ACIM Workbook
Healing Perspectives

Lesson 76

“I am under no laws but God’s.”

It is helpful to remember that the Course says that what we believe will make us happy is what we believe is our salvation. It was interesting for me to look at not only the ways I think I can make the body safe but also the things of the world that I believe will make me happy. If I had a faster computer or better software, I would be happier. If certain people stay in my life in the form of a body, I will be happy. If certain other people stay out of my life, I will be happy. If I follow certain laws of nutrition, I will be safe. If my body functioned better in some way, I would be happy. If there were no talk of war in the world, I would feel safe. The list can go on and on.

All of these conditions are centered around the belief that I am a body. Yet the Course clearly tells me the body is an illusion and was made as a defense against God. It is not what God created. It was made by a mind believing in the false idea that separation is real. It is just an attempt to prove that separation really succeeded. And to maintain this illusion, all efforts to find salvation must center around the body.

Today’s lesson tells me that these efforts are looking for salvation where it cannot be found. This is why the Course puts so much emphasis in helping us undo our identification with the body as what we are. Later on in the Workbook we will repeat the affirmation that we are not a body for 10 days, 6 times an hour.

The good news is that, in spite of our efforts to prove separation is real, it cannot be made real. We remain as God created us, one with Him, forever loving and forever loved. It is the remembrance of this that will bring us the salvation we seek. It will bring us back to full acknowledgment of God’s laws and only God’s laws being what rules our existence.

It is interesting that the ego rebels against rules but constantly makes up rules of its own. That is how it defends against the laws of God. That is how it maintains the illusion of its existence. Yet the truth in us, our true Self, lives only under the law of Love, the law of God. Love gives of Itself without limit, because that is what Love is. Because Love is one, Love gives forever to itself. And in this is our joy complete. Happiness is remembering we are under no laws but the laws of Love, of God.

In the Introduction to the Workbook, Jesus tells us that the purpose of these lessons is to train our minds to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world. He tells us that we need to let go of every value we hold -- including what we are and what this world of separate bodies we seem to see means to us. The message in today’s lesson reinforces the idea that all our experience of limitation is coming from the ego mind and that we are not limited to these limiting ideas. In fact, the way out of hell is to let go of these false ideas and let them be replaced by the idea that we are under no laws but God’s, which is the law of limitless Love.

The ego’s ‘laws’ are not our laws, unless it is our choice to be limited by the ego’s laws. In truth, our Identity could never be limited to a body. In today’s lesson, Jesus enumerates some of the insane ways we hold on to the ego’s laws by believing they will make us safe, by believing they will make us happy. He helps us understand that our mind is only the victim of what it chooses to believe in.

Today, my job is to be mindful of the limiting thoughts I hold about myself and others and to let these thoughts be replaced with, “I am under no laws but God’s.” I am finding that this is a continuous process, a continuous willingness to detach from the ego’s laws in my mind, day by day. This commitment to recognizing these limiting ideas and letting them go is what frees me from the ego’s law of separation through the false ideas of individual bodies, time, space and death.

It is really true that God’s one Son, Love’s extension, is under no laws but the laws of Love. I help myself and the whole Sonship when I am willing to open my mind to the Truth that only Love is real, and there is no opposite.

I went through the list of laws I have created to govern my life. No surprises there. I've done this before and my list is pretty much like everyone elses. My emphasis is on my kids; keeping them safely and happily in their bodies, keeping their love and respect and knowing they need me in their lives. Then all the other body stuff.

After I reviewed my list, I started the next part of the lesson. I reminded myself that, in spite of this long list to the contrary, I am under no laws but God's. I felt an immediate sense of panic.Wow! What was that all about? I don't remember that ever happening before. Perhaps the difference is that I am more ready to accept the truth of this than I ever have been before and so these are not just words.

I had to sit and listen for a long while. I realized that I really had not considered exactly what I would be gaining if I gave up my own set of laws and I wasn't really convinced that God's plan for me was something I wanted. That is a hard thing to admit and is scary all by itself. At first I felt like someone was pulling the rug out from under me. I feel better about it now. I am going to practice todays lesson and do the meditation again this evening. I look forward to seeing where that takes me.

When I remember that I answer to no one but God, I find solace and joy. All else falls away as meaningless delusion. My ego ideas change with the times and shifting perceptions. First "this is "right", then "that" is "better." Ego laws are judgments and opinions that sound official, but come from delusion about what is real. Ego laws are not healing or harmonious, much as I may want them to be at times. Ego laws only lead to conflict.

God's law is in perfect accord. Under God's law is perfect peace found. God's law fills my space as I open to it. In God's law is all possible goodness fulfilled. Today I allow fulfillment of God's law in me. There can be no other way. This is my refuge, solace and joy because this is where true justice is found.

I was relieved to know that I am under no laws but God's. I think in my heart I always knew our Heavenly Father could not have possibly created this insane world. Like the lesson states, it is extremely freeing to recognize that we are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws of the world.

The laws of our world are constantly changing and because our bodies and our situations change, we are in constant conflict with these laws,never being able to rest in the peace that God intended us to have.

Knowing that we are in the hands of God and not at the mercy of this insane world, is a relief beyond words. Thank you, Father, for getting this message to me. Help me, Holy Spirit, remember that the only laws I need to be concerned with are those of my Heavenly Father's; the laws that bring me closer to Him. Amen

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