The Five Roles of Doing: Based on ‘I Need Do Nothing’

The role of doing is a great source of confusion among spiritual seekers. On the one hand, emphasizing the importance of our own doing seems to push God out of the picture. On the other hand, we need to do something. If we just sit and twiddle our thumbs, not only will we starve to death, but the chances of enlightenment just dawning on us out of the blue are extremely slim.

The section “I Need Do Nothing” (T-18.VII) can be seen as a profound commentary on doing and non-doing. It presents five different roles for doing, five different ways in which we might use it to seek benefit. With each of the five, I’ll include a chunk of “I Need Do Nothing” and put in boldface the material that pertains directly to that particular aspect of doing.

1. Arranging our world for the sake of our comfort, protection, and enjoyment

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 the body an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this always means you still find sin attractive. No one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who prefer pain and destruction.

At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never wholly in the present. In any single instant the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else, and would be avoided. It has no attraction now. Its whole attraction is imaginary, and therefore must be thought of in the past or in the future.

The bolded part (and the section itself) begins with, “You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength.” Then, as proof of this not very flattering assessment, he offers the second line: “What plans do you make that do not involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way?” At this point, you want to prove him wrong. You want to say, “I make lots of plans that don’t involve my body’s comfort or protection or enjoyment.” But when you actually go through the plans you make, you inevitably find that he’s right.

He’s right because this is what we do with our time: we arrange our world (through action in the present or planned action in the future) in order to procure comfort, protection, and enjoyment for our body and our separate self. That’s what human being do. It is the first and most obvious role of doing.

The paragraph then heads off in one of those strange directions the Course often takes. It says that treating the body as an end amounts to treating sin as an end. The real attraction in doing for the body is our unconscious attraction to guilt. This sounds simply bizarre, doesn’t it? As I write this, I’m sipping on a smoothie I just made for breakfast. It actually doesn’t taste that great (too healthy), but I want it to taste great. Of course, I’m not thinking “I really want it to taste great because that makes the body an end in itself and that feeds my need to feel like a sinner.” Yet that is exactly what is going on, according to the Course.

Strangely enough, there is evidence for this. The evidence is that the more we arrange the world for the sake of our body and our separate self, the less we feel clean and innocent and holy. After a lifetime of pushing and pulling our world into shape so that it can delight our taste buds, so to speak, we don’t like ourselves. We may feel superior and important, but deep inside we feel corrupt. We tell ourselves we did what we had to do, but we still can’t shake the gnawing sense that we are stained. If, when we seek comfort, protection, and enjoyment, we always find guilt, it makes a certain kind of sense that that’s what we were really seeking all along, even if we didn’t know it.

Questions

How much of your time and energy are involved in arranging for your body’s comfort, protection, and enjoyment—either directly or indirectly (by, for instance, earning a paycheck)? Let a number from 1 to 10 come to mind. Just put down the first number that pops into your head. It may or may not be totally accurate, but it will be telling.

Based on how you live your life, how much of your happiness do you see as dependent on your arranging for your comfort, protection, and enjoyment? Again, write down the first number from 1 to 10 that pops into your head.

If you really believed that by pursuing the comfort, protection, and enjoyment of your body, or of your separate self, you were actually pursuing the goal of sin, the goal of seeing yourself as a sinner in your own eyes, what would happen to your scores?

2. Doing the right thing to make ourselves worthy

It is impossible to accept the holy instant without reservation unless, just for an instant, you are willing to see no past or future. You cannot prepare for it without placing it in the future. Release is given you the instant you desire it. 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. You may be attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin. Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is hated and despised. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.

Here we have two examples of “attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted”—meaning, the goal of salvation. The first is trying to make the self that you despise (after all of its seeking for comfort, protection, and enjoyment) into a holy self by “fighting against sin.” This calls to mind images of monks flagellating themselves, or of teenage churchgoers wrestling with all the sinful impulses swirling through their bodies. The second is spending “long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body.” Here the attempt to make a sinful self holy is less obvious, but it’s still there. The clue is in spending long periods of time trying to rise above the body—the seat of sin.

