Sean Reagan

I am under no laws but God’s.

Lesson 76 of A Course in Miracles brooks no middle ground. It is like Bob Dylan’s song Precious Angel: “You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.” Yet the absence of wiggle room is a gift, for it forces us to confront the lesson in helpful terms: what are the laws of God? And what am I that should be subject to any other law?

This lesson is easy to understand when you also understand that the self to which the lesson refers is not a body. It is associated with a body (because it has dissociated from God), but this is an illusion, not a fact.

In this sense, A Course in Miracles is a course in identity correction.

How simple is salvation! It is merely a statement of your true Identity (W-pI.77.1:4-5).

Lesson 76 addresses a critical aspect of that this self-confusion. If we consider ourselves bodies in the world, then we are subject to its laws. The lesson invites us to notice the way we subject ourselves to these apparent laws, and to consider an alternative.

There are no laws but God’s. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to you. You will be listening to the One Who says there will be 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 (W-pI.76.9:1-6).

Of course, these laws are the opposite of those which appear to govern the world in which we live, and the bodies with which we are associated.

In that world, if we are not careful what we eat, then we will get sick and die. If we don’t pay our mortgage or rent, then we will lose our shelter. We can seek satisfaction in one partner, then trade them for another. When someone we love dies, we never see them again. Et cetera.

To the body, those laws will be forever real. This is important! From the body’s perspective, if you and I sit at a table with a single slice of pie, and I eat the pie, you do not get any pie. I love my children more than children I’ve never met in a country I’ve never visited, even though I know this is not coherent.

We don’t have to resist these appearances; we merely have to notice them. The fix, so to speak, arises as a condition of our noticing, and it not something we do.

Thus, Lesson 76 is not an invitation to run this world or its various bodies by new rules. Rather, it is an invitation to see that what we are is not of this world and so we cannot be its subject. Thus, we cannot seek salvation in terms of the world. Doing so is an exercise in futility; it can never work.

. . . how simple is salvation. Look for it where it waits for you, and there it will be found. Look nowhere else, for it is nowhere else (W-pI.76.2:3-5).

How shall we understand this in terms of application?

Don’t get hung up on the fact that the world and the body are subject to laws like nutrition, capitalism, gravity, evolution and so forth. To the body, those laws will always appear real. Their appearance is not the problem; the problem is our investment in those appearances as if they are real and causative.

In this sense, the lesson is an opportunity to open our mind a little, that it might perceive a new way of thinking, one that is aligned with laws not of our own making.

We do not need to prove God’s laws. We do not need to establish and maintain them. You need only be willing to notice them, even the tiniest bit. They are already our reality. So really, our willingness to perceive God’s laws is our willingness to perceive our own self, which is not a body, and for which sacrifice of any kind is impossible.

As this becomes increasingly clear, we begin to appreciate the course’s emphasis on seeing things in stark relief. What works works and what does not, does not. What’s helpful is helpful and so we ought to make use of it; but what is not helpful should be set aside as a distraction and not picked up again.

Again, A Course in Miracles emphasizes correction of our self-confusion.

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself. Yet in this learning is salvation born (T-31.V.17:7-8).

So this lesson is a chance to go deep within and admit that we are lost. We can face the surrender of the entire world – everything we think we know, everything that we believe – and accept that we have no clue what comes next. We don’t know how to proceed. This is a good space because it is a space of learning. It is a space of receptivity to Bill Thetford’s “another way.”

The workbook lessons are always opportunities to shift our thinking, away from fear and towards love. That transition can seem to take time and it can seem difficult. That’s okay. Our thinking – especially with respect to what we are – is cloudy indeed.

Yet with every application of every lesson, the clouds thin and drift away. Magical thinking – the notion that salvation can be obtained in bodies in terms of the world – is undone.

Magic imprisons, but the laws of God make free. The light has come because there are no laws but His (W-pI.76.7:5-6).

