The Laws of Chaos

In this exploration, we brace ourselves and take the plunge into The Laws of Chaos (ACIM, T-23.II) in A Course In Miracles (ACIM) in a class given for the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. (I highly recommend Lyn and Tim’s almost daily zoom classes!)

The antidote to ego’s Laws of Chaos (discouraging, dualistic dreams)  is Heaven’s non-dual law of forgiveness (sameness and shared interests). Here’s a quote about Heaven’s Laws:

“Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. ²But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven’s laws. ³What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? ⁴What if you really understood you made it up? ⁵What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? ⁶Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this? ⁷And would you see it?” (T-20.VIII.7:1-7)

Here is a whimsical quote from Ken Wapnick about “The Laws of Chaos”:

“It’s the worst section in the book.”

Ken quotes from the end of that section:

“Brother, take not one step in the descent to hell. ²For having taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what they are. ³And they will follow. ⁴Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven.” (T-23.II.22:1-4)

… and then comments further:

“The work – the Course’s ‘shortcut’ is to pay careful attention. try not to let the slightest bit of annoyance escape you, because if you do, the next will follow. … It’s like a very slippery slope; once you start you go all the way down very quickly. Hate feeds on itself. Anxiety feeds on itself. Depression feeds on itself. If you stop a rock from rolling down a hill at the beginning it’s easy. …(Later it builds momentum and mass.) …Catch it at the beginning.” – Ken Wapnick

This ever-more-chaotic world is typified by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (a.k.a. entropy or disorder … or chaos):

“An increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, often referred to in the concept of the arrow of time.”

One variation of Murphy’s “Law”:

“If something can go wrong, it will.”

We assume – if we buy into ego’s pervasive propaganda – that we’re in a protected “bubble” at least temporarily, where we have some limited control over situations closest to us. Yet if we examine the material world honestly, we don’t really have much control over outcomes in the world, let alone understanding of what factors influence those outcomes. Ego desperately tries to hide both its impotence and cluelessness behind an arrogant façade of competence. We’re in no position to judge or rule anything; we dreamt up chaos so that we could be vulnerable and have a built-in excuse for everything that seems to befall us, reversing cause and effect.

Synonyms for chaos: … this time I’ll work in reverse order, saving the synonyms with the most occurrences until the end.

So, not explicitly mentioned in ACIM (but implied, since every thought in the ego’s split mind is chaotic):
disarray, mayhem, pandemonium, tumult, commotion

bedlam: 1 instance in ACIM:

“Frantic and loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. ²Yet they know not their “enemy,” except they hate him. ³In hatred they have come together, but have not joined each other. ⁴For had they done so hatred would be impossible. ⁵The army of the powerless must be disbanded in the presence of strength. ⁶Those who are strong are never treacherous, because they have no need to dream of power and to act out their dream. ⁷How would an army act in dreams? ⁸Any way at all. ⁹It could be seen attacking anyone with anything. ¹⁰Dreams have no reason in them. ¹¹A flower turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes a giant and a mouse roars like a lion. ¹²And love is turned to hate as easily. ¹³This is no army, but a madhouse. ¹⁴What seems to be a planned attack is bedlam.” (T-21.VII.3:1-14)

havoc: 2 instances in ACIM:

“All attack is Self attack. ²It cannot be anything else. ³Arising from your own decision not to be what you are, it is an attack on your identification. ⁴Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because when you attack, you must have forgotten what you are. ⁵And if your reality is God’s, when you attack you are not remembering Him. ⁶This is not because He is gone, but because you are actively choosing not to remember Him.

If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind you could not make such an insane decision. ²You make it only because you still believe it can get you something you want. ³It follows, then, that you want something other than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it must be. ⁴Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will only look at it. ⁵By deciding against your reality, you have made yourself vigilant against God and His Kingdom. ⁶And it is this vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him.” (T-10.II.5:1–6:6)

“Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. ²Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. ³In pain is God denied the Son He loves. ⁴In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. ⁵And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery.” (W-190.8:1-5)

turmoil: 8 instances in ACIM; here’s one example:

“The purpose of your learning is to enable you to bring the quiet with you, and to heal distress and turmoil. ⁵This is not done by avoiding them and seeking a haven of isolation for yourself.” (W-rI.in.4:4-5)

disorder: 8 instances in ACIM; here’s one example:

“The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned themselves. ²They do not wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation go. ³And so they separate into their private worlds, where everything is disordered, and where what is within appears to be without. ⁴Yet what is within they do not see, for the reality of their brothers they cannot recognize.” (T-13.V.4:1-4)

disruption: 9 instances in ACIM; here’s one example:

“What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt, and must give rise to joy. ⁴This makes it invulnerable to the ego because its peace is unassailable. ⁵It is invulnerable to disruption because it is whole. ⁶Guilt is always disruptive. ⁷Anything that engenders fear is divisive because it obeys the law of division. ⁸If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. ⁹Guilt is more than merely not of God. ¹⁰It is the symbol of attack on God.” (T-5.V.2:3-10)

madness: 144  instances in ACIM; here’s one example:

“The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. ²The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. ³Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. ⁴For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death. ⁵Children are born into it through pain and in pain. ⁶Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. ⁷Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. ⁸They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. ⁹They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. ¹⁰And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. ¹¹Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel.