In both cases, then, you are engaging in a kind of doing. It is an inner doing, a spiritual doing, but it is still a doing, for it is aimed at changing reality. In this case, it is not outer reality that it’s meant to change, but the reality of your identity. This inner doing is aimed at making your sinful self a holy self. It’s aimed at changing your nature from corrupt to pure.

Yet this provides the basis for the Course’s criticism of this kind of doing. It says that this will get you to salvation, but it will take a long time, for such approaches “look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.” Right now you are unworthy, sinful, tied to the body. But these efforts will purify you and make you worthy, holy, above the body. Yet remaking yourself takes a long time, and that’s the problem with these approaches.

We can broaden this kind of effort to include anything we do that is designed to make our identity worthy. And that covers a huge amount of what we do. It is the chief motivation in much of what we do, and a secondary motivation in virtually everything else. While you are completing some task at work, you may primarily be doing it because that’s your way of getting a paycheck, but you are no doubt also doing it to make yourself a tiny bit more worthy, and save yourself from unworthiness (which would result if you did a poor job or didn’t do it at all).

So what the flagellating monk and meditating monk are doing—seeking to make themselves worthy by doing the right thing—is the same thing we are doing, all the time.

Questions

What are some of the activities that you do that make you more worthy in your eyes? These can be spiritual, self-improvement, taking care of responsibilities, doing favors for others, being a responsible citizen, etc.? What are some of the things you do that make you feel “I am really good”?

Based on how you live your life, how much of your happiness (from 1 to 10) depends on making yourself worthy in your eyes, as well as in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in God’s eyes?

Based on the overall history of your efforts at making yourself worthy, and the overall progress you’ve made, when are you set to succeed in making yourself worthy?

3. “I need do nothing”

Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with your brother restores the universe to both of you. You are prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do nothing. It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you should do. When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; “I need do nothing.“

That final line, the focus of the section, is very enigmatic. What does it mean? I asked this question in class, and got several responses that related to the Holy Spirit acting through us, so that we are not really the ones doing the doing, so to speak. We are not so much doing but being done through. Someone quoted the biblical line, “It is not I, but my Father who doeth the works through me.”

I think this is a valid sense of “I need do nothing,” But it is not the main sense communicated by the context here. The final sentence of the above paragraph communicates that sense. Here we have the sin wrestlers and the meditators both seeking through doing to make themselves holy.

Yet when they finally reach their goal, they realize that what they sought so long through arduous efforts was actually theirs all along without the effort, prior to the effort. They sought to make themselves worthy of salvation, but as the Course says, “Your worth is not established by teaching or learning [or spiritual discipline]. Your worth is established by God” (T-4.I.7:1-2). The original dictation said, “Your worth was established by God” (emphasis mine).

Thus, “I need do nothing” means “What my doing would get for me is already mine, without the doing.”

We can broaden this to include both kinds of doing we’ve looked at. The first kind of doing attempted to get happiness for yourself from the world. But that happiness, as the Course teaches, is already ours, not from the world, but from true reality. That is captured in this quote from the Text, “In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your release. God has given you everything (T-4.III.9:1-2). In other words, we already have everything, all of reality. This has nothing to do with our efforts. It is a pure gift.

Let’s take a moment and dwell on these lines, which capture the essence of “I need do nothing”:

All that my doing would get for me is already mine, without the doing.
I don’t need my doing to grab me happiness from the world. God has given me all of reality.
My doing cannot make me worthy or unworthy. God established my worth forever.
Neither what I have nor what I am rests on my doing.
For I already have everything and already am everything.
I need do nothing.

Do you feel the liberation in those lines? What an incredible relief! Thinking that what we have and what we are hinges on our doing is such an impossibly stressful position. Our doing is so weak in the face of the world’s resistance and our own inner resistance, not to mention our finite stores of energy. And our doing is so fallible, so prone to error and short-sightedness. To think that everything of importance hinges on our doing is an intolerable burden.

