowledgment of union.  It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself.  It is His Love that joins you and your brother, and for His Love you would keep no one separate from yours.”  (10:2-3)

 

            “Grace is not given to a body, but to a mind.  And the mind that receives it looks instantly beyond the body, and sees the holy place where it was healed.  There is the altar where the grace was given, in which it stands.”  (13:1-3)

 

            “And be you healed by grace together, that you may heal through faith.”  (13:5)

 

            “In the holy instant, you and your brother stand before the altar God has raised unto Himself and both of you.  Lay faithlessness aside, and come to it together.  There you will see the miracle of your relationship as it was made again through faith.”  (14:1-3)

 

            “For faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth to enter and make lovely what has already been prepared for loveliness.”  (15:2)

 

            “Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal, and learn how not to interfere with it and make it slave to time.  For what you think you do to the eternal you do to you.”  (16:1-2)

 

In summary, section 1: “Healing and Faith” is saying:

 

            Truth is peaceful because the truth is, we are not in conflict with one another, we are One.  We are called here to have faith in this truth, despite the separated bodies our eyes perceive.  It is through faith in our union that our bodies are healed; it is the idea of separation that produced the body and so our healing lies in the idea that is the opposite to this illusion; the idea we are not separate bodies but joined in God’s peace.  To realize this with our full faith, is grace.  Grace, being an idea, can only occur to a mind, not a body.  So, healing must first be of the mind, and the body will follow.  Let us then be dedicated with full faithfulness to the eternal within everyone.  Remember in each holy instant, you do not need anyone to be a body for you.  In this remembrance, your faith will heal you both.

 

II.  Sin versus Error

 

            “It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes salvation possible.  For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right.  But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible.”  (1:1-3)

 

            “To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed.  Sin is the proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified.”  (2:2-3)

 

            “The Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind against himself.  But he cannot sin.  There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty.”  (3:1-3)

 

            “A major tenet in the ego’s insane religion is that sin is not error but truth, and it is innocence that would deceive.”  (4:1)

 

            “It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin.  Only in such a world could everything be upside down.”  (6:1-2)

 

            “For sin has changed creation from an idea of God to an ideal the ego wants; a world it rules, made up of bodies, mindless and capable of complete corruption and decay.  If this is a mistake, it can be undone easily by truth.  But if the mistake is given the status of truth, to what can it be brought?”  (6:5-8)

 

            “There is no stone in all the ego’s embattled citadel that is more heavily defended than the idea that sin is real; the natural expression of what the Son of God has made himself to be, and what he is.”  (7:1)

 

            “Would you not rather that all this be nothing more than a mistake, entirely correctable, and so easily escaped from that its whole correction is like walking through a mist into the sun?  For that is all it is.”  (8:1-2)

 

            “Yet think you carefully before you allow yourself to make this choice.  Approach it not lightly, for it is the choice of hell or Heaven.”  (8:4-5)

 

In summary, section 2: “Sin versus Error” is saying:

 

            Here the Course makes it very clear: We have never sinned, for sin is defined as an uncorrectable wrong act.  We have made an error, and errors are always correctable.  What is the sin we are afraid we have committed?  We think we have made this world of separation a real place, where the wrongs we commit in time carry over into the realm of eternity.  This is not so!  This world is merely a place where ego ideals are allowed to play out in full, but never are they made real, for to be real, such acts would have to be eternal.  Nothing in this world of form is eternal – no act and no effect of such acts can affect our eternal Self, which is indestructible forever.  Bodies can hurt, be abandoned and all will one day die.  Spirit cannot.  Mind cannot.  Therefore, there is no sin we can commit against what cannot be harmed.  Be glad then, that all we have done is made a mistake in believing we are bodies and have not sinned by making it our truth.

