Choosing Between the Laws of the Dream and the Laws of God: A Reminder of What You Are

In this world we call “reality,” we’ve been taught to live by laws of cause and effect that seem inevitable: time, karma, illness, punishment, suffering as a path to learning, the idea that pain must atone for past wrongs… These are what we might call the laws of the dream—a thought system built on the belief that we are separate from our Source.

But they are not true. They exist only within the ego’s thought system, which has invented an entire world to cover the guilt of having believed it could separate from God.

A Course in Miracles calls them the laws of chaos, because they rely on a single fundamental error: the belief in separation.

The Laws of the Dream: Punishment, Karma, and the Illusion of Redemption

In the worldview of the ego, if you do something “wrong,” you must pay for it. If you hurt someone, you’ll be hurt in return. If you want to succeed, you must fight, earn it, and maybe suffer along the way. It’s a logic based on lack, merit, and sacrifice.

Even the concept of karma—if not transcended through the lens of oneness—becomes a spiral of debts to be paid, sins to be atoned for, and pain to be endured in order to finally “deserve” peace.

But the Course is clear:

“God does not know retribution. His Son is free.” (T-3.I.6:6)

You have nothing to pay. What you believe needs fixing is based on one illusion only: the belief that you separated from Love, and must now suffer to regain what was never actually lost.

The Laws of God: Where Only Love Is

In contrast to the illusion-based laws of the dream, there are the laws of God. These never change, because they rest on what is unchanging: Pure Love, Oneness, Absolute Truth.

According to these laws:

• You are innocent, because God creates only innocence.

• You are one with all, because nothing is separate.

• You are forever loved, regardless of any behavior.

• You have nothing to fix, for “errors cannot really change the truth.” (T-9.III.6:2)

“God’s laws give only.” (W-344.1:1)

“Your only responsibility is to accept the Atonement for yourself.” (T-2.V.5:1)

You have nothing to prove, nothing to earn. Peace is already here.

But as long as you believe in guilt, you will unconsciously choose to be punished for what never truly happened.

We Do Not Know What Love Is

The Course insists: we do not know what Love is.

“You do not know what love is, and that is your handicap.” (T-13.V.3:1)

As long as we define love through the mind or the body, it remains tinged with expectations, conditions, or protection.

As long as we think loving means doing good according to certain values—being nice, eating this but not that, behaving a certain way—we stay within a system of judgment, and therefore, within duality.

All Judgments of Good and Bad Come from the Ego

Every time you believe there’s a “right” way and a “wrong” way, you’re judging—and giving reality to the separation.

“Judgment is based on the assumption that you have the ability to judge reality rightly.” (M-10.2:3)

And this applies to everything:

• Believing vegetarian food is “purer” than meat assumes the body is real, that form holds power over spirit.

• Thinking certain sexual practices are more spiritual than others still gives form a false value.

• Believing there are “high” emotions and “low” ones ignores the truth that all ego emotions stem from a single mistaken thought.

Judgment keeps you believing that something has been done wrong—by you or another. And so someone must pay. But ask yourself:

Do you still want the other to pay for their mistakes?

Then you are still choosing to keep your own.

Because as long as you believe someone deserves to suffer—even subtly—you believe that you also deserve some form of punishment.

“Forgiveness is the key to happiness.” (W-121)

“I will forgive, and this will disappear.” (W-193)

Choosing Imprisonment… or Liberation

Every day, every moment, you make a choice. But it’s not a choice between actions in the world—

It’s a choice between two thought systems:

• The ego’s, which ties you to the laws of the dream and belief in guilt.

• Or the Holy Spirit’s, which reminds you that you are as God created you.

You can continue believing there are mistakes to correct in form,

Or you can choose the Atonement now: the remembrance that the error never happened.

“I need do nothing except not to interfere.” (T-16.I.3:7)

Truth or Illusion: There Is No Compromise

There is no softened version of Truth. Either you are in God, or you are dreaming.

Either Love is, or you believe in an illusory world.

“Truth has no opposite.” (T-6.V.A.4:1)

“You think you must fit into a world you perceive. Yet that world is only an outer picture of an inward condition.” (T-21.in.1:5)

As long as you believe things still need to be fixed in form, you’re choosing the dream.

As long as you believe in “right behaviors” or “wrong attitudes,” you affirm the idea of a personal self capable of doing right or wrong.

But there is no salvation in form. There is only forgiveness.

Conclusion: The Only Real Law

You are not under the laws of the dream.

You are not a body, not a story, not a wounded identity to heal.

You are Love.

And Love obeys no law but its own.

Whenever you wish to return to truth, you can say:

“I am not under the laws of this world.” (W-76)

“I am as God created me.” (W-110, W-162, W-199, W-219…)

And remember:

You can choose again at any moment.

Choose Love.

Choose Truth.

Choose to stop asking anyone—including yourself—to pay for a mistake that never was.