Beyond All Idols

Chapter 30 – 4. Beyond All Idols

Idols are quite specific. But your will is universal, being limitless. And so it
has no form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. Idols are
limits. They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and
that, by limiting, is all attained. It is as if you said, “I have no need of
everything. This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me. “And
this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours.
Decide for idols and you ask for loss. Decide for truth and everything is
yours.
 
It is not form you seek. What form can be a substitute for God the Father’s
Love? What form can take the place of all the love in the Divinity of God
the Son? What idol can make two of what is one? And can the limitless be
limited? You do not want an idol. It is not your will to have one. It will not
bestow on you the gift you seek. When you decide upon the form of what
you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. So you see your will
within the idol, thus reducing it to a specific form. Yet this could never be
your will, because what shares in all creation cannot be content with small
ideas and little things.
 
Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion.
Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. To seek a special person or
a thing to add to you to make yourself complete, can only mean that you
believe some form is missing. And by finding this, you will achieve
completion in a form you like. This is the purpose of an idol; that you will
not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. Only
if you had sinned could this be so. For sin is the idea you are alone and
separated off from what is whole. And thus it would be necessary for the
search for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on
yourself.
 
It never is the idol that you want. But what you think it offers you, you want
indeed and have the right to ask for. Nor could it be possible it be denied.
Your will to be complete is but God’s Will, and this is given you by being
His. God knows not form. He cannot answer you in terms that have no
meaning. And your will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made but
to fill a gap that is not there. It is not this you want. Creation gives no
separate person and no separate thing the power to complete the Son of
God. What idol can be called upon to give the Son of God what he already
has?
 
Completion is the function of God’s Son. He has no need to seek for it at
all. Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is. For more than
whole is meaningless. If there were change in him, if he could be reduced to
any form and limited to what is not in him, he would not be as God created
him. What idol can he need to be himself? For can he give a part of him
away? What is not whole cannot make whole. But what is really asked for
cannot be denied. Your will is granted. Not in any form that would content
you not, but in the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you.
Nothing that God knows not exists.
 
And what He knows exists forever,
changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of
them. And in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His
Thoughts were absent or could suffer change. Thoughts are not born and
cannot die. They share the attributes of their creator, nor have they a
separate life apart from his. The thoughts you think are in your mind, as you
are in the Mind which thought of you. And so there are no separate parts in
what exists within God’s Mind. It is forever One, eternally united and at
peace.
 
Thoughts seem to come and go. Yet all this means is that you are sometimes
aware of them, and sometimes not. An unremembered thought is born again
to you when it returns to your awareness. Yet it did not die when you forgot
it. It was always there, but you were unaware of it. The Thought God holds
of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. It will always be exactly
as it was before the time when you forgot, and will be just the same when
you remember. And it is the same within the interval when you forgot.
 
The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. They
await not birth. They wait for welcome and remembering. The Thought God
holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in
Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. Yet still
and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it
was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever
was.
 
Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds
it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not
depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it and softly
holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven.
It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. But
those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there.
 
Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. Completely unaffected
by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that
here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite undisturbed,
the Thought God holds of you remains exactly as it always was. Surrounded
by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, it rests in
certainty and perfect peace. Here is your one reality kept safe, completely
unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. In
perfect sureness of its changelessness and of its rest in its eternal home, the
Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of its Creator Whom it
knows, as its Creator knows that it is there.
 
Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? Is your
reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows
nothing of? Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no
reality. The mind of Heaven’s Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of
Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. You have not
two realities, but one. Nor can you be aware of more than one. An idol or
the Thought God holds of you is your reality. Forget not, then, that idols
must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your
own. The star shines still; the sky has never changed. But you, the holy Son
of God Himself, are unaware of your reality.