Laws/Rules

I got this in my e-mail box:

It is your rules that make unlawful beings. You would get along better if you would just trust each other to treat each other appropriately, but you don't. So you keep making laws -- until you make criminals of everyone.

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Chicago, IL on Sunday, April 25th, 1999 #430

I understand this in the broader context it is meant, and when I think of this in a personal context, I think of rules with children. We make rules because we don't trust people's process, their path, their learning. Rules stunt learning and show distrust. People have this vision of "no rules" as complete chaos, which is not reflective of our life -- not to say things don't get chaotic and that it is not a result of a lack of rules, but I believe life is meant to be messy, and chaos is a form of movement and an opportunity to appreciate its contrast (stillness) and find a new way.

We don't need rules to do things; for example, we don't have a rule about not hurting each other -- we just make choices that feel good to us, and usually they lead to not hurting each other because we love each other or don't want to deal with the reprocussions, etc. Sometimes, we may chose to hurt each other (a snap-decision, not planned), and when that happens, we talk about it. We understand that it hurts the person who was the hurter and it hurts the person who was hurt. I strive to not see either as good or bad, just as each defending something important to them, and I trust whatever that is. Because we "allow" it, we all learn a lot about it, and we each get life lessons from it. Another reason we don't have a rule against, say, hitting, is because we don't want to forbid that, since there are instances where hitting is perfectly acceptable, like defending oneself against harm. So, it is part of the process of how we interact with others and protect ourselves. There are so many lessons embedded in the journey of it -- I would hate to stump my kids' learning by forbidding it by making a rule against it.