Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 31: The New Beginning
4. The Paradox of Awakening
In your split mind you will oppose what does not satisfy you, and thus you will not realize that you made it up. You can only fight illusions. For the Truth behind all appearances is so lovely and so still in loving Gentleness, were you aware of It you would forget opposition and defensiveness entirely, and rush to Its Embrace. The Truth can never be attacked, and this you knew when you made idols. They were made that this might be forgotten. You can only attack false ideas and never true ones, and by your attack are false ideas kept as yours. Idols are the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true. And you attack them for the things you think they represent. Yet what is real that is beyond them cannot be attacked.
The wearying, dissatisfying ideas projected into the world as idols that you made up and tried to imbue with meaning are inflated children’s toys. A child becomes frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is opened suddenly, or when a soft and silent wooly bear begins to squeak as it is taken hold of. The rules the child made for boxes and toy bears have failed it, and have broken its perception of control of what surrounds it. And the child is afraid because it thought the rules protected it. Now must the child learn that the box and the bear did not deceive it, and broke no rules, nor did they make its world chaotic and unsafe. The child was simply mistaken. It misunderstood what made it safe, and thought that safety had abandoned it.
The gap of time between Eternity and Timelessness that is not there is filled with children’s toys in countless forms. And each one seems to break the rules you set for it. These toys never were the thing you thought. They must appear to break your rules for safety and control, since your rules are wrong. But you are not endangered because of this misunderstanding. You can learn to laugh at popping heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns they are no threat to it. But while the child continues to play with its toys, it still perceives them as obeying rules it made for its enjoyment. So there still are rules that these toys can seem to break, and frighten it. Yet is the child at the mercy of its toys? And can they represent a threat to it?
Reality observes the Laws of the Divine and not the rules you made up. Its Laws guarantee your Safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey no laws but those of chaos. They seem to dance a little while according to the rules you set for them. But then they fail and fall and only rise by your choice to see the shadow play again. My sisters and brothers, these illusions are merely toys. Do not grieve for them. Their dancing never brought you real Joy, but neither were they things to frighten you, nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules or you obeyed theirs. They must be neither cherished nor attacked, but merely seen as what they are in truth, without a single meaning of their own. Perceive meaning in them and you will believe yourself to be in a world that is one of fantasy and dreams. Perceive no meaning in them and they will touch you not.
Appearances deceive because they are illusions and not Reality. Dwell not on them in any form. They merely obscure Reality. And they bring fear because they seem to hide the Truth. Do not attack what you have made to deceive yourself. For thus you will believe that in truth you have been deceived, and that in this you have made deception real. Attack has power to make illusions seem real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could be made fearful by a power that can have no real effects at all? What could this power be but an illusion itself, making things appear like to itself? Calmly observe appearance’s toys, and understand that they are idols that only dance to vain desires. Give them not your honor, for they are not there, though this is forgotten in a world of fantasy and dreams.
The awakening separated ones need no defense against their dreams. Their idols do not threaten them at all. Their one mistake is that they have believed them real. What can the power of illusions do in truth? Appearances can only deceive the mind that wants to be deceived. And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far beyond deception. You need not concern yourself with how this will be accomplished, for this you cannot currently understand. But you will understand that mighty changes have been quickly brought about when you decide one very simple thing: you do not actually want whatever you believe an idol specifically gives. For thus the Children of the Divine declare that they are free of idols. And thus are they free.
Awakening is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream? For you are asked just to forgive all things that no one ever really did, to see beyond what is not there, and not to perceive the unreal as if it were Reality. You are simply asked to let your true will – which is the Divine’s Will – be done in all things, and seek no longer for the things you do not actually want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were in Truth, and seek no longer to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of the Divine. Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. For here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror that you made to fill it in fear of the emptiness you thought was there.
No more than this is asked. Be glad indeed that awakening asks so little rather than so much. It asks for nothing in reality. And even in illusions it asks only that forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain.
Dreams that aren’t of Spirit are for nothing. And the Children of the Divine can have no need of them. Such dreams offer them no single thing that they could ever wholly want.
The Children of the Divine are delivered from illusions by their will, or what they want and love with their whole being, and simply restored to what they are. What could the Divine’s Plan for their awakening be except a Means to give them to Itself and to themselves?
