Obstacles to Peace
Worth a close look
Posted by aplecompte on July 5th, 2009
In the unholy instant I thought I separated from God; I fearfully made the ego to maintain the separation and keep God out, and I adopted the ego as my self-concept. I use the illusion of linear time to call forth that unreal instant. Dreaming a world of time and space demonstrates my belief that the separation from God is current. I value the past because I can hold it against everyone. I see only representations of my insane thoughts, replacing reality with illusions that I blame for my upsets. I make people enemies to justify my anger. I am only aware of my private thoughts. This prevents the present from dawning on my mind. I am using the past against God and against peace. The following obstacles exist because I find something in the world to be attractive and valuable. I would like to expose my faulty decisions so that I can see they really offer nothing I want.
1) The desire to get rid of peace because I find guilt more attractive.
The ego made the world based on the sin of separation from God. This is the ego’s past from which escape is impossible. Sin assumes that I/ego am guilty of making myself, mortal man, in defiance of God. This sin has seemingly rendered God incompetent. Sin wrests creation from truth; man kills God. The ego believes that sin is truth. Sin proclaims that attack is real and guilt is justified. The belief in sin is based on the conviction that minds attack, thus the mind is guilty. Sin demands punishment. I fear retaliation. The fact that sin is punished gives it enormity; hence it must be real. I want what I think is real. Sin is an essential part of what the ego thinks I am, so I will always want it. The ego rules the world of bodies. The belief that bodies limit minds leads to a perception of the world in which the proof of separation seems to be everywhere. Acceptance of the self as sinful is perceived as holiness. Sin is the idea that evil cannot be corrected and yet will be forever desirable. To believe in the body is to believe in sin. The body is the symbol of sin while I believe it can get me what I want. While I believe that bodies can unite, I will find guilt attractive and believe that sin is desirable.
2) The belief the body is valuable for what it offers: the attraction of pain.
The attraction of guilt is made manifest in the body. I think the body offers me pleasure. I fear that in order to have the peace of God I would have to give up or sacrifice my body. I believe my body offers me salvation; but this is the belief in death. The body cannot give salvation. The body has no purpose of itself; it is only a means to achieve a purpose. The mind chooses either the purpose of peace or the purpose of the ego. The ego’s purpose for the body is separation, sin, guilt and death. If I use the body to seek for pleasure I will also find pain, the proof of sin. This is the inevitable result of equating myself with the body. I think the body’s pleasure is happiness, but it is death. The ego has dedicated the body to the goal of sin. The ego mind drives the body with the emotion of fear. The ego’s perception focuses only on what can suffer, the body. The ego mind makes/projects dark images on the screen of the world. It then sends sense messengers to perceive the world and report back. As I pursue pleasure through the body, the ego sends out attack and pain (unconscious) and then receives pain through my body (conscious). Pleasure and pain are inextricably associated and mixed.
3) The attraction of death.
Sinners believe their lot is death. Sin, guilt and death are the result of the ego. The body is a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, condemned to die. The ego is the enemy of life. All the ego’s secrets lie hidden in the attraction to death. Death is the triumph of separation, the ego’s making over of creation and God’s defeat. Death is seen as safety, the dark silencer of the Voice for God. But the body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing. It is nothing. It is the result of a tiny mad idea of corruption that can be corrected. My body can only serve my purpose. As I look upon it, so it will seem to be. God’s will is that I live. I choose the Holy Spirit’s purpose and join in the holy relationship. The fear of death will go as its appeal yields to love’s real attraction. When any situation strikes me with terror it is because the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, sin and death. But the meaning in a symbol lies in its source. The ego is a false source; hence the symbol is false. I give it to the Holy Spirit to judge and to use to facilitate the coming of peace.
4) The Fear of God.
I made a solemn vow in secret to the ego—to keep the memory of God forever blotted out and unremembered. This promise to stay in separation and avoid union is the great amnesia, the fear of God, the final dissociation. I am sharing in insanity. I fear God because I fear my brother. My brother seems to be a stranger and my interpretation of him is very fearful. I still attack him to protect what seems to be my self. I see my brother’s madness and hate it because I share it. I must think who my brother is before I condemn him. My brother has the Holy Spirit in him. Would I hold his sins against him or accept his gift of salvation? If I give him forgiveness I will receive forgiveness. For his redemption, he will give me mine. I offer thanks to God that my brother is holy. I join my brother and remove all trace of guilt from his mind. I lift his burden of sin and toss it lightly away with happy laughter. Everyone gives as he receives. Faith, hope and mercy are mine to give. I give to him and we are free together! Here is the peace of God.
My desire to get rid of peace and drive away the Holy Spirit fades as I recognize I love Him. I love spirit as I could never love the body. Choosing love means losing sin, guilt and death, re-establishing my will, and never again believing that I am at the mercy of anything beyond me. Love Itself calls me from deep within with an irresistible attraction.
Tags: Body, Ego, Forgiveness, Guilt
