Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet centre of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet centre, 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 centre will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this centre, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it (T-18.VII.8).

The Course is not silly and when it seems not to be making sense it is simply that we have somehow misunderstood or confused ourselves. At that point, in addition to asking how someone else understands it, I think it helps to go back to the Course and study it some more to see what it is actually saying. For instance, it can be very confusing just to take one statement like "I need do nothing" and start speculating about it. But reading the whole section will probably bring clarity.

A discussion group like this is only valuable if it helps you to better read the Course for yourself and practice it. The other value a group has is that it serves as yet one more classroom in forgiveness. Remember that no one here is a graduate of the Course who is able to actually live it from moment to moment without exception. Furthermore, we all have our blind spots and areas of misunderstanding. We're all beginners. Some of us learn by asking questions and some of us learn by attempting to answer questions. But nobody here is a replacement for your own Inner Teacher. As Helen wrote in the Preface to the Course: "Its only purpose is to provide a way in which some people will be able to find their own Internal Teacher."

Also, the fact that we're caught up in special relationships and dependency is not to be judged as "bad" and therefore to be avoided. The point of the Course is to be able to look honestly and objectively at what's going on with us without judgment. We look without judgment when we invite Jesus into the process, or when we're right minded.

As far as interpersonal relationships are concerned, it's not a question of avoiding them, but of allowing the Holy Spirit and Jesus to give them a different purpose -- the purpose of forgiveness. Relationships in our dream are the curriculum when we allow the dream to become a classroom in forgiveness.

As for spending the day in observing and undoing the ego, yes, that's the point. But there's another part of that, which is that when we step back from the ego we allow Jesus or the Holy Spirit to be our guide in the dream. We don't become immobilized. Rather, we are mobilized by love and forgiveness rather than specialness. But most of the time we're going to continue to come from the ego, at least in the early years with the Course (like, maybe the first twenty or thirty! -- or maybe the first two or three lifetimes!). So, we continue to act out ego motivations, but now we have the ability to step back and look at what we're doing and why. That's the beginning of changing our mind -- changing our inner teacher, which is what the "miracle" is all about.

Your part is only to remember this; you do not want anything you value to come of a relationship. You choose neither to hurt it nor to heal it in your own way. You do not know what healing is. All you have learned of empathy is from the past. And there is nothing from the past that you would share, for there is nothing from the past that you would keep. Do not use empathy to make the past real, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let healing be done for you. Keep but one thought in mind and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be to judge any situation, and to determine your response by judging it. Focus your mind only on this: I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest. I have invited Him, and He is here. I need do nothing except not to interfere (T-16.I.3).