We are not bodies, though we associate ourselves with bodies. We are love itself, and subject only to the laws of unconditional giving. This is our salvation; this is the foundation of our joy and inner peace.

←Lesson 75
Lesson 77→

The light has come.

The 75th lesson of A Course in Miracles is both a celebration of what we are in truth and an opportunity for gratitude. We celebrate that which knows it is an extension of God’s wholly loving will. And we are grateful for the learners and teachers who make “the happy ending of our long dream of disaster” (W-pI.75.2:1) possible.

Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. It is a new era, in which a new world is born. The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing. Today we see a different world, because the light has come (W-pI.75.2:3-7).

This lesson is an invitation to reflect on our study, and to notice the way in which it has gently but clearly steered us to the “single purpose” (W-pI.75.4:3) of waking with our brothers and sisters from our dream of “darkness and turmoil and death” (W-pI.75.1:6).

Forgiveness – our commitment to seeing from our own holiness which naturally occurs as a condition of remembering that only God’s Will exists – makes vision and its healing effects inevitable.

Understand that the Holy Spirit never fails to give the gift of sight to the forgiving. Believe He will not fail you now . . . He will show you what true vision sees (W-pI.75.7:2-3, 6).

The light to which A Course in Miracles refers here is not the light by which the body’s eyes see. It is closer to the light of understanding – the light in which we know ideas or concepts, like “God is Love” or “mercy is justice recognized.”

Thus, we are not looking for a physical experience so much as a mindful one – one that is premised in abstraction and, as such, cannot be contained by a body (including a brain). After all, is the idea that “God is Love” limited to your brain? Your life?

If we can see the truth of this – and recall as well the core ACIM principle that ideas do not leave their source (T-26.VII.4:7) – then we will be well on our way to the happiness that is the course’s goal for us, and the necessary condition for our awakening unto oneness with God.

←Lesson 74
Lesson 76→

There is no will but God’s.

This is a simple but deeply satisfying lesson of A Course in Miracles. If it’s true – and if we accept its truth – then all our perceived conflict is over. And in the absence of conflict, there is only peace.

Thus, if we can grasp this lesson – and bring it into application – then we will know in fact the peace that surpasses understanding.

To share is to make one. If you and I travel separately to Cape Cod, we have two different experiences. But if we travel together, stay together and recreate together, then we have a unified experience because it is shared.

That analogy is imperfect but it does move our thinking in the direction of what it means to share a will with God. Where it fails is in our recognition that God’s is the only will there is.

Thus, it is more accurate to say that there is only God’s Will, and to leave our own self out of it. That is not easy for us to conceptualize, much less accept, but it is the truth of our being, and in realizing it without resistance, our happiness is complete.

The belief that conflict is possible has gone. Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by conflicting goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have not goal but His (W-pI.74.1:4-6).

That last sentence bears patient reflection, for it essentially defines us: we are expressions of the Will of God.

Is that your experience? Is that your truth?

What does it even mean?

It means that the ideas, plans, goals, strategies, excuses and assumptions which characterize our lives in the world are illusory, and that we are no longer capable of denying it.

There is no middle ground here. There is no option for compromise. Either God’s Will is the only will, or our will is real among all the other separate wills out there, each conflicting with one another, fighting one another, struggling with one another. Which do we prefer be the correct understanding?

But if we relinquish our own will – our separate will, the will whose objectives always revolve around favorable outcomes for this body, this self – what happens?

Ego says that everything will fall apart. We’ll lose everything from our shoes to our next meal to our dignity. We’ll suffer and die. It will be awful.

Don’t argue with ego! Just let it be for a few moments – or a few hours or days even. What happens when we just let go?

One thing that we will notice is that life does not stop. It goes on; things happen; other things don’t. We begin to see that the ego’s interventions are obtrusive, not helpful. We begin to see that it’s at least possible that God’s Will is sufficient.

