Lesson 76: I am under no laws but God’s.
I recently ran across an internet meme that read: “In America, there are more prison beds than hospital beds and more gun shops than free clinics. We’ve been sick for a long time.”
Today’s lesson seeks to underscore this idea that we’ve been sick for a long time, not just in America, but as a human race. We’re sick because we believe fully and wholeheartedly in sickness. We believe that our bodies will grow old, get sick and we’ll eventually die. It’s true that all bodies die – it’s how we’re constructed here in this bodily illusion.
This lesson, though, says the laws we’ve constructed here in this little “r” reality are meant to ensure our suffering. We rely on bits of coins and paper to pay for the basics everyone needs such as food, clothing and shelter. No coins and paper? No food, clothing or shelter for you unless someone more charitable comes along and gives it to you. No round pellets or fluid to push through your veins? You’ll get sick and die.
These are the laws of this universe we live in, because we have written them and believe them to be true. I struggle a bit with this lesson, because, especially in this time of pandemic, you don’t want to blame the sick for being sick, but every illness under the sun has been created by the rules and laws we humans have concocted and live under.
Yes, medicine has mitigated the spread of illnesses and vaccines have slowed down the contagion of some diseases, but none of them have been totally eradicated. Polio, smallpox, chicken pox, tuberculosis, they all still exist. Our medicine has tamed some of the beasts we’ve created, but we created them. No illness has been sent by God for any reason.
That’s what this lesson is getting at – under God’s law, illness, death, economic systems, government entities – they don’t exist. They are not needed when we’re following God’s laws.
We have some examples of people who have followed God’s laws over human’s laws – Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mandela, Mother Teresa and perhaps spiritual leaders whose names we have never learned. What made them different is that they dreamed of a different kind of world – a “beloved community,” as King put it – that is based on common care and love for one another. Instead of competition, these leaders knew that if some of us were working for the wellbeing of all of us we could transform this nightmare of a reality into a happy dream – which the Course says is the place we need to be for God to complete the next step to our ultimate enlightenment or awakening.
What if we all actually followed the laws of God instead of laws of human existence? What if we understood that we were to be constructing a beloved community that had enough for all, that cared for the needs of all, that looked after the health and wellbeing of all – without charge, without expectation, without competition, without profit or gain?
The ego has us believe that this is ridiculous – a pipe dream. It certainly is as long as we’re playing by the ego’s rules. This lesson parodies the extremes of economic, medical and social laws that we live under and makes us uncomfortable on purpose – to shake us from our unquestioning loyalty to the laws of this illusion.
Laws can only be effective when the majority believe in them and follow them. We fully believe in the laws of the body, so they seem to prove themselves to be true. The Course is always asking us to experience what life would be like when we withdraw our belief from the rules and laws of the ego and this illusory world. In Reality, with a capital R, we don’t need bodies – we are spirits under God’s law where rules around bodies aren’t even known.
This is the fear then – we love being our bodies. It’s all we’ve ever known and all we believe in that exists. There may be some eternal life afterward, we think, but who knows for sure. All we seem to know for sure right now is that we’re in these bodies and if we withdraw our belief in these bodies, we fear we would lose them. As bodies we want to continue living. But, as a rule, bodies live under tyranny and danger, this lesson says.
Under the law of God there is only joy, there is only peace. Seems to me the swap is a no-brainer. Living under God’s law in this moment doesn’t mean we suddenly vanish or get sick and die and shed these bodies right now, though. It means that we are fully living into our purpose while we are in these bodies – to be the light of the world that guides others out of the danger and tyranny of the body’s laws in to the joy and peace of life under God’s law.
Hafiz says these laws of the body we insist on carrying around with us are like a heavy shield.
There is a shield you may still hold
because of some many battles.
I guess another conflict could begin any moment;
so maybe lugging it about could be of some use;
or is it just an undermining habit?
Does not it get heavy, so much so that you
sometimes struggle by noontime?
And then do wonder, with your insecurities so intact
about casting darkness as fears can
shadows even if the sun is out.
But God is really all around
in the middle of beautiful day or night
Yet, how amazing that a small illusion
when clung to can hide
the stupendous fact of omniscient Light.
Photo by Jaime Spaniol on Unsplash