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Good evening. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.

It is very easy when coping with fear or when attempting to move beyond it, to feel that it is a very complex problem—one that you’re likely to be unable to accomplish. And when—as we’re reading about the Obstacles to Peace—you hear what seems to be a very complex set of beliefs and misunderstandings, you can very easily begin to think that it’s going to be difficult, because it is so complex. And so, before we continue tonight, I want to consider the larger picture.

You—all of us—are the Sons and Daughters of God. No matter what you think, no matter what you’ve come to believe, that is the bottom line. That is the unchangeable fact. You and I—we—are all the Sons and Daughters of God right now. The difference between you and me is that you don’t believe it, and you claim another definition for yourself—a definition which you are committed to. But nevertheless, we are Brothers and Sisters. Offspring of the same Father.

My purpose in communicating with you, in being involved in our Brotherhood in a very active way, as I am right now, is to remind you of the truth about you … which is the truth right now, even though it seems unbelievable to you.

Because you are and Sons and Daughters of God, I have shared that you must remember that you are neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing toward it. You are at that point and must understand yourself therefrom.

This means that the apparent journey that you embark upon in abandoning the Obstacles to Peace, is a journey without distance as the Course speaks of. You are making the journey from your destination. You are right now a holy Son or Daughter of God believing that you are not, and engaged in the steps which will allow you to rediscover—remember—that you are, and never stopped being the holy Sons and Daughters of God. And so, you are Waking up to your holiness from your holiness. You see what I mean?

The divine one that you Are, we could say, is engaged in remembering your divinity from your holy place of divinity. This is very important to understand, because the complexity that you seem to be confronted with, is not complex at all, even though you can think about it with great complexity.

Now, when you decided to dally with the ego by claiming independence from the Father and from everything else, your divinity, your true Selfhood was held in trust, as I’ve said before, and it’s what’s called “the Holy Spirit.” That of you which you were ignoring, did not go away, could not go away, could not be altered in any way, and therefore, the wholeness of you constantly has been engaged in getting your attention.

In other words, the poor little mortal that you have thought you were, has been constantly invited to remember your holiness. There has been the constant invitation to you by, for lack of better words, divine Love, encouraging you to become unsure about your commitment to your mortality and to cause a chink in your armor that would let the Light of your Being—the truth of You—penetrate and register with you.

In other words, you have never been alone, you have never been abandoned, and you have constantly been embraced and encouraged—invited—to remember who you divinely Are.

Now, there’s no way to overcome or move beyond the Obstacles to Peace all by yourself, or for your own private reasons, because as we discussed last time, independence is the problem and union is the solution.

Now, the fourth obstacle is The Fear of God.

What would you see without the fear of death?1

“Well,” you say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Without the fear of death, I would be thrown into the not-knowing place, because the one thing I was sure of, I’m abandoning—death!”

Well, you know what? You don’t have to use your imagination. You don’t have to imagine something radical. Every single one of you, at one time or another—usually due to circumstances—have had the occasion where you were called into Silence. I mean by that, that either through illness or injury or overwhelming fear, you have been brought to a place of humility, except that you would have called it “humiliation.”

And in that state, your arrogance was abandoned. And in that place, in one way or another, divine Love was able to penetrate your willfulness and touch you and lift you and restore you. Every one of you has had that experience to one degree or another. That experience is the experience you have without the fear of death.

Without the fear of death, you would see everything without any indulgence in self-protection, without any need to provide any definition to what you were experiencing. And in the absence of your defining everything, what everything divinely IS can register with you, … and everything is at peace.

That’s the first thing. Everything is at peace: Living, Loving, dynamic peace.

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.

Why? Because in your peace, in the absence of willful self-assertion, That of you which you’ve been ignoring Which has been called “the Holy Spirit,” has an open door to connect with and register with you.

And what is the Holy Spirit’s Function? It is to reveal God to you and to reveal your relationship—your inseparable Oneness—with the Father, and thus bring you back into your right Mind.

So that’s why you will remember your Father.

Very simply, you would remember your Father.

And listen to this:

The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the universe and of the universe of universes, and of everything that lies even beyond them would you remember.

Does that sound to you like the world and universe is going to disappear? If your Father is the Father of the universe and of the universe of universes, and of everything that lies even beyond them, and this is what you’re going to remember, then there is not going to be a radical interruption of your conscious experience of everything. It will instead, be a gentle adjustment into the awareness of it all and the fact that it is all at peace. In other words, the movement of Creation involves no conflict. It is pure harmony, and you are purely at peace and in harmony with it.