This is not an argument that it won’t rain at the picnic or that our bodies won’t be diagnosed with cancer. It is a reminder that those outcomes – negative unto the ego – mean nothing to what we are in truth and therefore cannot disturb our peace. And joy is the hallmark of peace (W-pI.74.6:1).

Lesson 74 asks us to be alert unto our joy, our happiness. If we are practicing the lesson effectively, then joy is its sure result. If, instead, we find ourselves withdrawing from the world or from our lives, then we are still confused.

When we identify with Spirit, which is to let go of our identification with the body, then we naturally let go of a lot of the investment and expectation that surround the body and its experience. By extension, we also relax our investment and expectation of the world. It’s not that the body or the world go anywhere, but that we begin to experience them differently. They are no longer the primary mode of our experience.

Thus, the lesson calls us simply to repeat its core idea and remind ourselves that peace and happiness are both our goal and the result of practicing A Course in Miracles.

Awakening is not about loss; the ACIM’s happy dream does not call for sacrifice of any kind. To remember that we share a will with God, and that this is so because only God’s will is real, is a profound statement aligning us with what we are in truth: expressions of God’s wholly perfect and wholly loving Will.

←Lesson 73
Lesson 75→

I will there be light.

The understanding that we are not separate from God does not relate to our bodies nor to the confused self that appears to be that body. We share a will with God, a will to create in perfect abstraction, beyond the limited nature of bodies and worlds.

This is a fundamental concept that underlies the recent emphasis laid by the ACIM workbook on discerning what we are in truth from what we believe we are. A Course in Miracles aims to take us beyond belief to knowledge, where there is neither doubt nor need to defend in any way. When we know, belief does not enter into it.

The will you share with God has all the power of creation in it. The ego’s idle wishes are unshared, and therefore have no power at all. . . they make nothing that is real (W-pI.73.1:3-4, 7).

Ego’s “idle wishes” make both a vulnerable body and a world filled with people, places and things which attack that body and must be defended against, often under the rubric of attack. Grievances arise naturally in such a world and, together with the ego’s frivolous plan for salvation, obscure both our truth and the reality of our brothers and sisters.

A Course in Miracles invites us to let the focus on the body – and the ego’s arguments for focusing on it, and the grievances which are its lifeblood – go and see what takes its place.

Indeed, Lesson 73 is explicitly intended to help us reach the world that is in accordance with the will we share with God (W-pI.73.4:1).

The light is in you because it does not oppose the Will of God. It is not Heaven, but the light of Heaven shines on it. Darkness has vanished. The ego’s idle wishes have been withdrawn (W-pI.73.4:2-5).

This light is in us. It is not in a body – much less in a world – but in us. We are relying not on the mind’s conception of light nor the body’s eyes to heed the lesson’s directive. Instead, we are turning to the Vision that wakens in us when we no longer listen to the ego’s raucous cries. Vision – which is the exercise of forgiveness, or right seeing – “lifts the darkness, reasserts your will, and lets you look upon a world of light.”

Thus, Lesson 73 is asking us to reject the ego’s arguments without exception and instead answer a very simple question: Do we really want to “weep and suffer and die” (W-pI.73.5:8)?

Our answer is not actually in any doubt. A Course in Miracles is in our life because our answer is not in doubt. And our answer is not in doubt because what we are in truth – what we are in reality – is not in doubt.

There is a point beyond which illusions cannot go. Suffering is not happiness, and it is happiness you really want. Such is your will in truth. So so salvation is your will as well (W-pI.73.6:4-7).

Thus, we can ask with confidence if we are ready and willing to perceive the light that is in us as God created us. And we can refuse any answer or argument that merely delays our return to happiness.

This is easier to say than to actually do. But it can be helpful to remember that all we are really doing is surrendering our insistence that we know what is best for us, right for us, healthy for us. We are letting go of our definition of spirituality, peace, understanding and love.

