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.