Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 30: The Happy Dreams of the Real World

8. The Toys of Judgment

Those imprisoned by idols are willingly bound. For willing they must be to let themselves bow down in honor of what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the separated ones – holy Children of the Divine – that this could be their wish; to cast themselves upon the stones on the ground, and look to idols to raise them up? Hear, then, their story in the dream that was made, and ask yourself if it be not true that you believe that it is not a dream.

A dream of judgment came into the mind that the Divine created perfect as Itself. And in that dream was Heaven changed to a nightmare of hell, and the Divine made into enemy unto Its Children.

How can the sleeping Divine Children awaken from their dream? It is a dream of judgment, so must they judge not, and they will awaken. For the dream will seem to last while they are part of it. Judge not, for they who judge will have need of idols, whose purpose is to hold the judgment off from resting on themselves. Nor can they know the holy Self they have condemned. Judge not, because in doing so you make yourself a part of nightmares, of evil dreams, where idols become your identity and your “salvation” from the judgment you laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself.

All figures in the dream of this world are idols made to save you from the dream. Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you from. Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and full of anxiety. For who would wish for an idol unless they were in fear and despair? And this the idol represents, and so honoring it is the honoring of fear and despair, and of the dream from which they come.

Judgment is an injustice to the Divine’s Children, though it is justice within the dream they made that they who judge their sisters and brothers will experience, in the dream, the judgment they laid upon others as a judgment laid upon themself. For judgment always means that a dream of fear is being projected. But it does not follow that this projection must be received and accepted, and sleep maintained to protect against it.

The Divine knows of true Justice, not of punishment or retribution. But in the dream of judgment, you attack and then believe that you are condemned. And you choose to cherish idols, which are interposed between your judgment of all things and the penalty you believe it brings. There can be no awakening in the dream as you are dreaming it. For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have done to make yourself unholy and unworthy, and to put out the Light within you that would illuminate what you are afraid to behold, thinking it would mean your annihilation.

Sisters and brothers, the Light is there. You do only dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and think and feel and speak for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. But children are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, and do not wish to recognize that the wishes of their toys are their own.

Nightmares are childish dreams in which their toys have turned against the children who thought they made them real. Yet can a dream really attack, or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This do the children having the nightmare believe because they fear their thoughts, and give these thoughts to their toys instead. And the “realness” of their toys becomes their own, because their toys seem to save the children from their own thoughts. Yet the toys keep these thoughts active and of seeming impact, but perceived outside of those thinking them, where the thoughts can turn against their source for the “treachery” of casting them outside. The children think that they need their toys to escape their thoughts of fear, because they think the thoughts are real. And so they make a toy or an idol of anything, to allow their world to remain outside themselves, so they can play that they are merely a part of it.

There is a time when the fears of childhood should be moved beyond and gone forever. Seek not to retain the stories and toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children’s game in which the child becomes the parent, powerful but with the limited understanding of the child. In this game what seems to hurt the child is destroyed, and what helps it is blessed. Except that the child judges this as does a child, who does not truly know what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and the child is afraid of all the chaos in a world it thinks is governed by the laws it made up.

Yet is the Real World unaffected by the world children think is real. Nor have its laws been changed because these children did not understand. The Real World itself is still only a dream, except that the figures in the dream have been changed. They are not looked upon as toys or idols that can betray. The Real World is a dream in which nothing is used to substitute for something else, or interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it perceives. No one is used for something they are not, for childish things have all been put away in this dream. And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream of forgiveness where all is Joy, because that is the Purpose that the Real World has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms that enter into these dreams are now perceived as sisters and brothers and not figures, not in judgment but with Love and gratitude.

Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. And in these happy dreams a Melody is heard that everyone remembers, though they have not heard It since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings Timelessness so close that the Song of Heaven can be heard, not with the body’s ears but with the Holiness that never left the Altar that abides forever deep within the Children of the Divine. And when they hear this Song again, they know there never was a time when they heard It not. And where is time when dreams of judgment have been put away?

Whenever you feel fear in any form – and you are fearful if you do not feel deep contentment, certainty of Help, and calm assurance that Heaven is with you – be sure that you designated something as an idol and that you believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of dread. Your self-betrayal must result in fear as long as it is maintained, and fear is judgment, leading surely to the designation of idols to aid in the frantic search to escape from annihilation.

Forgiving dreams remind you that you forever live in Safety, and that in Reality you have not attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away, and forgiving dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginning, not another attempt to cherish idols and keep attack. Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream, and so they bring the dreamer full Release from dreams of fear and retribution. The dreamer does not fear their own judgment, for they have judged no one, nor have they sought to be released through judgment from what judgment must impose. And all the while they are remembering what they forgot when judgment seemed to be the way to save them from its penalty.