Bit by bit we shed the ego’s layers and leaves, discovering as we do that we are really shedding nothing and gaining a clear and undivided understanding of the reality of our identity. Indeed, this becomes a space of rest and restoration. It heals perception, bringing the world into harmony with our Source in love. We become happy, and offer our happiness to the world. In this way, we are saved.

←Lesson 72
Lesson 74→

Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.

Lesson 72 extends the previous lesson’s emphasis that God’s plan for salvation is the diametric opposite of egos, and that only God’s plan can actually work in bringing us peace and happiness. Lesson 72 emphasizes that ego’s plan is an affirmative attack on God’s plan.

What is the value of this insight? What do we gain by understanding this?

Sometimes in our study and practice of A Course in Miracles, we get casual. We think that we can negotiate a compromise between God and ego. We’ll keep a little of this and give up a little of that. It feels mature to do this; it feels reasonable.

But between God and ego there is no compromise. There is no middle ground. We “see the flesh or recognize the spirit” (T-31.VI.1:1). This is why ego fights the way it does; it is also why in the end, God’s plan for salvation is the one which will prevail in our mind.

Ego needs the mind to believe it is in – and restricted to – a body. This is what the course means when it describes ego as the physical embodiment of the desire to replace God (W-pI.72.2:1). Grievances are the way in which ego keeps mind focused on the body and the perils it faces in a violent and unscrupulous world.

Yet oddly, ego’s focus is always on what other bodies are doing. The effect of this is to keep our brother and sister yoked in their apparent body; ego does not readily reveal that the purpose of this is to keep us in bodies, too. Moreover, this insistence on bodies is an attack on God.

You are doing more than failing to help in freeing [your brother or sister] from the body’s limitations. You are actively trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him, and judging them as one. Herein is God attacked, for if His Son is only a body, so must He be as well (W-pI.72.4:3-5).

In this way, ego teaches us that God’s plan for salvation requires suffering and ends in death (W-pI.72.5:1). It is this perspective – an “arena where angry animals seeks for prey and mercy cannot enter” (W-pI.72.6:1) to which ego proposes itself as a viable alternative.

Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation (W-pI.72.6:6-9).

This grim picture reflects “the universal belief of the world you see” (W-pI.72.7:1). The body is exalted and deprecated, the mind is belittled and ignored. Humiliation and struggle, loneliness and confusion abound. We live in the middle of a war on God. Of course we do not know peace. Of course we do not know happiness.

It is critical to understand that this “attack” on God is a mirage. It has no effect on God. We are not going to be judged and punished. We are not going to be found unworthy for a lack of faith.

We are simply going to be invited – over and over, as a condition of what God is and what we are – to consider another way.

Your upside-down perception has been ruinous to your peace of mind. You have seen yourself in a body and the truth outside of you, locked away from your awareness by the body’s limitations. Now we are going to try to see this differently (W-pI.72.8:3-5).

Effectively, this means that we are going to simply disregard the body and gaze instead upon “the light of truth” (W-pI.72.9:1). We are going to gently look beyond our grievances and the rationale that seems to sustain them and see what – if anything – appears to us.

A Course in Miracles suggests that we will not look in vain.

To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on God’s plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever His plan is accepted, it is accomplished already (W-pI.72.9:4-6).

Thus, we are simply coming to see what is actually so. We are looking for truth, rather than ideas. We are looking for what is the case right now rather than what might be so tomorrow or in a year.

We are becoming open-minded and willing – to a radical degree – to set aside all our ideas and preconceptions, our plans and goals, our strategies and assumptions – in order to consider the possibility of another, better plan.

Ask and you will be answered. Seek and you will find. We are no longer asking the ego what salvation is and where to find it. We are asking it of truth. Be certain, then, that the answer will be true because of Whom you ask (WpI.72.11:3-7).

We also want to notice that the lesson does not actually answer the question: what is God’s plan for salvation? Rather, it simply expresses its faith that when we ask the question sincerely, we will be given the answer.

