The slave of idols is a WILLING slave. For willing he must be to let
himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in
the powerless. What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be
his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and
look to idols that they raise him up? Hear, then, your story in the
dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe
that it is NOT a dream: A dream of judgement came into the mind that God
created perfect as Himself. And in that dream was Heaven changed to
hell, and God made enemy unto His Son.

How can God’s Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgement. So
must he judge not, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last
while he is part of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of
idols, which will hold the judgement off from resting on himself. Nor
can he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make
yourself a part of evil dreams, where idols are your “true” identity,
and your salvation from the judgement laid in terror and in guilt upon
yourself.

All figures in the dream 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 terrible, for who could wish for one
unless he were in terror and despair? And this the idol represents, and
so its worship IS the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from
which they come. Judgement is an injustice to God’s Son, and it IS
justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he laid upon
himself within the dream he made. God knows of justice, not of penalty.
But in the dream of judgement, you attack and are condemned; and wish to
be the slave of idols, which are interposed
between your judgement and the penalty it brings.

There CAN be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. For idols
must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have
accomplished, and have done to make you sinful, and put out the Light
within you. Little children, It is there. You do but 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 talk 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
they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys
are real, nor recognize their wishes are their own.

Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child
who thought he made them real. Yet CAN a dream attack? Or CAN a toy grow
large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child believe,
because he fears his thoughts, and gives them to the toys instead. And
their reality becomes his own, because they seem to SAVE him from his
thoughts. Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside
himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. He
thinks he NEEDS them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks
the thoughts are real. And so he makes of anything a toy, to make his
world remain outside himself, and play that HE is but a part of IT.

There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek
not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need
of them no more. The dream of judgement is a children’s game, in which
the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a
child. What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. Except he
judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will
heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos
in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made. Yet is the real
world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. Nor have its laws been
changed because he did not understand.

The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been
changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. It is a dream in which
no-one is used to substitute for something else, nor interposed
between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No-one is used
for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away. And
what was once a dream of judgement now has changed into a dream where
all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE which it has. Only forgiving
dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which
enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in judgement, but
in love.

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 dreams a melody is heard
which everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all
time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the
song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness
which never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of
God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not.
And where is time, when dreams of judgement have been put away?

Whenever you feel fear in any form, – and you ARE fearful if you do not
feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes
with you, – be sure you made an idol, and 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 doom. Your self-betrayal MUST result
in fear, for fear IS judgement, leading surely to the frantic search for
idols and for death.

Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and have not
attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams
become a sign that you have made a new beginning, not another try to
worship idols, and to 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. He does not fear his judgement, for he has judged
no-one, nor has sought to be released through judgement from what
judgement must impose. And all the while he is remembering what he
forgot when judgement seemed to be the way to SAVE him from its penalty.