 

III. The Unreality of Sin

 

            “The attraction of guilt is found in sin, not error.”  (1:1)

 

            “But while the guilt remains attractive the mind will suffer and not let go of the idea of sin.”  (1:4)

 

            “The ego does not think it possible that love, not fear, is really called upon by sin, and always answers.  For the ego brings sin to fear, demanding punishment.”  (2:1-2)

 

            “An error, on the other hand, is not attractive.  What you see clearly as a mistake you want corrected.” (3:1-2)

 

            “Now you will not repeat it; you will merely stop and let it go, unless the guilt remains.”  (3:5)

 

            “Every mistake must be a call for love.  What, then, is sin?  What could it be but a mistake you would keep hidden; a call for help that you would keep unheard and thus unanswered?”  (4:7-9)

 

            “And when correction is completed, time is eternity.  The Holy Spirit can teach you how to look on time differently and see beyond it, but not while you believe in sin.  In error, yes, for this can be corrected by the mind.  But sin is the belief that your perception is unchangeable, and that the mind must accept as true what it is told through it.”  (5:4-7)

 

            “When you are tempted to believe that sin is real, remember this: If sin is real, both God and you are not.”  (6:1)

 

            “While you believe that your reality or your brother’s is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin.”  (7:1)

 

            “Your holy relationship has, as its purpose now, the goal of proving this is impossible.”  (8:4)

 

            “In the holy instant, you will see the smile of heaven shining on both you and your brother.”  (10:1)

 

            “The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see.”  (10:6)

 

            “Your relationship is now a temple of healing; a place where all the weary ones can come and rest.  Here is the rest that waits for all, after the journey.  And it is brought nearer to all by your relationship.”  (11:3-5)

 

In summary, section 3: “The Unreality of Sin” is saying:

 

            Why is feeling guilt so attractive to us?  If it were not, we would instantly give up this debilitating emotion that ultimately chains us to this world.  This is in fact, the very reason we refuse to give it up; the ego knows it binds us to this world, and to cease to feel guilty would mean we would not only give up our attachment to this world, but the ego as well.  And so, through listening to the voice of the ego, we hear nothing but that we have “sinned” – or committed unforgivable wrongs that cannot be corrected.  The Voice for truth; the Holy Spirit would tell us that we have merely been mistaken in who we think we are.  We believe we are bodies that can commit heinous crimes against one another, but in truth, nothing at all has happened to our Light bodies – our Christ Identity.  Sin, therefore, is unreal.  To make sin real, would mean our mistakes would become eternal, but only Love is eternal, and we are Love – we are not our mistakes.  To correct our mistakes, we must move our thinking from time to eternity, since Eternal Light is our true Identity.  We do this, through ceasing to believe in sin – it is to cease to need another to be a body for our ego’s satisfaction.  It is to transform your relationship into a holy one, thus bringing about the holy instant.  In this instant, you lift all barriers between yourself and God, Who lives within the one you cease to see as a body.  And thus the unreality of sin will be understood.

 

IV.  The Obstacles to Peace

 

            “As peace extends from deep inside yourself to embrace all the Sonship and give it rest, it will encounter many obstacles.  Some of them you will try to impose.  Others will seem to arise from elsewhere; from your brothers, and from various aspects of the world outside.  Yet peace will gently cover them, extending past completely unencumbered.”  (1:1-4)

 

            “And you will carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him.”  (1:7)

 

            “All this will you do.  Yet the peace that already lies deeply within must first expand, and flow across the obstacles you placed before it.”  (2:1-2)

 

            “You can indeed be sure of nothing you see outside you, but of this you can be sure: The Holy Spirit asks that you offer Him a resting place where you will rest in Him.”  (2:4)

 

            “And when you look with gentle graciousness upon your brother, you are beholding Him.”  (3:2)

 

            “When the peace in you has been extended to encompass everyone, the Holy Spirit’s function here will be accomplished.”  (3:6)

 

In summary, section 4: “The Obstacles to Peace” is saying:

 

            Peace is the natural state of being for each and every one of us.  Peace is what happens to our mind, when it rests in the truth.  The truth is, we are One Love and what is One cannot be anything but at peace with Itself.  If there is conflict, oneness becomes divided in two; between the ego and our One Mindedness in God.  In order to know the peace of our One Mindedness in God, we must lift the barriers we have placed in front of our awareness of It.  We do this, through looking with gentleness and love upon our brothers and beholding their inner light instead.  And so, we learn to look past the obstacles to our peace; there are but four, under which all conflict falls.

