T-19.IV-A:The First Obstacle: The Desire to Get Rid of It

1. 1The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your desire to get rid of it. 2For it cannot extend unless you keep it. 3You are the center from which it radiates outward, to call the others in. 4You are its home; its tranquil dwelling place from which it gently reaches out, but never leaving you. 5If you would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of God? 6If 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.

2. 1Why would you want peace homeless? 2What do you think that it must dispossess to dwell with you? 3What seems to be the cost you are so unwilling to pay? 4The little barrier of sand still stands between you and your brother. 5Would you reinforce it now? 6You are not asked to let it go for yourself alone. 7Christ asks it of you for Himself. 8He would bring peace to everyone, and how can He do this except through you? 9Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier, stand between your brothers and salvation? 10And yet, this little remnant of attack you cherish still against your brother is the first obstacle the peace in you encounters in its going forth. 11This little wall of hatred would still oppose the Will of God, and keep it limited.

3. 1The Holy Spirit’s purpose rests in peace within you. 2Yet you are still unwilling to let it join you wholly. 3You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. 4And that little is a limit you would place upon the whole. 5God’s Will is One, not many. 6It has no opposition, for there is none beside it. 7What 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. 8This little wall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep it from Heaven.

4. 1Would you thrust salvation away from the giver of salvation? 2For such have you become. 3Peace could no more depart from you than from God. 4Fear not this little obstacle. 5It cannot contain the Will of God. 6Peace will flow across it, and join you without hindrance. 7Salvation cannot be withheld from you. 8It is your purpose. 9You cannot choose apart from this. 10You have no purpose apart from your brother, nor apart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you. 11The little wall will fall away so quietly beneath the wings of peace. 12For 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.

5. 1To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. 2For in the miracle of your holy relationship, without this barrier, is every miracle contained. 3There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they are all the same. 4Each is a gentle winning over from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love. 5How can this fail to be accomplished, wherever it is undertaken? 6Guilt can raise no real barriers against it. 7And all that seems to stand between you and your brother must fall away because of the appeal you answered. 8From you who answered, He Who answered you would call. 9His home is in your holy relationship. 10Do not attempt to stand between Him and His holy purpose, for it is yours. 11But let Him quietly extend the miracle of your relationship to everyone contained in it as it was given.

6. 1There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause of gladness in acknowledgment of the journey’s end. 2For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. 3No illusions stand between you and your brother now. 4Look not upon the little wall of shadows. 5The sun has risen over it. 6How can a shadow keep you from the sun? 7No more can you be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. 8Every miracle is but the end of an illusion. 9Such was the journey; such its ending. 10And in the goal of truth which you accepted must all illusions end.

7. 1The little insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited in and push Him out must produce conflict. 2As 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. 3Before 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. 4Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in love’s appeal.

8. 1This 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. 2It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to peace. 3Its pointless wandering makes its results appear to be more erratic and unpredictable than before. 4Yet what could be more unstable than a tightly organized delusional system? 5Its seeming stability is its pervasive weakness, which extends to everything. 6The variability the little remnant induces merely indicates its limited results.

9. 1How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings of truth? 2Can it oppose an eagle’s flight, or hinder the advance of summer? 3Can it interfere with the effects of summer’s sun upon a garden covered by the snow? 4See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return, and part with it in gladness, not regret. 5For it is nothing in itself, and stood for nothing when you had greater faith in its protection. 6Would you not rather greet the summer sun than fix your gaze upon a disappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter’s cold?