Now, you all have the opportunity—without dying and without having to have a radical imagination—you all have the opportunity and the means of moving into that experience, and it’s called, “meditation.” Meditation is when you silence the mind, which means you shut down the thinking so that the pure experience of conscious Awareness is what is left.

Now every time we have a meeting, every time Paul shares me with anyone, he moves into the holy instant. He moves into that place where his thinking is silenced. He moves into that place in which everything is at peace, and there is nothing—no conflict—to resolve or overcome.

And every single one of you, when you meditate and move into the Silence, have done the same thing. It is the way you move out of the Obstacles to Peace. And in that space, even though initially it is a limited experience of the universe of universes and everything beyond it that you will remember, you are nevertheless experiencing the quality and the nature of Reality.

It’s important to understand this, because when you meditate and become still, you’re not engaged in overcoming anything. You’re simply engaged in abandoning the making of “noise.” You see? And so, the overcoming of the Obstacles to Peace is that simple. And you already have the experience. And if you haven’t had it, it’s easily available to you.

And as this memory …

… of the universe of universes and everything beyond …

… 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.

And what does that mean? It means the world, as you have chosen to perceive it, ends … because you’ve abandoned the thinking. You’ve abandoned the use of your mind that seems to have created a creation different from the Kingdom of Heaven.

That is what ends, because clarity is restored. Peace is restored.

The fourth obstacle to be surmounted …

… The Fear of God …

… hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ.

Before your face. Don’t think it hangs before mine, between you and me. The veil hangs between you and your Real face—the face of the Christ that you Are. In other words, if you are neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing toward it, but are at that point and must understand yourself therefrom, it means that the Christ that awaits you on the other side of the veil, is the Christ that you Are—the Christ that is making this journey of moving through the veil from the other side of the veil already.

Catch the meaning of this! Because it’s essential.

Yet as His face …

… the Christ’s face—your face …

… rises beyond it, …

… the veil …

… shining with joy because He …

… you …

… is in His Father’s Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, …

… you … .

… and to join with Him …

… you …

… at last. For this dark veil, which seems to make the face of Christ Himself …

… your face …

… like to a leper’s, and the bright rays of His Father’s Love …

… your Father’s Love …

… which light His face …

… your face …

… with glory appear as streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond it when the fear of death is gone.

When the fear of death is gone, clarity of Mind—the clarity of your divinity—fills you, becomes your experience of you, because It is. It rushes in because you’ve made room for It and opened the door.

You see?

This is the darkest veil, upheld by the belief in death, and protected by its attraction.

Your Oneness with God and your willingness to experience It is the last part of moving beyond the Obstacles to Peace. Abandoning your attraction to your definitions and your attraction to your commitment to death by virtue of your unwillingness to believe your eternality, … that will be gone.

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.

Now here’s part of the complexity. Because you can run off at the mind [chuckling] with all kinds of conjectures and suppositions about what that means—that you made a solemn vow to not even suspect that it is there. Oh-h-h! But don’t go there! Don’t waste your energy.

The fact is that you are bound, apparently by the laws of sin and death. But it’s not true. And you are bound to become free of them.

This is the secret bargain made with the ego to keep what lies beyond the veil forever blotted out and unremembered.

Again, though, you’re on the other side of the veil. That which you divinely Are, you still divinely Are. And It is intent upon reuniting this “private” part of you—that you want to keep private—with It … to reunite you with It.

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 fourth Obstacle to Peace …

… the final step in your dissociation.

“Oh, but Father, I’d rather define it myself.” “Oh, but Father, I’d rather do it my way.” And that first step followed through to an ultimate fear of God that caused you to make a pact with the sense of yourself that you developed that said, you would forever be devoted to this finite, fearful, guilty, entity that you have become. But none of it is true.

None of it has ever been true. And the uncovering of it, and your freedom from it, is what we are engaged in facilitating.

See how the belief in death would seem to “save” you.

From what? From having to look at God, from having to recognize God for what He is and therefore, you for what you Are.

… the belief in death would seem to “save” you.

… from that.

For if this is gone, what can you fear but LIFE?

Nothing.

It is the attraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel and tyrannical.

You know, let’s not be too indefinite here:

… ugly, cruel and tyrannical.