 

A. The First Obstacle: The Desire to Get Rid of It

 

            “The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your desire to get rid of it.  For it cannot extend unless you keep it.”  (1:1-2)

 

            “If it would spread across the whole creation, it must begin with you, and from you reach to everyone who calls, and bring him rest by joining you.”  (1:6)

 

            “The Holy Spirit’s purpose rests in peace within you.  Yet you are still unwilling to let it join you wholly.”  (3:1)

 

            “Would you thrust salvation away from the giver of salvation?”  (4:1)

 

            “Peace could no more depart from you than from God.  Fear not this little obstacle.  It cannot contain the Will of God.”  (4:3-5)

 

            “The little wall will fall away so quietly beneath the wings of peace.”  (4:11)

 

            “To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall.  For in your holy relationship, without this barrier, is every miracle contained.  There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they are all the same.  Each is a gentle winning over from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love.”  (5:1-4)

 

            “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.”  (6:4-7)

 

            “This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once seemed to be the world.”  (8:1)

 

            “How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings of truth?”  (9:1)

 

            “The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love would never look on guilt at all.  It is the nature of love to look upon only the truth, for there it sees itself, with which it would unite in holy union and completion.”  (10:1-3)

 

            “Love is attracted only to love.”  (10:5)

 

            “Fear is attracted to what love sees not, and each believes that what the other looks upon does not exist.”  (10:8)

 

            “And each has messengers which it sends forth, and which return to it with messages written in the language in which their going forth was asked.”  (10:10)

 

            “Love’s messengers are gently sent, and return with messages of love and gentleness.”  (11:1)

 

            “What love would look upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible.”  (11:7)

 

            “Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is seen.  And this depends on which emotion was called on to send its messengers to look upon it, and return with word of what they saw.”  (12:1-2)

 

            “The Holy Spirit has given you love’s messengers to send instead of those you trained through fear.”  (14:1)

 

            “If you send them forth, they will see only the blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind.”  (14:3)

 

            “They offer you salvation.  Theirs are the messages of safety, for they see the world as kind.”  (14:7-8)

 

            “I am made welcome in the state of grace, which means you have at last forgiven me.  For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die instead of you.  To the ego sin means death, and so atonement is achieved through murder.”  (17:1-3)

 

            “No one can die for anyone, and death does not atone for sin.  But you can live to show it is not real. The body does appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe that it can get you what you want.”  (17:8-10)

 

            “To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little is to hurt yourself, and to limit the happiness that you would have calls upon pain to fill your meager store and make your life complete.  This is completion as the ego sees it.”  (17:12-13)

 

            “Communion is another kind of completion which goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body.”  (17:15)

 

In summary, section “A. The First Obstacle: The Desire to Get Rid of It” is saying:

 

            Let us remember that the word “guilt” is synonymous with the word “body.”  These two words can be equally substituted for the other in the Course teachings, and when done, understanding becomes quite clear.  While we still desire conflict with others, we are desiring to get rid of our peace.  While guilt is still attractive, or rather, while believing we are bodies is still attractive, guilt (the body) will remain a barrier to our peace.  We will desire to get rid of the peace of seeing our union in exchange for the conflict of our relationships as bodies.  Love sees none of this.  Love cannot see our guilt, our bodies.  Love sees only our union.  Because we see only our bodies, we think that dying will solve our problem.  We thought that the death of Christ would absolve us of our sin; that if His body died, we would no longer have to suffer being in a body either.  This cannot be true if the body is not Who We Are in truth.  But we can live in a body and choose to not see each other as bodies; we can choose peace instead of conflict.  We can see beyond sin to oneness we all share.  This is to desire communion, rather than to desire to get rid of our peace.