Why would A Course in Miracles be so coy on this subject? If it has the answer, why not give it?

One way to respond to that is to consider that God’s plan for salvation is not readily condensed into language. Thus, what we are listening for in our study periods, may not show up as words. It may not show up as an idea or concept. It may not even show up as a feeling!

What does show up when we genuinely turn to God and ask with an open heart and mind to be saved? Who can find out but us?

←Lesson 71
Lesson 73→

Only God’s plan for salvation will work.

From ego’s perspective, our experience of living in the world is predicated on others – how they behave, how they act, how they affect us. Essentially, “our” living becomes an effect of “their” living.

This isn’t a form of unity but rather of upside-down, or backwards, cause-and-effect. We are victims of forces beyond our control. Grievances – which are closely-guarded and nurtured memories of wrongs done by others to us – are central to this confused and painful way of living.

This “backwards” thinking is characteristic of ego, and serves only the purpose of its survival.

Each grievance you hold is a declaration, and an assertion in which you believe, that says “If this were different, I would be saved.” The change of mind necessary for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything except yourself (W-pI.71.2:4-5).

Thus, under ego’s plan for salvation, we become judges. We notice wrongs and carefully catalog them, always emphasizing who has done us wrong, how that wrong has adversely effected us, and what the other needs to do to make amends and “save” us.

We are always looking outward. If our spouse was more supportive . . . If we only made more money . . . If our house was bigger . . . If we lived on the west coast instead of the east . . . Salvation always rests beyond our control and so we remain perennially unsatisfied. And the ego is ever ready to point to new exterior “saviors.” Maybe we need a better shrink. Or some other medication. Or a new diet . . .

Thinking this way is basically an abdication of any kind of self-responsibility. It doesn’t work. And, by continually looking away from mind towards our image of others, and projecting all power and responsibility outward onto those images, we ensure that it never will work.

Lesson 71 both identifies and provides a means to actively remember the remedy to ego’s faulty plan for salvation. It reminds us that God’s plan for healing always looks to the source of the problem, not to the apparent symptom. Salvation is in us; in truth, there is nowhere else to look.

Ego argues – and its arguments are not unpersuasive – that this is ridiculous. It is naive and even dangerous. And its litanies of wrong-doers and their myriad wrongs can be very convincing.

A Course in Miracles says: will you at least consider there is another way? Can you at least consider that following the ego’s plan for salvation has made you miserable?

. . . let us rejoice that there is an answer to what seems to be a conflict with no resolution possible. All things are possible to God. Salvation must be yours because of His plan, which cannot fail (W-pI.71.7:2-4).

What do we do? We ask God to show us the plan for salvation established in Creation. We set aside our own “insane attempts and mad proposals” to reach happiness, and wait on that which promises to deliver us unto “release and joy” (W-pI.71.8:4).

Critically, we want to notice when grievances – those long-held and those under new construction – appear in our mind. They are signs that we have projected the cause of salvation unto something external and thus illusory. Can we let them go? If we can’t, why not?

Between God and ego there is no conflict, because what is whole does not recognize what is partial. What is perfect and true does not recognize what insists on error and deception.

Yet to a mind that listens to lies, it is possible to be deceived and confused. If we cannot relinquish grievances, it is because we are still invested in – we are still holding on to – the ego’s plan for salvation. This is not a crime! We will not be punished for this.

But it helpful to remember that our sadness, grief and loneliness are all a direct consequence of refusing to accept the simplicity and clarity of God’s plan. If we would be happy and helpful, can we not spend a few minutes looking for that which will gratefully teach us happiness and helpfulness? For it is already given. It is already working, already waiting on our acceptance.

Lesson 71 is an invitation to do just that. And, more, it is a promise that once we accept this invitation, the end is sure. Only God’s plan for salvation will work. What else do we need to know?

←Lesson 70
Lesson 72→