My friend Kathryn, our local ACIM workshop leader, sent me rambling down a twisty but interesting pathway of thought and ideas last night. We were talking about how someone might cut us off in traffic, and how we might react. After all, we have laws against reckless and aggressive driving, against endangerment and countless other behaviors. All kinds of laws rule our behavior on the highways. But putting laws aside for a moment, if someone cuts me off in traffic, might I not get angry? Might I not react, cuss him out, or worse?
On the surface it might look like I had justifiable reason to become angry. Or even to seek revenge because that other driver did something clearly wrong. He needs to “pay” for his behavior, for his “sin.” I need to “get even.” At least that what one's ego might say. Yet, what really happened?
I don't know why a driver cuts another off. Maybe he's rushing to a hospital. Maybe he's playing loud music and is feeling aggressive. Maybe he's been drinking. But why he cuts me off really doesn't matter because he didn't do anything to me beyond what my ego wants to project on him. And, as the Course teaches, we can always make the choice between projecting our anger, attack and guilt, or extending love.
That discussion led me to the next few curious steps down that twisty path of ideas, which I shared with my wife as we discussed them this morning. It occurred to me that we probably have thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of laws in effect across our country. So do most other nations. They exist for just one reason: to regulate human behavior. I suppose law-making might have begun when Moses came down from the mountain with ten laws of conduct for his people to obey.
Even the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is yet one more rule for human conduct. While it serves us with good guidance when in moments of doubt, fear or anger when our ego is challenged, it is still a rule much like other rules and laws. It exists to manage our conduct as people.
Yet…in the Real World there is no need for laws, nor for judges and juries who find you “guilty.” For attorneys who defend you from "attack". For prisons where law breakers are incarcerated for their “sins.”
Just imagine this…
Imagine a world powered by Love. In it, every person sees all others as the Holy Son of God they Are, in Truth and Reality. Just as God gives us His incomprehensible Love, just as He extends it to all Creation—imagine you too did that.
You'd know that all other seeming people are One with you, one Holy Creation. You'd know that when you give you also receive. And that giving never spawns a sense of loss or sacrifice. For it is an extension of the Love you Are, and the more you extend the more you receive. How could it be any other way? For when we extend Love we extend it to ourselves, for we are all One.
Imagine, too, that what your ears and eyes and senses perceive in the world around you is a dream, an illusion, a false seeing. The world does not exist in Truth. Nor do bodies. God's Love is All that Is. Nothing else exists.
The Course tells us many times that reaching that point of Knowing, which is the Atonement, is “simple.” But for us, seeming to walk around in bodies trying to understand how this can all be illusory dreams, it isn't easy. It may seem to take years to reach certain levels of understanding, although the Course also tells us that even time, just like the world, is an illusion. Lesson 132 reminds us that…
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.
There is no world because it is a thought apart from God and made to separate the Father and the Son and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.
Choose God's clear Vision over perception; giving over getting; Love over fear—and you'll find how it's possible to live in a world without laws.
On the surface it might look like I had justifiable reason to become angry. Or even to seek revenge because that other driver did something clearly wrong. He needs to “pay” for his behavior, for his “sin.” I need to “get even.” At least that what one's ego might say. Yet, what really happened?
I don't know why a driver cuts another off. Maybe he's rushing to a hospital. Maybe he's playing loud music and is feeling aggressive. Maybe he's been drinking. But why he cuts me off really doesn't matter because he didn't do anything to me beyond what my ego wants to project on him. And, as the Course teaches, we can always make the choice between projecting our anger, attack and guilt, or extending love.
That discussion led me to the next few curious steps down that twisty path of ideas, which I shared with my wife as we discussed them this morning. It occurred to me that we probably have thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of laws in effect across our country. So do most other nations. They exist for just one reason: to regulate human behavior. I suppose law-making might have begun when Moses came down from the mountain with ten laws of conduct for his people to obey.
Even the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is yet one more rule for human conduct. While it serves us with good guidance when in moments of doubt, fear or anger when our ego is challenged, it is still a rule much like other rules and laws. It exists to manage our conduct as people.
Yet…in the Real World there is no need for laws, nor for judges and juries who find you “guilty.” For attorneys who defend you from "attack". For prisons where law breakers are incarcerated for their “sins.”
Just imagine this…
Imagine a world powered by Love. In it, every person sees all others as the Holy Son of God they Are, in Truth and Reality. Just as God gives us His incomprehensible Love, just as He extends it to all Creation—imagine you too did that.
You'd know that all other seeming people are One with you, one Holy Creation. You'd know that when you give you also receive. And that giving never spawns a sense of loss or sacrifice. For it is an extension of the Love you Are, and the more you extend the more you receive. How could it be any other way? For when we extend Love we extend it to ourselves, for we are all One.
Imagine, too, that what your ears and eyes and senses perceive in the world around you is a dream, an illusion, a false seeing. The world does not exist in Truth. Nor do bodies. God's Love is All that Is. Nothing else exists.
The Course tells us many times that reaching that point of Knowing, which is the Atonement, is “simple.” But for us, seeming to walk around in bodies trying to understand how this can all be illusory dreams, it isn't easy. It may seem to take years to reach certain levels of understanding, although the Course also tells us that even time, just like the world, is an illusion. Lesson 132 reminds us that…
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.
There is no world because it is a thought apart from God and made to separate the Father and the Son and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.
Choose God's clear Vision over perception; giving over getting; Love over fear—and you'll find how it's possible to live in a world without laws.