My thoughts* on ACIM Urtext Lesson 76, for March 16, 2024.
I am under no laws but God’s.
* Do not think that this means that you no longer are accountable to the laws in your culture and society. Or that you have no responsibilities in your family and communities.
* This statement is simply stating that only God’s Laws could be REAL because God IS REAL.
1. We have observed before how many senseless things have seemed to you to be salvation.
²Each has imprisoned you with laws as senseless as itself.
³You are not bound by them.
⁴Yet to understand that this is so, you must first realize salvation lies not there.
⁵While you would seek for it in things that have no meaning, you bind yourself to laws that make no sense.
⁶Thus do you seek to prove salvation is where it is not.
2. Today we will be glad you cannot prove it.
²For if you could, you would forever seek salvation where it is not, and never find it.
³The idea for today tells you once again how simple is salvation.
⁴Look for it where it waits for you, and there it will be found.
⁵Look nowhere else, for it is nowhere else.
* Salvation is found in the recognition of God alone and nothing else. Without His Existence NOTHING IS, period.
3. 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.
* He speaks of the laws that are unwritten as much as those that are. There may well be many times more that are unwritten in the frightened ego’s briefcase.
²You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs.
³You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death.
⁴You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.
* Oh my, I dare not speak on these much but I will say that I have a firm testimony and personal witness that the last one is not true.
4. It is insanity that thinks these things.
²You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose.
³You think you must obey the “laws” of medicine, of economics and of health.
⁴Protect the body, and you will be saved.
* This last statement is why the Course starts off with the idea that the physical is not real. I suspect that what Jesus, or (Wholly) Holy Spirit was attempting to say is that the physical is not the source of your being, it is secondary. God is the Source that must be recognized for your redemption.
* Jesus has attempted to get us to understand this in many ways when he, himself was struggling with the ego’s confusion. He knows that God IS because he remembers when we were all one being the first to consider the possibility of being without him. We must include him in our forgiveness if we are to be redeemed as a WHOLE which is the ONLY way Redemption is possible, even though we each must make that distinction/decision/declaration ourselves.
5. These are not laws, but madness.
²The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself.
* This is what constitutes our physical ills. Father help me release that which holds my body in the grip of destruction. I will gladly lay it by when my service in this form is complete. In the Name of Christ and His Father, even Love, amen.
³The body suffers just in order that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself.
* The physical serves as a distraction to what we do to ourselves when our mind believes it could be divided from Father. AND as a distraction from what we want to correct and how to do that.
⁴The body’s suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers.
* Which is the soul. The energy source that has been denied its source in God, the Father.
⁵It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die.
⁶It is from this your “laws” would save the body.
⁷It is for this you think you are a body.
6. There are no laws except the laws of God.
²This needs repeating, over and over, until you realize it applies to everything that you have made in opposition to God’s Will.
* Everything.
³Your magic has no meaning.
⁴What it is meant to save does not exist.
⁵Only what it is meant to hide will save you.
7. The laws of God can never be replaced.
²We will devote today to rejoicing that this is so.
³It is no longer a truth that we would hide.
⁴We realize instead it is a truth that keeps us free forever.
⁵Magic imprisons, but the laws of God make free.
⁶The light has come because there are no laws but His.
* Light = understanding = a witness of the existence of God.
8. We will begin the longer practice periods today with a short review of the different kinds of “laws” we have believed we must obey.
²These would include, for example, the “laws” of nutrition, of immunization, of medication, and of the body’s protection in innumerable ways.
³Think further; you believe in the “laws” of friendship, of “good” relationships and reciprocity.
⁴Perhaps you even think that there are laws which set forth what is God’s and what is yours.
⁵Many “religions” have been based on this.
⁶They would not save but damn in Heaven’s name.
⁷Yet they are no more strange than other “laws” you hold must be obeyed to make you safe.
9. There are no laws but God’s.
²Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to you.
³You will be listening to One Who says there is no loss under the laws of God.
⁴Payment is neither given nor received.
⁵Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes; and nothing is replaced by something else.
⁶God’s laws forever give and never take.
10. Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the “laws” you thought upheld the world you thought you saw.
²Then listen further.
³He will tell you more.
⁴About the Love your Father has for you.
⁵About the endless joy He offers you.
⁶About His yearning for His only Son, created as His channel for creation; denied to Him by his belief in hell.
* Oh my.
11. Let us today open God’s channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us to Him.
* I like the way that this is stated. “…let His Will extend through us to Him.”
* We ARE His Will as He IS ours. Let us acknowledge and celebrate this.
²Thus is creation endlessly increased.
³His Voice will speak of this to us, as well as of the joys of Heaven which His laws keep limitless forever.
⁴We will repeat today’s idea until we have listened and understood there are no laws but God’s.
⁵Then we will tell ourselves, as a dedication with which the practice period concludes:
⁶I am under no laws but God’s.
12. We will repeat this dedication as often as possible today; at least four or five times an hour, as well as in response to any temptation to experience ourselves as subject to other laws throughout the day.
²It is our statement of freedom from all danger and all tyranny.
³It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved.
(ACIM, W-76.1:1–12:3)
Till next time, God bless, debi.