 

B. The Second Obstacle: The Belief the Body is Valuable for What It Offers

 

            “We said that peace must first surmount the obstacle of your desire to get rid of it.  Where the attraction of guilt holds sway, peace is not 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 it offers.  For here is the attraction of guilt made manifest in the body, and seen in it.”  (1:1-4)

 

            “This is the value that you think peace would rob you of.  This is what you believe that it would dispossess, and leave you homeless.”  (2:1-2)

 

            “What has the body really given you that justifies your strange belief that in it lies salvation?  Do you not see that this is the belief in death?  Here is the focus of the perception of Atonement as murder.  Here is the source of the idea that love is fear.”  (2:6-9)

 

            “Is it a sacrifice to be removed from what can suffer?  The Holy Spirit does not demand you sacrifice the hope of the body’s pleasure; it has no hope of pleasure.”  (3:4-5)

 

            “Pain is the only “sacrifice” the Holy Spirit asks, and this He would remove.”  (3:7)

 

            “The second obstacle is no more solid than the first.  For you want neither to get rid of peace nor limit it.”  (4:3-4)

 

            “You want communion, not the feast of fear.  You want salvation, not the pain of guilt.  And you want your Father, not a little mound of clay, to be your home.  In your holy relationship is your Father’s Son.”  (4:6-9)

 

            “The end of guilt is in your hands to give.  Would you stop now to look for guilt in your brother?”  (5:7-8)

 

            “Let me be to you the symbol of the end of guilt, and look upon your brother as you would look on me.”  (6:1)

 

            “From your holy relationship truth proclaims the truth, and love looks on itself.”  (7:1)

 

            “And we are there together, in the quiet communion in which the Father and Son are joined.”  (7:3)

 

            “Forgive me your illusions, and release me from punishment for what I have not done.  So will you learn the freedom that I taught by teaching freedom to your brother, and so releasing me.  I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you raise to freedom, and bar my way to you.”  (8:2-3)

 

            “Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole idea of sacrifice.”  (9:1)

 

            “Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what must fail?”  (9:8)

 

            “It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and not find pain.  It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it is one the ego sees as proof of sin.”  (12:1-2)

 

            “Why should the body be anything to you?  Certainly what it is made of is not precious.  And just as certainly it has no feeling.  It transmits to you the feelings that you want.”  (14:1-4)

 

            “Who would send messages of hatred and attack if he but understood he sends them to himself?”  (14:11)

 

            “Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true.”  (16:1)

 

            “Not one but must regard the body as himself, without which he would die, and yet within which is his death equally inevitable.”  (16:5)

 

            “So does the ego find the death it seeks, returning it to you.”  (17:6)

 

In summary, section “B. The Second Obstacle: The Belief the Body is Valuable for What It Offers” is saying:

 

            We have only one thing to do and peace is ours: Release our desire to be a body.  The body is a block to our peace because it represents the idea of separation – it is the direct manifestation of the ego’s desire to exist separate from God.  It represents our desire for what is opposite of what God Wills for us – our union.  Therefore, the body itself represents our opposition to peace.  Can you forgive the illusion of your body in exchange for peace?  The body is the symbol of guilt.  To use the body as nothing more than a “getting mechanism” is to engage it in relationships where the body is your central focus.  This is the attempt to make guilt, or the body, real.  Forgive this illusion, for you are not a body, but the eternal Christ within.  Let Christ be the symbol of the end of guilt – the end of the desire to identify with a bodily illusion.  You do not need Christ to be a body, and neither should you need anyone else to be one either.  The body has no value because it cannot offer you eternity.  Let this obstacle go, through letting go your belief the body is valuable for what it offers.  It can offer nothing, but the Christ within offers you everything forever.