If this were the real world, God would be cruel.” (T-13.in.2:1–3:1)

That last sentence is particularly comforting when we consider that Perfect Oneness doesn’t support the cruel and tyrannical thought system we made up, and we can and will inevitably awaken from the chaotic dream of separation and separate interests.

confusion: 165 instances in ACIM; here’s one example:

“Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go, a quiet time of listening and loving. ²It should not be confused with supplication of any kind, because it is a way of remembering your holiness. ³Why should holiness entreat, being fully entitled to everything Love has to offer?” (S-1.I.5:1-3)

chaos: 37 instances in ACIM; 16 of 37 instances of the word “Chaos” in ACIM are in Chapter 23, but that leaves 21 other mentions of ego’s crazy minded attempt to make sense of its nonsense thought system:

Here is one instance of the word chaos:

“There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. ²Seek not to retain the toys of children. ³Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. ⁴The dream of judgment is a children’s game, in which the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. ⁵What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. ⁶Except he judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. ⁷And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made. ⁸Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. ⁹Nor have its laws been changed because he does not understand.” (T-29.IX.6:1-9)

We’ll now consider each of the “Laws of Chaos”:

“The ‘laws’ of chaos can be brought to light, though never understood. ²Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason’s sphere. ³Yet they appear to be an obstacle to reason and to truth. ⁴Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain. ⁵It is essential it be understood what they are for, because it is their purpose to make meaningless, and to attack the truth. ⁶Here are the laws that rule the world you made. ⁷And yet they govern nothing, and need not be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond.” (T-23.II.1:1-7)

We need to trust and accept Holy Spirit’s evaluation of ego’s seeming obstacles to truth; allowing that calmness to permeate our mind so that we see that nothing chaotic happened in truth and there is no meaning in the meaningless world of separate interests, dualistic dreams and the world’s perplexing propaganda.

“The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. ²Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a different set of thoughts that set him off from others. ³This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable and therefore true. ⁴Each one establishes this for himself, and makes it true by his attack on what another values. ⁵And this is justified because the values differ, and those who hold them seem to be unlike, and therefore enemies.” (T-23.II.2:1-5)

What we value is what is “true” for us, depending on which thought system we’re learning and teaching ourselves. If we value separate interests, that “truth” leads to an “inescapable” conclusion that we are all at war on the battlefield, fighting to preserve our innocence at the expense of everyone else’s. Holy Spirit gently reminds us that there’s another purpose, another set of values that doesn’t make sin real, doesn’t make the warfare against God and each other an inevitable oblivion. We can see peace instead of separate interests, sinlessness instead of sin.

“Think how this seems to interfere with the first principle of miracles. ²For this establishes degrees of truth among illusions, making it seem that some of them are harder to overcome than others. ³If it were realized that they are all the same and equally untrue, it would be easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to all of them. ⁴Errors of any kind can be corrected because they are untrue. ⁵When brought to truth instead of to each other, they merely disappear. ⁶No part of nothing can be more resistant to the truth than can another.” (T-23.II.3:1-6)

What part of “I have given everything all the meaning it has for me” do I want to deny? HS gently, patiently reminds, “the things you think you need don’t matter” All my projected illusions – my calls for love – are equally forgivable.

“The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death. ²This principle, closely related to the first, is the demand that errors call for punishment and not correction. ³For the destruction of the one who makes the error places him beyond correction and beyond forgiveness. ⁴What he has done is thus interpreted as an irrevocable sentence upon himself, which God Himself is powerless to overcome. ⁵Sin cannot be remitted, being the belief the Son of God can make mistakes for which his own destruction becomes inevitable.

