Text · Chapter 19
The Attainment of Peace
Original study notes. The book remains the book.
In plain words
Walk the sections in order. Open ordinary words when a paragraph is heavy. The book remains the book.
Walk through this chapter
Chapter 19. Each section of this chapter, in order. Ordinary words under a paragraph are the same teaching, said simply. The Text is the map. The day’s workbook lesson is still the walk. Official Text: acim.org.
The desire to get rid of peace
You say you want peace, then you pick a fight with it. Conflict is familiar and makes you feel real. That loyalty is the first obstacle.
Notice when calm arrives and you immediately invent a problem. That inventing is the obstacle, not the world.
The body as a means of getting
The second obstacle: the belief the body is valuable for what it offers — pleasure, control, proof. The body can be used to join. Used to get, it teaches lack.
Pleasure is not the sin. Using a person as supply is.
The attraction of death
The third: the ego’s final proof that you are a body, and a way out of the classroom that is not awakening. Not a dare to skip care. A naming of a loyalty.
The wish to be done, to be out, to have the story end on the ego’s terms — see it. Stay in the classroom.
The fear of God
The last obstacle, because if God is here the ego is unemployed. Walk toward it. It is the fear of your own reality, not of a punisher.
Each obstacle is a loyalty you can notice without shame. Notice, and the loyalty loosens.
Words in this chapter
Peace
An available perception, not the prize at the end of fixing the world. Lesson 34: you could see peace instead of this — this being the situation still in front of you. Wanting the peace of God more than the substitutes is the whole later curriculum.
The body
A communication device and a learning aid — not your identity and not your enemy. “I am not a body. I am free” is freedom from identification, not disgust. Care for it. Do not obey it as a god. Do not hate it as a proof you failed.
Fear
A call for love, dressed as a prophecy. You are never afraid for the reason you think. Fear of God is fear of love, because love would end the private self. “There is nothing to fear” is frequent and short on purpose — fear wants a long story.
Spalding
You say you want peace and then pick a fight with God, the body, or a partner. Tina will name that without shaming it.
Open streamRa
The negative path also seeks a kind of peace — control. The Course is describing the service-to-others obstacle course.