1. The 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. Why 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. The 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. Would 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. To 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. There 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. The 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. 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. 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. How 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?