Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 31: The New Beginning

3. The Thought the Divine Holds of You

Your will is universal, being limitless. And so it has no form, nor is it content for its expression in terms of form. Idols are quite specific and are therefore 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 is what I want instead, and it will be as Everything to me.” And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your true 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. For what form can be a substitute for the Creator’s Love? What form can take the place of all the Love in the Holiness of the Divine Family? What idol can make two of what is One? Could the Limitless be limited?

You do not want an idol. It is not your true 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 perceive your will within the idol, thus reducing your will to a specific form. But this could never be your true will, because what shares in the Meaning of all Creation cannot be content with appearances and forms, small ideas and petty things.

Behind the search for every idol is the yearning for Completion. Wholeness has no form because It is limitless. To seek a special person or thing to add to you to make yourself complete can only mean that you believe that some form is missing, and that by finding this missing form you will achieve completion in a form you like. This is the purpose of an idol: that you will not see beyond it to the source of your belief that you are incomplete. Yet only if you had made separation real could you be incomplete. For separation is the idea that you are split off from what is whole, and alone. And only thus would it be necessary for the “search” for Wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself that you have accepted for yourself.

It never is the idol for itself that you want. But what you think it offers you – Completion – you want indeed, and are perfectly right to ask for. Nor could it be possible that this be denied you. Your will to be complete is the Divine’s Will, and Completion is given you by being Its Will. The Divine knows not form. It cannot answer you in terms that have no Meaning. And your will could not be satisfied with forms, empty and made up merely 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 Children of the Divine. What idol could be called upon to give the Children of the Divine what they already have?

Completion is the natural State of the Divine’s Children. They have no need to seek for this State at all. Beyond all idols stands their holy will to be only what they truly are. For more than Whole is meaningless. If there were actual change in them; if they could be reduced to any form and limited to what is not in them, then they would not be as the Divine created them. What idol could they then need to be themselves? Can they give a part of themselves away, and get another part instead?

What is not Whole cannot make Whole, yet what is really asked for of Spirit must be answered. Your will is granted, though not in any form, which would content you not, but only in the whole, completely lovely Thought the Divine holds of you. What the Divine knows not does not exist. And what It knows has Being forever, complete and changeless. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thinks them, and in the Mind of the Divine there is no ending, nor a time in which Its Thoughts were absent or could experience change. True Thoughts are not born and cannot die. They share the Attributes of their Creator. Nor have these Thoughts a separate life apart from the Source of Their Attributes. The true Thoughts you think are in your mind, as you are in the Mind That thought of you. And so there are no separate parts in what has Being within the Divine’s Mind. It is forever One, eternally United and at peace.

Thoughts seem to come and go. But all this means is that you are sometimes aware of them and sometimes not. An unremembered thought is born anew in you when it returns to your awareness. Yet it did not die when you forgot it. It was always there even when you were unaware of it. The Thought the Divine 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 the Divine shine forever and are far beyond all change. They await not birth, for They have been created. They wait for welcome and remembering. The Thought the Divine holds of you is like a Star, unchangeable in an eternal Sky. So high in Heaven is It set that those who believe themselves to be outside of Heaven perceive not that It is there. But still and clear 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. Who knows the Creator knows this Light, for It 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 from Earth or not. The Sky of Heaven 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 or the time that keeps this Star invisible to Earth. Only those who seek for idols cannot know this Star is there.

Beyond all idols and illusions is the Thought the Divine holds of you. It is 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 and guilt can take. Quite undisturbed, the Thought the Divine holds of you remains exactly as It always was. Surrounded by a Stillness so complete no sound of battle can ever come 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 the Divine. In perfect Sureness of Its Changelessness and of Its Rest in Its eternal Home, the Thought the Divine holds of you has never left the Mind of Its Creator, Whom this Thought knows as Its Creator knows It.

Where could the Thought the Divine holds of you be but where you are? Is your reality a thing apart from you, or in a world that your reality knows nothing of? Outside of you there is no eternal Sky, no changeless Star, and no Reality. The Mind of Heaven’s Children is in Heaven, for there the Mind of the Creator and of Its Children are joined in Creation that can have no end. You have not two realities, only one. Nor can you ever be aware of more than one. You must be an illusion or the Thought the Divine holds of you. Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of the Divine, but from your own. The Star shines still, the Sky has never changed, even when you, a holy Child of the Divine Itself, are unaware of your reality.