That’s why “I need do nothing” carries such profound relief. It relieves us of the burden of doing. All that our doing would get for us has already been given us by God, and infinitely more. What a relief!

This third role of doing is really a non-role. It says that when it comes to that which is truly real, our doing is irrelevant and unneeded.

Questions

How much of your happiness each day flows from these ideas: “My efforts cannot make me worthy or unworthy. God established my worth forever. My efforts cannot bring me something of value from the world, but they don’t need to. There is a perfect, joyous reality that has always been mine.”

If those thoughts (“My efforts cannot make me worthy or unworthy. God established my worth forever. My efforts cannot bring me something of value from the world, but they don’t need to. There is a perfect, joyous reality that has always been mine.”) were your basic emotional stance in life, how would you go through life feeling?

The class shared that they would feel the following: carefree, trust, joyful, compassionate, spontaneous, giving, grateful, bullet-proof, a vessel of God’s Will, fulfilled, safe, “all is well,” surrendered to God’s Will.

If you went around feeling that way, how would that feeling change your life?

4. Practicing to realize “I need do nothing”

Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. You do not need this time. Time has been saved for you because you and your brother are together. This is the special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for you. Save time for me by only this one preparation, and practice doing nothing else. “I need do nothing” is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. 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. And if you recognize you need do nothing, you have withdrawn the body’s value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and escape from time. This is the way in which sin loses all attraction right now. For here is time denied, and past and future gone. Who needs do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. He will remain when you forget, and the body’s activities return to occupy your conscious mind.

This fourth role is really the holy counterpart of the second role. In the second role of doing, we did our spiritual practice (and innumerable other things) in order to subtly make ourselves worthy. Here, we still do our spiritual practice, but what we are practicing is “I need do nothing”—I am already worthy, already holy.

The theme of practice is clear here in this section. We are told (in the material under role #3) to “concentrate on” the idea that we need do nothing. We are told to “practice doing nothing else.” We are told to “believe it for just an instant.”

What does this practice look like? On the simplest level, it looks like simply concentrating on and repeating “I need do nothing.” But on a more in-depth level, it means carrying out the instructions sprinkled throughout this section, “to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention,” a place in which, for an instant, we utterly forget the body (as the second paragraph of the section mentioned). If we can achieve this state of rest, stillness, and forgetfulness of the body, the Holy Spirit will come into that place and grace us with a holy instant.

If you have ever tried to establish that place of rest and stillness within you, you know that it takes practice. It takes a lot of concentration to do nothing in this sense, given how habitual activity is for us. This practice can look exactly the same as the practice we discussed under role #2, but on an inner level it is subtly but significantly different. There, there was an unconscious (or perhaps conscious) motivation to make yourself holy, to make yourself acceptable in God’s eyes, to make yourself a superior spiritual seeker, to prove yourself worthy of enlightenment. Here, there is effort and concentration, there is spiritual discipline, but it is simply for the purpose of getting out of the way of what already is, to realize that you already holy and worthy and acceptable in God’s eyes.

So here is a role for doing—practicing the thought “I need do nothing.” All of the Course’s practice is this, in one form or another. Thus, we cannot use the section “I Need Do Nothing” to explain away the need for practice. This section advocates practice. For it is true that we already have everything and already are everything, but we will not know that unless we practice.

Questions

How much of your time and energy each day is devoted to practicing some form of “I need do nothing”?

If you really believed that practicing “I need do nothing” is what would allow you to go through life with the feeling you wrote about under the last point, how much of your time and energy would you devote to it?

5. Being motivated from the quiet center to bless and serve others

Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it.

This paragraph sketches a remarkable state of being. The section’s previous paragraph spoke of us establishing a place of rest within us, in which the mind is still and totally forgets the body. Into this place, the Holy Spirit comes, granting us a holy instant. And even when this brief state passes away, the Holy Spirit will remain there.

