laws
Conventional: A rule which governs the way things work. A standard which one must obey or suffer painful consequences.
ACIM:
- God’s laws are the laws of love. They do not demand; they give, guaranteeing freedom, happiness, safety. They give everything to everyone. It is not a sin to disobey them; they cannot be disobeyed. The law mentioned most often is the law of extension, or cause and effect, in which thoughts extend outward, creating after their own nature.
- This law of creation becomes translated in the dream (by the Holy Spirit) into the basic law of mind or perception: Our thoughts extend outward and determine how we perceive and what we experience (see projection makes perception).
- The laws or premises by which ego thinking operates. The ego’s laws are laws of sin, which, if obeyed, result in imprisonment, punishment, and death. The ego demands obedience to them, but can only punish those who obey its laws. These are not real laws but laws of chaos (see CE T-23.III), of lawlessness.
- The laws of this world—physical, social, and religious—are projections of the ego’s laws. They are laws that limit, imprison, and kill us. Yet they are fictional (see CE W-76). They only have power over us because of our belief in them.
- Extending healing to the minds of others is a reflection in this world of God’s laws, translated by the Holy Spirit into a form we can understand. These miracles transcend the laws of this world, overturning all the physical laws of space, time, distance, mass, and magnitude (see CE T-12.X.3:2-3).
- In the holy instant, the ego’s laws are suspended and we experience God’s laws of love and freedom.
See justice.