like a shark that needs to keep swimming to live

What you know of as yourself—that part of you that is conscious—believes that nothing can happen unless it does something. Unless it is moving (thinking, seeking, processing, being busy with one doing or another) it does not perceive itself as existing.

The truth is that only when this mind stops moving/thinking/seeking, or when attention is, for even a moment, taken completely off this moving mind, that that which is the source of the moving mind can come into awareness.

More accurately, it doesn't move into awareness, because it has never not been here, but it is available to knowing because the disturbances of the moving mind have momentarily ceased. It is not available to the mind we think of as "me."

Basically it comes down to trust. "I need do nothing," as ACIM maintains, is directed at the ego...the moving, seeking, shark mind. This mind will never find. But getting it through your head that there is actually something completely outside the parameters of what can be experienced, thought of and perceived by "me," which will not cause you to lose anything, is a leap of faith. And yet "I" cannot make this leap. "I" simply have to stop. The mechanics of the leap have nothing to do with "me."

You really do have to get to the point where you realize that "me" is a completely closed system. It will never come up with anything new. You can't take it along.

Comments

[Leslie]

Dear Marian,
Boy...if THAT doesn't hit the nail on the head I don't know what does.
The house thing is up again. There is no right answer. I mentioned to a friend of mine… ‘PLEASE don't write
back with suggestions of what I might be able to do’. The ego has made it
clear that nothing it can 'do' will work. It has presented its own self-destruction.
There has to be this 'leap of faith' that you mention. But it's not a leap of
faith by 'me' -- that you also mention.
The 'closed system' of me has definitely presented itself face-on.
With love,
-Leslie

[Aileen]

I've been thinking about what "I need do nothing," means and like you, I'm seeing clearly that it's a letting go of our ego's investment in doing things in the world. It's saying, I do nothing with my ego because the ego can only reinforce the conflict. Until we read ACIM as a mind and not as a body/self that seeks answers in the world, it's impossible to make that distinction.