Real Freedom

"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.  There are no laws except the laws of God.  This needs repeating, over and over, until you realize it applies to everything.  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.  Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the 'laws' you thought upheld the world you thought you saw." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 76, 3:1, 6:1-2, 9:3-6, 10:1

How did your day begin today?  Is your mind clear and clean of all thoughts of what has been or what will be?  Is your mind free?  The realization that none of our man made laws or rules has any real effect or hold on us is the beginning of real freedom.

Jesus walked the earth with this liberated awareness.  He didn't always wash his hands before he ate.  He healed on the Sabbath, to the horror of the other rabbis.  He hung out with people who were social and political outcasts.  He precipitated food and coin and wine out of thin air when needed, seemingly from out of nowhere.  He didn't work for a living, and told his disciples that to follow him meant "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head."  He didn't need to own anything, because he knew that the Allness of God is omnipresent.  He knew that God's laws forever give, and never take.  He knew that in the awareness of Allness, whatever is needed is already present.

Questions arise for us:  "How can I be expected to live like this?  I have to be practical, don't I?  It's not freedom to live in fear of what tomorrow will bring, is it?"  The Voice of Christ speaks quietly but firmly in answer to our fears: "Peace, be still.  Beloved, I am with you always, and all that I have is thine.  Not some, but ALL that I have, infinitely and forever, unchanging and always."

Each of us must face these conditioned fears of lack and loss in our own lives, in our individual circumstances.  Some might look bigger or scarier than others... some might seem inconsequential in the scheme of things.  But don't be fooled.  There is no hierarchy of illusions, and there are no projected beliefs that are more or less important than any others, or any more or less true or real.  They are all made up, learned, conditioned... all mental constructs without any substance.  We may live and move in the world as if they were true, but when we remember God and our true life in God, we remember the infinite freedom in which we live and move and have our being.  We are always safe, always fulfilled, and always home.  Where else would we be, since God is All? 

Every day my prayer is to return to the Truth of Being... that there is only God, and God is All and only Good. That God is Love, and only Love.  My prayer is for a deeper awareness of what the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of Spirit IS... and for a deeper knowing of the nothingness of all our projected fears and lacks and limitations that make up the so-called laws of the projected world... an illusory world of thought-forms, dreams and imagination without substance.  In Reality there is nothing but God, and we live and move and have our Being in God's Oneness.  What does that make us?

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom.  I am under no laws but God's.  I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me.  I suffer only because of my belief in them.  They have no real effect on me at all.  I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's.  And His are the laws of Love and Freedom." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 88, 3:2-8