The Obstacles to Peace — T-19 in ACIM.

One of the most important and architecturally significant sections of the Text.

What your Father created you to be — the Thought of Perfect Love in form, a channel, a simple vehicle through which that Love of Spirit can shine forth. And your only task becomes the cleaning of your windows, the polishing of your floors, the weeding of your garden, so that that Light can pour forth unimpeded.

Be you, therefore, a wise gardener. Cultivate a deep love and respect for yourself, for you are not here to “fix” the world. You are not here to “fix” your brother or sister. ‘Tis only Love that heals. And until you have loved yourself wholly, by having purified the mind of every erroneous thought you’ve ever held — until you’ve loved yourself — you do not, in Truth, love anyone or anything. For the wise gardener cultivates a state of consciousness in which the Love of God is unimpeded.

It’s time to take responsibility, to learn to cultivate the ability to look upon the deep and vicious blackness of the ego, which is nothing more than the cesspool of denial — it is that which lacks Light — and begin to bring Light back to it by simply observing your own mind, your own behavior, your own reactions with a sense of wonder, with a sense of innocence, with a sense of childlikeness. You must again become a little child to enter the Kingdom. Remember, then, that everything is neutral, and in Truth all that which arises within your consciousness has no effect upon the Truth of your reality. The Way of the Heart is a way of cultivating the decision to become identified with the Light that can shine away all darkness — not by fighting with it, but by recognizing it, embracing it as your own creation, and choosing again.

It is time to step into the willingness to don the mantle of one committed to healing every obstacle to the presence of Love that may yet remain secretly hidden in the depth of that part of your mind that would struggle to be separate from God. And to remember that you are truly the Light that can come to shine lovingly upon every aspect of darkness you have known.

Let these lessons bring up within you everything unworthy of the Mind of Christ—every thought of scarcity, every sense of unworthiness and every fear. Let them come up, look at them, embrace them and transmute them through your own love of Self and through your honesty.

there is nothing worth holding onto any longer that keeps your peace and happiness at arm’s length. Become committed — become fully committed — to the experience of happiness, even as you’ve been fully committed to unhappiness, and limitation, and lack. Give your Creator full permission this year to sweep the basement clean. There really isn’t anything down there worth defending or protecting.

• wom, lesson 1