Well, tyrannical: You believe that your body has a life of its own and it can do to you what it will. And it will ultimately harm you, because by your definition it is something which deteriorates and ultimately self-destructs, which means it destroys you. That’s the way life can seem to be tyrannical—brought down to practical terms.

Cruel: Wow … earthquakes, enemies. They can take away your life, they can take away your happiness, they can make you miserable. And they do behave miserably and create misery, because they are filled with fear and guilt, because they also think that they are the separated entity that they were confronted with when they said, “Father, I’d rather see it my way.”

Well, there is another way to look at everything. And that’s what we’re doing in the process of getting past the Obstacles to Peace.

Now, this next sentence will surprise you:

You are no more afraid of death than of the ego. These are your chosen FRIENDS. For in your secret alliance with them, you have agreed never to let the fear of God be lifted, so you could look upon the face of Christ, and join Him in His Father.

Meaning: so that you could look upon your face as the Son of God, and in your realization and acknowledgement of your Sonship, to join Him, to not be different from Him because He is your Father, He is your Source.

Now you wouldn’t say that you’ve made friends with death, but when I tell you that you are the Son or Daughter of God, and that you are eternal at this very moment, and that no matter what you believe or what you see, you are incapable of dying and that you can have immediate evidence of the restoration of what you divinely Are at any moment, you don’t believe me!

“Oh-h … yes,” you say, “I know that as I work through my ‘karma’ I will eventually arrive at a point, not of resuming my divinity, but deserving to be given divine status.” You see?

You’re not divine now … but you can earn it! There’s your commitment to death. There’s your commitment to the Fear of God, there’s your unwillingness to see God in your Brother’s eyes, or your very own when you look in the mirror. “Oh, yes, maybe someday, but not now … NOT NOW!”

There’s the commitment! There you are choosing for death, choosing for the lack of peace and choosing to fear God and to see God as a fearful aspect of your future even as you regain or achieve divinity.

Now are you the Sons of God. And it doth not yet appear what ye shall be … what ye shall be. Well it doesn’t matter what you shall be. Now are you the Sons and Daughters of God. And now is when you can experience that Fact. But you will not experience It if you do not abandon the four Obstacles to Peace. And as I’m pointing out tonight, abandoning them is not as difficult as it might sound as we read here, or as you might think when you’re confronted with fear, or feelings of guilt.

But the simple fact is, that no matter what is going on, no matter what frightening thing is going on, you are capable of sitting down, closing your eyes and saying a mantra, or paying attention to the sensation of the air moving past the bridge of your nose, and neglecting to think, because you are devoted to saying the mantra or paying attention to the sensation. And peace comes. You experience peace. It is unavoidable if you take the steps.

It doesn’t matter what’s going on. It doesn’t matter how conflicted everything seems to be in your life or in the world as you look out there and everything going on out there seems to convince you that there is justification not to be in your peace. But your peace is available to you, and in the experience of it, you are succeeding in getting past the Fear of God and being in that place where the Holy Spirit—your right Mind—can reveal the presence of God in you as You. And it is not more complicated than that.

Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in just the same way; …

… each of the four obstacles …

… is surmounted in just the same way; …

There isn’t a different technique or practice because each of them is different or more complicated than the other.

Every obstacle …

… of the four obstacles …

… that peace must flow across is surmounted in just the same way; …

And here it is:

… the fear that raised it yields to the love beneath, and so the fear is gone. And so it is with this.

… the Fear of God. Do you hear that?

Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in just the same way; the fear that raised it yields to the love beneath, 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 …

… which is the first obstacle …

… fades in the presence of the quiet recognition that you love Him.

… the Holy Spirit.

The exaltation of the body …

… which is the second obstacle …

… is given up in favor of the Spirit, which you love as you could NEVER love the body. And the appeal of death …

… the third obstacle …

… is lost forever as love’s attraction stirs and calls to you. From beyond each of the obstacles to love, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies beyond.

… what lies beyond each of the obstacles. You see? It’s not as complicated as you think and the only reason you are on the journey, the apparent journey, is because you’re being helped from the destination … right now … right here … no matter whether you think you deserve it or not, because whatever definition is being applied to you, if it isn’t that you are the holy Son or Daughter of God, it isn’t true and you are not bound by it. You are free to move beyond it by virtue of abandoning the Obstacles to Peace. That’s what this is all about.

Your WANTING fear seemed to be holding them in place.

