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Chapter 25: Undoing the Spell of Specialness

2. I Need Do Nothing

You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this always means that you still find guilt attractive. Atonement is not wholly welcomed by those who prefer pain disguised as pleasure. All who accept Atonement for themselves have relinquished separation as their goal. They have thus met their sole responsibility.

We have progressed far together in this Course, and it is our shared will to continue the journey of awakening to its completion. There is one thing still to do that will help you with this goal: to entirely forget the body, even if only for an instant. Your body has faded at times from your waking attention, but has it completely disappeared from your awareness, even for a moment?

You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, but it is in this Instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterward, you will perceive the body again, but never quite the same. And every Instant that you spend without awareness of your body gives you a different view of it when its perception returns to you.

At no single instant does the body actually exist in Reality at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced as it truly is just now. This is because it is an effect. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely. In a similar way unholiness is never present. In any single instant that you are fully present, the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else, and would be avoided. It has no attraction now. Its entire attraction is imaginary, constructed in fantasy, and therefore must be thought of from the past or in the future.

It is impossible to accept the Holy Instant without reservation unless, just for that Instant, you are willing to see no past or future. You cannot prepare for this experience without placing it in the future. Release is given you the instant you desire It fully, apart from memory or anticipation. Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have, indeed, achieved their Instants of success. This Course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time. But it does aim at saving time.

Some attempt to follow a very long road to the goal of awakening they have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against the belief in flaw, unholiness and unworthiness—the belief in “sin.” Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is despised and rejected because of its believed unholy or “sinful” nature. Nor are long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body or a lifetime of contemplation necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their Purpose. But the means are tedious and very time-consuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a perceived state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.

The Way this Course offers toward the same Goal of Freedom will be different, not in purpose, but in means. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One Holy Instant experienced together restores the Universe to the awareness of both of you. You are prepared. Now you need only remember that you need do nothing. It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this, than to consider what you should or need to do.

When Peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation, and fight against giving in to “sin;” when the Light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation and meditation; or when the Goal of Freedom is finally achieved by anyone, It always comes with just one happy Realization: “I need do nothing.” Here is the ultimate Release that everyone will one day find in their own way, at their own time. Yet time is not needed. Time has been saved for you because you are together. Your holy relationship is the means this Course uses to save you time.

You would therefore not be making best use of this Course if you insist on using means that have served others well in the past, neglecting what was made for you now. Save time for us by only this one preparation, and practice doing nothing else. “I need do nothing” is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty to what has already been done and accomplished for you, and that only awaits your acceptance, not your doing. It is the acceptance of the Atonement for yourself. Believe it for just one Instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation or of struggle against temptation.

To do anything involves the body. So if you recognize you need do nothing, then you have withdrawn the body’s value from your mind and let it be directed by One who knows its best use in every situation. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort and release yourself from time. This is the way in which the idea of unworthiness loses all attraction right now. For here is belief in time withdrawn, and past and future gone. They who need do nothing have no need for time.

To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within yourself where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. It will remain when you forget and the body’s activities return to occupy your conscious mind. But there will always be this place of Rest to which you will return. And you will be more aware of the quiet Center of your life than of all of time’s raging activity.

This quiet Center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy situation to which you are sent. For from this Center will you be directed how to use the body without strengthening the illusion of separation. It is this Center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of It. From this Center the body will serve Spirit’s Purpose well. And in this Center you will dwell in the Blessing of That which you have accepted for yourself, each time you remember, “I need do nothing.”