The First Obstacle: The Desire to Get Rid of It

Chapter 19 – 5. 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. You are the center from which it
radiates outward, to call the others in. You are its home; its tranquil
dwelling place from which it gently reaches out, but never leaving you. If
you would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of God? 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.
 
Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that it must
dispossess to dwell with you? What seems to be the cost you are so
unwilling to pay? The little barrier of sand still stands between you and your
brother. Would you reinforce it now? You are not asked to let it go for
yourself alone. Christ asks it of you for himself. he would bring peace to
everyone, and how can he do this except through you? Would you let a little
bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier, stand between your
brothers and salvation? And yet, this little remnant of attack you cherish
still against each other is the first obstacle the peace in you encounters in its
going forth. This little wall of hatred would still oppose the Will of God,
and keep it limited.
 
The Holy Spirit’s purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are still
unwilling to let it join you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by
a little. And that little is a limit you would place upon the whole. God’s Will
is One, not many. It has no opposition, for there is none beside it. What you
would still contain behind your little barrier and keep separate from your
brother seems mightier than the universe, for it would hold back the
universe and its Creator. This little wall would hide the purpose of Heaven,
and keep it from Heaven.
 
Would you thrust salvation away from the giver of salvation? For such have
you become. Peace could no more depart from you than from God. Fear not
this little obstacle. It cannot contain the Will of God. Peace will flow across
it, and join you without hindrance. Salvation cannot be withheld from you.
 
It is your purpose. You cannot choose apart from this. You have no purpose
apart from your brother, nor apart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to
share with you. The little wall will fall away so quietly 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
interpose will be surmounted.
 
To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little
wall. For in the miracle of 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. 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 fall away because of the appeal you answered.
 
From you who answered, he who answered you would call. His home is in
your holy relationship. Do not attempt to stand between him and his holy
purpose, for it is yours. But let him 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 now. 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. Every miracle is but the end of an illusion. Such was the
journey; such its ending. And in the goal of truth which you accepted must
all illusions end.
 
The little insane wish to get rid of him whom you invited in and push him
out must produce conflict. As you look upon the world, this little wish,
uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon anything,
for it has no purpose now. Before the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you
it seemed to have a mighty purpose; the fixed and unchangeable dedication
to sin and its results. Now it 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 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 makes 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.
 
The variability the little remnant induces merely indicates its limited results.
 
How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings of truth? 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 covered by snow? See but
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 when you had greater faith in its protection. Would you not rather
greet the summer sun than fix your gaze upon a disappearing snowflake,
and shiver in remembrance of the winter’s cold?