The Obstacles to Peace.

Your WANTING fear …

… and we talked about this. Oh, I know, you don’t want fear, but, oh boy, you sure do use it. And you use it [chuckling] with a degree of skill and excellence—misguided as it is—to magnify your strengths and your credibility to prove to yourself that you are something valid and valuable and worthy. Oh no, you don’t want fear, but boy, you sure want the benefit that can come from dealing with fear well. You see? Pay attention.

Your WANTING fear seemed to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the voice of love beyond them, you answered and they disappeared.

Now, as I said, you have all in one way or another—and no one is excluded from this—each one of you, in one way or another, has had the experience of humiliation and humility that it took in order for Love to reach you and show you that your validity wasn’t dependent upon anything you could do, but was inherent in you as an eternal Gift that caused you, in whatever circumstance you were in, to shift perception and experience the blessing and the healing of that.

So we are not talking about something foreign to you that it will be hard for you to achieve.

Yet when you heard the voice of love beyond them, …

… the Obstacles to Peace …

… you answered and they disappeared.

And now you stand in terror before what you swore never to look upon.

… referring to the forth obstacle: The Fear of God.

Your eyes look down, remembering your promise to your “friends.”

You know, fear and guilt and the ego.

The “loveliness” of sin, …

… “loveliness,” of course is in quotes.

The “loveliness” …

… the attractiveness of sin, the pleasure of sin …

… the delicate appeal of guilt, the “holy” waxen image of death, and the fear of vengeance of the ego you swore in blood not to desert, all rise and bid you not to raise your eyes.

… not to look at God again.

For you realize that if you look on this and LET the veil be lifted, THEY will be gone forever.

The Obstacles to Peace will be gone forever. The ego and it’s misdirection and it’s deceit will be gone forever. Fear will be gone forever, and you will never be called upon again to show your validity by the strength with which you overcame the fear. That will be gone. And what will you be left with? The remembrance of your Father and therefore the remembrance of who you divinely Are.

All of your “friends,” your “protectors” and your “home” …

… meaning, your body as you were defining it …

… will vanish.

In other words, the use to which you put Creation for your own purposes will be gone! And you’ll be left with what? Creation as It is, Creation as the Father is being It, including You as the witness to Creation as being the expression of the Father. Your Function is, as co-creator, to confirm that Creation is the Father’s.

When you’re in this process:

Nothing that you remember now will you remember.

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 …

… what world? Not Creation! Not the universe of universes and everything beyond … and everything up close. No!

… all that will occur is you will leave the world forever.

You will leave the meanings you have superimposed upon It. And you will leave the suffering that was the result of your superimposing your definitions upon Creation.

This is the re-establishment of YOUR will.

And we’re not talking here about the will you were engaged in using to create a distorted perception of Reality. We’re talking about the Father’s Will in you, Which you can have none other than, because you are the current direct expression of God being All.

Look upon it, …

… your will …

… 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.

Look upon it, open-eyed, …

… meaning, your will. And let’s be very clear here: what you’re looking upon that’s your will, is the Father’s Will, not being altered, tampered with, or manipulated or biased in any way, by any effort on your part. Look at your will in the recognition that it is the Father’s Will and you will never be afraid again, nor will you think that you have anything to overcome, especially through some special private skill of your own.

It IS your will to look on 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.

… the Father’s Will in you that is You.

For what attracts you from beyond the veil is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it and completely One.

You see? Right now, when you think that you are a private mortal entity, you are not. You, right here, evidently in the middle of mortality, are the unchanged Son or Daughter of God, the One who, because He or She never changed, is on the other side of the veil, calling to you in the form of the Holy Spirit, to get you to abandon the division that you have put in place.

So, we are talking about the abandonment of independence and the reemergence as a conscious experience of unity, of union. And the divine one that you Are as you think you are a mortal, is inseparable from the divine one that you Are, who is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing toward it, but is at that point, and which it calls to you to understand, and in the understanding, move beyond the Obstacles to Peace.

Don’t let this get too complicated. Don’t let the solution become difficult in your mind. You all have the capacity to still the human mind, to become still and to inquire in the Silence, “Father, Holy Spirit, what is the truth here?” And in so doing, find yourself in the space in which the Obstacles to Peace are absent. The simple necessity is to begin to practice this now … now … now.

I love you all and I look forward to being with you next time.

  1. T19.10 Obstacles to Peace; The Fear of God 



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