Think what this seems to do to the relationship between the Father and the Son. ²Now it appears that They can never be One again. ³For One must always be condemned, and by the Other. ⁴Now are They different, and enemies. ⁵And Their relationship is one of opposition, just as the separate aspects of the Son meet only to conflict but not to join. ⁶One becomes weak, the other strong by his defeat. ⁷And fear of God and of each other now appears as sensible, made real by what the Son of God has done both to himself and his Creator.”
(T-23.II.4:1–5:7)

Sin vs. error; errors can be corrected; the ego has no “undo button” in its thought system; the very existence of a (silly seemingly separate) self is “proof” of guilt and demands punishment. HS gently, patiently says that ego’s chaotic blathering ain’t necessarily so, as Workbook Lesson 134 reminds! :-)

“Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. ²It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. ³It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. ⁴It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. ⁵It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.” (W-134.7:1-5)

Returning to chapter 23:

“The arrogance on which the laws of chaos stand could not be more apparent than emerges here. ²Here is a principle that would define what the Creator of reality must be; what He must think and what He must believe; and how He must respond, believing it. ³It is not seen as even necessary that He be asked about the truth of what has been established for His belief. ⁴His Son can tell Him this, and He has but the choice whether to take his word for it or be mistaken. ⁵This leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. ⁶For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son’s belief in what he is, and hate him for it.”
(ACIM, T-23.II.6:1-6)

Our ego-mind basically proclaims: “I’ll take care of my own punishment, god; you can have the day off.” We seem to have stepped in, usurped God’s rule (and Heaven’s Laws of forgiveness), threw God off the throne, under the bus, and told Him that the guilt we made is true. Not wanting to incur that wrath, we proactively and preemptively step in as jury and judge for the impossible crime we couldn’t commit, deliver a guilty verdict and cruel sentence to pre-empt our fears of an even more severe sentence from (ego’s) god.

“See how the fear of God is reinforced by this third principle. ²Now it becomes impossible to turn to Him for help in misery. ³For now He has become the “enemy” Who caused it, to Whom appeal is useless. ⁴Nor can salvation lie within the Son, whose every aspect seems to be at war with Him, and justified in its attack. ⁵And now is conflict made inevitable, beyond the help of God. ⁶For now salvation must remain impossible, because the Savior has become the enemy.” (T-23.II.7:1-6)

There’s no where to turn in ego’s dream, so it makes up a world to project the horrific nightmare of sin, guilt and fear and hope that it stays not in my (ego) mind’s backyard… Over the fence it goes to the realm of special love and special hate games.

“There can be no release and no escape. ²Atonement thus becomes a myth, and vengeance, not forgiveness, is the Will of God. ³From where all this begins, there is no sight of help that can succeed. ⁴Only destruction can be the outcome. ⁵And God Himself seems to be siding with it, to overcome His Son. ⁶Think not the ego will enable you to find escape from what it wants. ⁷That is the function of this course, which does not value what the ego cherishes.” (T-23.II.8:1-7)

Ego doesn’t allow for any possibility of getting back to the mind, which it has designated as a “keep out” zone at all costs. To keep us mindless, we need serious distractions to keep us forever fire-fighting and battling lost causes, but with shifting hopes to keep the hoax from being exposed.

“The ego values only what it takes. ²This leads to the fourth law of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true. ³This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken. ⁴By this, another’s loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never take away save from yourself. ⁵Yet all the other laws must lead to this. ⁶For enemies do not give willingly to one another, nor would they seek to share the things they value. ⁷And what your enemies would keep from you must be worth having, because they keep it hidden from your sight.” (T-23.II.9:1-7)

If I can maintain a special love relationship with someone or something at all times, my ego thinks it can ward off the “attack” of sanity which would suggest that peace can’t depend on externals, nor can strife. Ego endlessly seeks for what will disappoint, knowing that without an adversary, it will be confronted with the obvious fact that its intrinsic lack of serenity is self-inflicted.

“All of the mechanisms of madness are seen emerging here: the “enemy” made strong by keeping hidden the valuable inheritance that should be yours; your justified position and attack for what has been withheld; and the inevitable loss the enemy must suffer to save yourself. ²Thus do the guilty ones protest their “innocence.” ³Were they not forced into this foul attack by the unscrupulous behavior of the enemy, they would respond with only kindness. ⁴But in a savage world the kind cannot survive, so they must take or else be taken from.” (T-23.II.10:1-4)

Fire up the blame thrower!

“You need not fear the Higher Court will condemn you. ²It will merely dismiss the case against you. ³There can be no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God’s creations is bearing false witness to God Himself. ⁴Appeal everything you believe gladly to God’s Own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him and therefore speaks truly. ⁵It will dismiss the case against you, however carefully you have built it up. ⁶The case may be fool-proof, but it is not God-proof. ⁷The Holy Spirit will not hear it, because He can only witness truly. ⁸His verdict will always be “thine is the Kingdom,” because He was given to you to remind you of what you are.” (T-5.VI.10:1-8)