OrEd-T-19.5-Obstacles to Peace-c.1
c. The Third Obstacle.1
The Attraction of Death
77. To us in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is given to release and be released from the dedication to death. For release was offered us, and we accepted. Yet we must still learn more about this strange devotion, for it contains the third of the obstacles which peace must flow across. No one can die unless he chooses death. What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction. Guilt, too, is feared and fearful. Yet it could have no hold at all except on those who are attracted to it and seek it out. And so it is with death. Made by the ego, death's dark shadow falls across all living things because the ego is the 'enemy' of life.
78. And yet a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They only walk past, and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication is not to live--the black-draped 'sinners,' the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily away from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession which honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any one of them with the gentle hands of forgiveness and I watch the chains fall away along with mine. I see him throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral and hear him laugh at death. He can escape the sentence sin would lay upon him, through my forgiveness.
79. This is not arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is impossible to me who chose God's Will as mine? What is death to me? My dedication is not to death nor to its master. When I accepted the Holy Spirit's purpose in place of the ego's, I renounced death, exchanging it for life. We know that an idea does not leave its source. And death is the result of the thought we call the ego, as surely as life is the result of the Thought of God.