Now this paragraph describes the relationship between this enduring quiet center within us and the activity of living. Even while we are in the midst of life’s activity, there will be this quiet center within us, in which we do nothing. Even while we are surrounded by life’s hurricane, we will carry the eye of the hurricane within us. Moreover, we are told that we will actually be more aware of the quiet center than the raging storm.

There’s one last point which is particularly significant. The quiet center will not only be there, resting us in the midst of the storm, but the Holy Spirit within that center will be sending us on busy doings, directing us “to use the body sinlessly.”

What do these things mean—”every busy doing on which you sent,” “directed how to use the body sinlessly”? These are ACIM code for our function of extending healing to our brothers, our function of saving the world. This function has two aspects to it, you could say. The first is that we do this function under His direction, not ours (“every busy doing on which you sent“). The second is that this function means serving the awakening of our brothers, rather than the needs of our separate self (“directed how to use the body sinlessly“).

Really appreciating what he means by those two phrases reveals a powerful contrast between this kind of doing and the first kind that we looked at. There, in the first, we used our own planning to do for the sake of our body’s comfort, protection, and enjoyment. This doing, in other words, was directed by our separate self for the sake of our body. Here, in this final kind of doing, we are directed by the Holy Spirit for the sake of our brothers. In the first kind of doing, the body was central in our mind. In this last kind of doing, the body is absent in our mind, or at least in the quiet center in our mind. The first kind of doing resulted in a sense of sinfulness. This last kind of doing results in a sense of sinlessness.

Both amount to doing in the world and arranging the world to suit our purposes. But in every other respect they are opposite.

It may be tempting to think that the first kind (arranging the world for the sake of our bodily needs) is mandatory, while the second kind, however wonderful, is optional. Yet the Course would say that if you really enter into the second kind, your bodily needs get taken care of for you. “You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill” (T-20.IV.8:8)

Questions

Have there been times when you felt that the quiet center within you was both giving you rest and motivating you to bless others and lift them out of suffering? Can you think of any specific examples?

Were those times happier than when you were in the first mode we discussed (arranging for your body’s comfort, protection, and enjoyment)?

If you could choose right now how much of your day you would spend in this mode—with the quiet center within you giving you rest and motivating you to bless and serve others—how much of your day would you choose?

Conclusion

It seems as if we have to engage in the first two kinds of doing, as if we have to arrange our world to meet our bodily needs, as if we have to do something to make ourselves more worthy. After all, if we don’t, what will become of us? We will be a homeless, starving, degraded, worthless individual.

Yet the realization that “I need do nothing” allows for a completely different relationship with doing. That realization means that God has already given me everything that my doing would get for me, and infinitely more. Where it really counts, therefore, my doing doesn’t matter.

Out of this realization I can engage in a new form of spiritual practice, practice designed to instill deeply into my mind the fact that I need do nothing. And I can engage in a new form of doing in the world. Rather than doing that is directed by my separate self for the sake of my separate self, I can do in a way that is directed by the Holy Spirit for the sake of my brothers. I still act, I still do, but my doing rests lightly on the peaceful foundation that what I have and what I am does not rest on my doing; that because of God, I already have and already am everything.

I have attempted to put this in table form, adding an assumption behind #1 and #2 and rearranging things somewhat:

Unstated assumption: We are inherently lacking and unworthy. We need to do, therefore, to fill our lack and make ourselves worthy.	3. We need do nothing. God has already given us everything our doing would get for us.
2. We do the right thing to make ourselves worthy. This includes doing our spiritual practice to turn our sinful self into a holy self.	4. We do our spiritual practice not to make ourselves worthy, but to instill in us the full realization that we need do nothing.
1. We do under our own direction for the sake of our own comfort, protection, enjoyment.	5. We do under the Holy Spirit’s direction for the sake of our brothers and their awakening.

 
[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]