 

C. The Third Obstacle: The Attraction of Death

 

            “To you and your brother, in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is given to release and be released from the dedication to death.”  (1:1)

 

            “Yet you must learn still more about this strange devotion, for it contains the third obstacle that peace must flow across.”  (1:3)

 

            “What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction.”  (1:5)

 

            “And death is the result of the thought we call the ego, as surely as life is the result of the Thought of God.”  (2:15)

 

            “From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself.  Where can such opposition lie but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness and set against the peace of Heaven?  One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them.”  (3:1-3)

 

            “But you who would release him are but honoring the Will of his Creator.  The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulcher of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death.”  (4:4-5)

 

            “For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience.”  (4:7)

 

            “You have another dedication that would keep the body incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose.”  (5:1)

 

            “You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given through your acceptance, the power to release from corruption.  What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that seems to be the hardest can be accomplished first?”  (6:1-2)

 

            “The body can but serve your purpose.  As you look on it, so will it seem to be.  Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which is the ego’s goal.”  (6:3-5)

 

            “Yet the retreat to death is not the end of conflict.  Only God’s Answer is its end.”  (7:3-4)

 

            “Under the dusty edge of its distorted world the ego would lay the Son of God, slain by its orders, proof in his decay that God Himself is powerless before the ego’s might, unable to protect the life that He created against the ego’s savage wish to kill.  My brother, child of our Father, this is a dream of death.”  (8:1-2)

 

            “The fear of death will go as its appeal is yielded to love’s real attraction.  The end of sin, which nestles quietly in the safety of your relationship, protected by your union with your brother, and ready to grow into a mighty force for God is very near.”  (9:1-2)

 

            “When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death.”  (11:1)

 

            “Remember the holy Presence of the One given to you to be the Source of judgment.  Give it to Him to judge for you, and say:

 

Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.  Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction.  Teach me how not to make of it an obstacle to peace, but let You use it for me, to facilitate its coming.”  (11:6-10)

 

In summary, section “C. The Third Obstacle: The Attraction of Death” is saying:

 

            Through our attraction to being bodies and all things associated with bodies, we are also attracted to death.  This association cannot be escaped because the body always dies.  Anything involving it is equally given to death.  Yet, death is false.  It does not exist because you are eternal and cannot die.  Only the body dies, and it is not you.  Yet we can be dedicated to something else – the part of us that is real – the Eternal Life within us.  Our attraction to death – the body – will go as we yield to the attraction to love.  Then will the body serve a new purpose.  We will use it to see only the truth within all bodies, and with this new association, the body will live on until we decide to set it aside.  Awaken from this dream that you can die and fear nothing in this ego-built world.  Learn to look only upon the eternal within all living things and there will be nothing left to fear, for you will know nothing that lives can ever die.  Then will you no longer be attracted to death and this obstacle to your peace will be lifted from your mind.  

 

D. The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God

 

            “What would you see without the fear of death?  What would you feel and think if death held no attraction for you?  Very simply, you would remember your Father.”  (1:1-3)

 

            “And as this memory rises in your mind, peace must still surmount a final obstacle, after which is salvation completed, and the Son of God entirely restored to sanity.  For here your world does end.”  (1:5-6)

 

            “The dedication to death and to its sovereignty is but the solemn vow, the promise made in secret to the ego never to lift this veil, not to approach it, nor even to suspect that it is there.  This is the secret bargain made with the ego to keep what lies beyond the veil forever blotted out and unremembered.  Here is your promise never to allow union to call you out of separation; the great amnesia in which the memory of God seems quite forgotten; the cleavage of your Self from you; - the fear of God, the final step in your dissociation.”  (3:2-4)

 

