Day 76: I am under no laws but God's.

Think of the ridiculous rules and regulations we hold ourselves to.  Who thought up the 40-hour work week, for instance?  Taxes?  I could certainly live without them. We wouldn't need government-supported programs if everyone were a little more charitable.  How about the fact that roughly 15% of the world's population is hungry?  (And it is fully within our resources right now to end that epidemic.)  It's obvious that the laws we adhere to are completely upside-down.  Now, with that in mind, consider the comfort of the following statement:

I am under no laws but God's.

In today's lesson of A Course in Miracles, we are asked to begin the process of relinquishing all the laws that we have, up to this point, held true.  The Course smartly articulates our current way of being:

Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you.  You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs.  You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death.  You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.

It is insanity that thinks these things.  You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose.  You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics and of health.  Protect the body, and you will be saved.

These are not laws, but madness.

So if this is the case, what are the laws of God?  That is precisely what I asked in my meditation this morning.  I received a few answers:

1. Anything created in the name of Love is permanent.

This makes perfect sense, as only what is created in line with our sole function - which is to love - can be real.  We ourselves were created by the Love of God.  And that which is real cannot be threatened, as the Course tells us in its introduction.

2. What you do unto others is done unto you.

It's the Golden Rule, restated.  The very reason we should heed the words, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is because what we do to others is done to us.  We are all the same person, reflected billions of different ways - in different shades, shapes and sizes - so much so that we actually seem to be separate people.  But, as A Course in Miracles and one of its prominent teachers Marianne Williamson would say, "God has only one begotten Son - and we're all it."

3. Your salvation is guaranteed.

I'd heard this message once before, on Day 72.  Indeed, the Course tells us that there is a limit to the amount of miscreating we can do.  At some point, we can no longer sustain the dark illusions we have made, and must, at last, shift our sights to the Light.  This is the promise of the Holy Spirit, who is our guide in returning and restoring us to our rightful place in Heaven.

These are but a few of God's laws, I am sure.  But the peace that comes with them is palpable.  In today's lesson, the Course gives us further insight into how God's laws operate:

... there is no loss under the laws of God.  Payment is neither given nor received.  Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes; and nothing is replaced by something else.  God's laws forever give and never take.

What a far better construct for us to govern ourselves by!  Let us rejoice in the knowledge, then, that we are well protected and well guided by a power far greater than the limits we impose upon ourselves here on earth.  I am under no laws but God's, and that is a beautiful thing.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman