Valuable Doing

“I do therefore I am”, says the ego. When you are ego-identified you are defined by what you do. When you follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance you say, “God is, therefore I AM.” What you do is merely an expression of your relationship with the Holy Spirit and the doing is itself unimportant.

The Holy Spirit is not concerned with what you do, but it is natural that your connection with the Holy Spirit will be expressed in the world in some form. As always, your connection to the Holy Spirit is what is important, not the form of the expression of this connection. The ego always emphasizes form; the Holy Spirit content. For example, let’s say you got a job as a construction worker. Depending on its mood or the overall story it has made for you, the ego will use this as a source of pride or shame. It may say, “You are doing valuable work building this city. You are an important contributor to society” or “You are in a lowly, blue collar job. People of real value work in an office”. However, if you are centered in the Holy Spirit the job isn’t personal. You know it is not the work you do, but your Oneness with the Holy Spirit that has value. You will look at the work as a way to extend God’s Love in your awareness and you will be grateful for it as a means of support in the world.

The ego will always judge what you do, but it becomes most vicious when what you do is an expression of the Holy Spirit and not of it. Then what you do is a threat, not because of the particular thing you do, but because you are coming from Something it cannot understand. It will attack the form because it has no real content to offer you in exchange for the Content you have accepted. If attack doesn’t work it will try to take over the form and make the form about the ego (which you experience as making it personal). For example, I was led to both my house cleaning business and my mentoring practice and writing by the Holy Spirit. With the house cleaning, which I started a year after I became a student of A Course in Miracles over 20 years ago, the ego attacked me for not using my intellect more, for not making more money, etc. Sometimes it tried to tempt me into other jobs or careers. But I stuck with the house cleaning because it was what felt right even though I couldn’t always justify it in the world’s terms. When mentoring and writing unfolded, the ego told me no one would want them, that they were pointless, that no one actually says out loud the things I say or writes about the things I write about. It has offered me a hundred ideas of how I could make more money or get recognized. But now the ego’s attacks just go past me and its offers don’t even tempt me because I have much more in my relationship with the Holy Spirit than it could ever offer with its various forms.

When you are connected to the Holy Spirit the content – the meaning -- of everything you do is as a means of extending God’s Love in your awareness. In other words, forgiveness becomes the purpose of all “doing”, no matter the form doing takes.

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