            “Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in just the same way; the fear that raised it yields to the love beyond, and so the fear is gone.  And so it is with this.  The desire to get rid of peace and drive the Holy Spirit from you fades in the presence of the quiet recognition that you love Him.  The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the spirit, which you love as you could never love the body.”  (5:1-4)

 

            “It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you but raise your eyes.  Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever.”  (7:1-2)

 

            “Look upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond you, forces you cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against your will.”  (7:4)

 

            “Forget not that you came this far together, you and your brother.”  (8:1)

 

            “But first, lift up your eyes and look on your brother in innocence born of complete forgiveness of his illusions, and through the eyes of faith that sees them not.”  (8:7)

 

            “No one can look upon the fear of God unterrified, unless he has accepted the Atonement and learned illusions are not real.”  (9:1)

 

            “This is the place to which everyone must come when he is ready.  Once he has found his brother he isready.”  (10:2-3)

 

            “To look upon the fear of God does need some preparation.  Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and compassion, but not with fear.”  (11:1-2)

 

            “This brother who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger.  You do not know him, and your interpretation of him is very fearful.”  (12:1-2)

 

            “Beside you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him.  Would you hold his sins against him, or accept his gift to you?  Is this giver of salvation your friend or enemy?  Choose which he is, remembering that you will receive of him according to your choice.”  (13:1-4)

 

            “Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you.”  (14:1)

 

            “This is your brother, crucified by sin and waiting for release from pain.  Would you not offer him forgiveness, when only he can offer it to you?”  (15:1-2)

 

            “Here is the holy place of resurrection, to which we come again; to which we will return until redemption is accomplished and received.  Think who your brother is, before you would condemn him.”  (16:1-2)

 

            “Join him in gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his disturbed and tortured mind.”  (16:4)

 

            “Let us give redemption to each other and share in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, not separate in death.”  (17:5)

 

            “Free your brother here, as I freed you.”  (18:1)

 

            “Together we will disappear into the Presence beyond the veil, not to be lost but found; not to be seen but known.”  (19:1)

 

            “Think carefully how you would look upon the giver of this gift, for as you look on him so will the gift appear to be.  As he is seen as either the giver of guilt or of salvation, so will his offering be seen and so received.  The crucified give pain because they are in pain.  But the redeemed give joy because they have been healed of pain.”  (20:1-4)

 

            “You came this far because the journey was your choice.  And no one undertakes to do what he believes is meaningless.”  (21:1-2)

 

            “You and your brother stand together, still without conviction they have a purpose.  Yet it is given you to see this purpose in your holy Friend, and recognize it as your own.”  (21:6-7)

 

In summary, section “D. The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God” is saying:

 

            No one likes to think that they fear God.  Most of us tell ourselves we love Him, and yet for many, there is an underlying fear of our Oneness just beneath the surface.  What if God does not really love us unconditionally?  What if, upon death, we are punished?  Or perhaps we are being punished now?  The description of “Oneness” also implies we will lose our personal identities and become absorbed into a wholeness that does not allow for our individual perception or freedom.  We may also fear what some call “The Rapture,” in which God will suddenly swoop us off to Heaven, leaving nothing but our empty cloths and our loved ones behind.  We fear to lose what little we seem to have and to be even more alone than we are now.  Cease to listen to the fears of the ego!  The Holy Spirit asks, would a loving Father cause us more fear and suffering than we now know?  Only the ego would have us believe it possible.  Know this, in our resurrection, we are One.  This means that when each of us translates into our eternal reality, when we resurrect, everyone goes with us together.  No one is lost or loses their personal identity.  Together, we are not lost but found.  Our only job is to believe in the Christ within all who walk this world with us, as One Love.  This unity is what carries us forward together.  The fear of God, our final obstacle, is overcome through faith in our Union and promised joy that lies beyond this world.  Have faith only in this and you will achieve attainment of peace. 

This concludes CHAPTER 19: THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE

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