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Chapter 30: The Happy Dreams of the Real World

7. Idols and What Opposes Divine Essence

What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never looked upon for what they really are. That is the only power they seem to have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are both feared and cherished because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made.

Idols are images of your sisters and brothers that you would value more than what their reality is. Idols, no matter their form, are made as replacements for your true relationships with your sisters and brothers. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized by the body’s eyes. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, idols are all the same. Don’t let their forms deceive you. Idols are merely substitutes for Reality. In some way you believe they will complete your little self, and let you walk in safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. You believe that they have the power to lighten your burdens and supply your lacks, and add the value that you feel you do not have.

Only those who have bound themselves to littleness and loss believe in idols, and thus must seek beyond their little self for strength to raise their head and stand apart from all the misery their world reflects. This is the “cost” for refusing to see within for Certainty, and for a quiet Calm that liberates you from the illusions of the world, and lets you stand in confidence and in peace.

An idol is a false impression of lack or belief in flaw and unworthiness. It therefore opposes Divine Essence, Which can see no lack, flaw or unworthiness anywhere. And thus these don’t exist. An idol is a wish not in accord with the Divine’s Will, made tangible and given form, and in this way perceived as real and outside the mind. Yet idols remain ideas, and cannot leave the mind that is their source. Nor is their form apart from the ideas they represent. All forms of what opposes Divine Essence hang like a dark veil before your eyes, and seem to shut you off from the Face of Divine Essence, leaving you alone in darkness. Yet the Light is there. A cloud does not put out the Sun, nor can a veil banish what it seems to separate, or darken by one whit the Light Itself.

This world of idols is a veil hung before your eyes to obscure the Face of Divine Essence, because its purpose is to separate your sisters and brothers from yourself. Its is a dark and fearful purpose, yet is it a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere, for its source abides in the place within your mind where the Divine has not been invited. Where is this place, where That Which is Everything Everywhere has been excluded, and been kept apart? What hand could be held up to block the Divine’s Way? Whose voice could make demands that It enter not where It would be? This “more-than-everything” is not a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. Divine Essence’s adversary is nothing and nowhere. It can take no form in which it ever will be real.

What is an idol? Nothing! It must be believed before it seems to come to life, and handed your power by you that it may be feared. Its life and power are its believer’s gifts, and this life and power are what the miracle restores to the giver, to what does have Life and Power worthy of the Gift of Heaven and eternal Peace. The miracle does not restore the Truth – the Light the veil between has not put out – for that needs no restoring. It merely removes the veil, and lets the Truth shine unencumbered, being what It is. The Truth does not need belief to be Itself, for It has been created, and so It is, forever. An idol is established by belief, and when this is withdrawn, the idol “dies,” for it never was alive.

This is what opposes Divine Essence: the strange idea that there is a power beyond Omnipotence, a place beyond the Infinite, a time transcending the Eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea that this power and place and time are given form, and that they shape the world where the impossible seems to have happened. Here the Immortal come to “live” a moment and then die, the All-Encompassing to suffer loss, the Timeless to be made prisoners of time. Here does the Changeless change, and the Peace of the Divine, forever given to all that has been created, give way to chaos. And here do the Children of the Divine, as perfect, innocent and loving as their Creator, come to fear and doubt a little while, to suffer pain, and finally to perish.

Where is an idol? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is Infinite, a place where time can interrupt Eternity? A place of darkness set where all is Light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is Endless, has no place to be in reality. An idol is beyond where the Divine has set all things forever, and has left no room for anything to be except Its Will. Nothing and nowhere must an idol be, while the Divine is Everything and Everywhere.

What purpose has an idol, then? What is it for? This is the only question that has meaning, and it has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked.

The world believes in idols. No one comes here without the wish to cherish them, and still attempt to seek for one that yet might offer them a gift that Reality does not contain. Each one who cherishes idols harbors hope that their special beliefs will give them more than others possess. It must be special and “more than.” It does not really matter more of what: more attractiveness, more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. But more of something is what an idol is for, to set apart and make special. And when one idol fails and falls another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by forms the “something” takes. An idol is a means for getting more and making special. And it is this that can never be, for it is this that is not the Divine’s Will.

The Divine has not many different Children, but only one Divine Family. In this Family, who can have more, who be given less, and who be special? In Heaven the Children of the Divine would merely laugh if idols could seem to intrude upon their Peace. It is for the Divine Family that the Holy Spirit speaks to the separated ones, and reminds them that idols have no purpose. For more than Heaven can you never have. If Heaven is within, then why would you seek outside yourself for idols, which would make of Heaven less, to give you more than the Divine bestowed upon your sisters and brothers and on you, being One with It?

The Divine gave you All there is. And to be sure you could not lose It, did It also give the same to every one of Its Children as well. And thus is every creation a Part of you as of the Divine. No idol can establish you as more than the Divine. But you will never be content with being less.