1. Idols are quite specific. 2But your will is universal, being limitless. 3And so it has no form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. 4Idols are limits. 5They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. 6It is as if you said, “I have no need of everything. 7This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me.” 8And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. 9Decide for idols and you ask for loss. 10Decide for truth and everything is yours.
2. It is not form you seek. 2What form can be a substitute for God the Father’s Love? 3What form can take the place of all the love in the Divinity of God the Son? 4What idol can make two of what is one? 5And can the limitless be limited? 6You do not want an idol. 7It is not your will to have one. 8It will not bestow on you the gift you seek. 9When you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. 10So you see your will within the idol, thus reducing it to a specific form. 11Yet this could never be your will, because what shares in all creation cannot be content with small ideas and little things.
3. Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. 2Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. 3To 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. 4And by finding this, you will achieve completion in a form you like. 5This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. 6Only if you had sinned could this be so. 7For sin is the idea you are alone and separated off from what is whole. 8And thus it would be necessary for the search for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself.
4. It never is the idol that you want. 2But what you think it offers you, you want indeed and have the right to ask for. 3Nor could it be possible it be denied. 4Your will to be complete is but God’s Will, and this is given you by being His. 5God knows not form. 6He cannot answer you in terms that have no meaning. 7And your will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap that is not there. 8It is not this you want. 9Creation gives no separate person and no separate thing the power to complete the Son of God. 10What idol can be called upon to give the Son of God what he already has?
5. Completion is the function of God’s Son. 2He has no need to seek for it at all. 3Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is. 4For more than whole is meaningless. 5If 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. 6What idol can he need to be himself? 7For can he give a part of him away? 8What is not whole cannot make whole. 9But what is really asked for cannot be denied. 10Your will is granted. 11Not in any form that would content you not, but in the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you.
6. Nothing that God knows not exists. 2And what He knows exists forever, changelessly. 3For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them. 4And in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent or could suffer change. 5Thoughts are not born and cannot die. 6They share the attributes of their creator, nor have they a separate life apart from his. 7The thoughts you think are in your mind, as you are in the Mind which thought of you. 8And so there are no separate parts in what exists within God’s Mind. 9It is forever One, eternally united and at peace.
7. Thoughts seem to come and go. 2Yet all this means is that you are sometimes aware of them, and sometimes not. 3An unremembered thought is born again to you when it returns to your awareness. 4Yet it did not die when you forgot it. 5It was always there, but you were unaware of it. 6The Thought God holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. 7It will always be exactly as it was before the time when you forgot, and will be just the same when you remember. 8And it is the same within the interval when you forgot.
8. The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2They await not birth. 3They wait for welcome and remembering. 4The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.
9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. 4It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. 5But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there.
10. Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. 2Completely 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. 3Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, it rests in certainty and perfect peace. 4Here is your one reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. 5In 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.
11. Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? 3Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. 4The 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. 5You have not two realities, but one. 6Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7An idol or the Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9The star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality.