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Study of Manual for Teachers 1/15/12

Day 15

4. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOD’S TEACHERS?

1 The surface traits of God’s teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body’s eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial “personalities” are quite distinct. Nor, at the beginning stages of their functioning as teachers of God, have they as yet acquired the deeper characteristics that will establish them as what they are. God gives special gifts to His teachers, because they have a special role in His plan for Atonement. Their specialness is, of course, only temporary; set in time as a means of leading out of time. These special gifts, born in the holy relationship toward which the teaching-learning situation is geared, become characteristic of all teachers of God who have advanced in their own learning. In this respect they are all alike.

Jesus says God’s teachers don’t look alike and that their personalities are distinct. That caught my attention because when I first started studying the Course I thought His teachers would be perfect in their outward appearance. I don’t mean looks of course, but I thought they would act like they were already awake, and it was confusing for me when that didn’t happen. In fact, it seems that many of them have lots of personality flaws.

I had to learn to not confuse the messenger with the message, and of course it was an opportunity to practice forgiveness and look at my desire to judge. I would not be able to take my place among the teachers of God until I let go of this mistaken belief because I would never live up to my standards and so would never feel worthy.

The special gifts Jesus speaks of would be things like the ability to channel and to scribe such as Helen did and Regina does. Maybe the ability to write like I do. I have always had the desire to write but every time I tried to do that it would be just awful. I decided to just settle for being a reader. Then one day I felt a strong desire to write an article for Unity Magazine. I knew I couldn’t write, but I felt such a strong desire to share that I asked God to help me. The story just flowed from me and it was published.

I think that was the first time I listened to the Holy Spirit and wrote down what I was given. I had no idea that this is what happened and had never heard of such a thing. Afterwards, I was so impressed with my writing I tried to write a fictional story. It was as awful as before. I didn’t understand it but assumed it was a one time shot and forgot about writing for a long time.

The next time I wrote was for Pathways of Light and I did it because I felt I was supposed to, and I knew that it should be my personal story and completely open and honest. Since up until that time I had always been reluctant to share on a personal level I was very surprised by what I wrote, but never questioned it.

I always began the writing by asking Holy Spirit to guide my words and I’ve been writing like this ever since. I now simply accept that the writing doesn’t come from me, but through me. I know that the Myron personality is not responsible and gets none of the credit. In fact that part is funny. The ego self wants to grab all the credit and be a famous Course writer and have everyone be amazed at her accomplishments.

Then she is afraid and feels like stepping back and pretending to barely exist, so as not to draw attention to herself. She thinks that she will fail and everyone will know what a fake she is. It is so typical ego it is funny. But in this one area of my life I hear the ego and am completely clear that it is just the ego and meaningless. I am simply following directions; my only part is to not get in the way. Sometimes I do that part well, and sometimes not. It doesn’t matter. The Holy Spirit works around all that stuff.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 1/14/12

Day 14
5 The third level of teaching occurs in relationships which, once they are formed, are lifelong. These are teaching-learning situations in which each person is given a chosen learning partner who presents him with unlimited opportunities for learning. These relationships are generally few, because their existence implies that those involved have reached a stage simultaneously in which the teaching-learning balance is actually perfect. This does not mean that they necessarily recognize this; in fact, they generally do not. They may even be quite hostile to each other for some time, and perhaps for life. Yet should they decide to learn it, the perfect lesson is before them and can be learned. And if they decide to learn that lesson, they become the saviors of the teachers who falter and may even seem to fail. No teacher of God can fail to find the Help he needs.

I see these relationships as the ones I have with my children and my family members. I think that I am my kid’s forgiveness lesson more than they are mine, though of course, it goes both ways. One area I am working with right now that centers around my children is my desire to please them. It seems it is finally time to accept healing in this area. When I first looked at this I cried just to think about having to do anything about it. The inconvenience this people-pleasing creates for me seemed a small price to pay to avoid really looking at the fear behind it.

I used Byron Katie worksheets to help me get to the thoughts that need healing. I talked to my children about this and asked them how they felt when they had to say no to someone they love. I had a good talk with Toby, my youngest, sharing with him my problem and my fears. I told him that saying yes to him and my other children was not always love, but sometimes fear; that I was actually afraid of them, afraid they would not love me if I said no. Saying that out loud to him was very helpful. It took the fear out of looking at it.

He shared that he knew this about me and that he was careful not to ask me for something that would be too much, like not asking for money I didn’t have. He knew more about me than I did, it seems. I told him that I want to heal this in myself because it is not his job to take care of me. That is my job. I’m not sure where I am in this process, but I don’t feel near as much discomfort when I think of it so I know that I am doing what needs to be done. I am accepting there is something that needs to be healed, and I am giving my willingness that it be done.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 1-13-12

Day 13
4 Each teaching-learning situation is maximal in the sense that each person involved will learn the most that he can from the other person at that time. In this sense, and in this sense only, we can speak of levels of teaching. Using the term in this way, the second level of teaching is a more sustained relationship, in which, for a time, two people enter into a fairly intense teaching-learning situation and then appear to separate. As with the first level, these meetings are not accidental, nor is what appears to be the end of the relationship a real end. Again, each has learned the most he can at the time. Yet all who meet will someday meet again, for it is the destiny of all relationships to become holy. God is not mistaken in His Son.

Hah! Two people enter into a fairly intense teaching-learning situation and then appear to separate. That sounds exactly like my marriages. I was Catholic at the time of my first divorce. The priest said I would no longer be allowed to teach Catechism or receive the sacraments. I was very angry with God for about a year, but I’ve since forgiven Him. ~smile~

I experienced a lot of shame at not being able to sustain a marriage relationship, and a lot of guilt. But Jesus tells us here that the relationships we have are deliberate. We don’t just form relationships accidentally and we get as much from the relationship as we are both able to at the time. That is a very comforting thing for me to know. Divorce was not a sin, or even a failure. We learned what we could and then we separated, which when put like that, makes perfect sense. Why would we remain together if there was nothing else for us to gain from the relationship?

Jesus also tells us that all relationships are destined to become holy, so these aborted relationships will be fulfilled at some time. A part of my mind is relieved at this. I am here to save the world through forgiveness, and it would be disturbing to think I passed up a chance to do so and now it is too late. But another part of my mind holds the memories of all that went wrong in these relationships and really doesn’t want to go there again.  Holy Spirit, could you speak to me about this?

Holy Spirit: The memories you speak of are the memories of your judgments of what happened. As your mind is healed, the judgments and the desire to judge will fall away, and so will the pain and suffering. Your experience of the situation will be very different, indeed, as you see the one before you as he is rather than as you have thought you needed him to be. You have had some experience with this already, have you not?

Me: Yes, actually I have. I have seen the anger fall away as I forgave Greg for all I thought he was guilty. I was surprised, too, that as I forgave myself for the mistakes I thought I made, it was simple to forgive him. It seemed a lot of the anger I directed towards him was just projection of my guilt onto him. When I forgave myself, I didn’t need him to be guilty.

Oh, I see. That is what you mean when you say the experience will be very different when I see him as he is rather than as I thought I needed him to be. I still don’t want to return to that relationship, and there are others that I dread the thought of returning to.

Holy Spirit: Yes, these are the parts of the relationships that remain unforgiven, or to say it differently, that you are still judging. Continue the work you are doing now as you practice forgiveness. When you next meet your brother you will welcome him with a loving heart unburdened by judgment.

Me: This is hard for me to imagine in some cases, but I know this is just a measure of my desire to judge, and judgment is the cause of my fear, not the actual situation or person. I will gladly continue my practice

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 1-12-12

Day 12

2 The simplest level of teaching appears to be quite superficial. It consists of what seem to be very casual encounters; a “chance” meeting of two apparent strangers in an elevator, a child who is not looking where he is going running into an adult “by chance,” two students “happening” to walk home together. These are not chance encounters. Each of them has the potential for becoming a teaching-learning situation. Perhaps the seeming strangers in the elevator will smile to one another; perhaps the adult will not scold the child for bumping into him; perhaps the students will become friends. Even at the level of the most casual encounter, it is possible for two people to lose sight of separate interests, if only for a moment. That moment will be enough. Salvation has come.

3 It is difficult to understand that levels of teaching the universal course is a concept as meaningless in reality as is time. The illusion of one permits the illusion of the other. In time, the teacher of God seems to begin to change his mind about the world with a single decision, and then learns more and more about the new direction as he teaches it. We have covered the illusion of time already, but the illusion of levels of teaching seems to be something different. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate that these levels cannot exist is simply to say that any level of the teaching-learning situation is part of God’s plan for Atonement, and His plan can have no levels, being a reflection of His Will. Salvation is always ready and always there. God’s teachers work at different levels, but the result is always the same.
Two thoughts occur to me as I read this paragraph. The first is that I am dismayed to think how many opportunities I have had to offer salvation, and have actively chosen not to, or have thoughtlessly chosen not to. The clerk who checked me out at the store, and others I looked right through, barely glancing at them, my thoughts on my own interests which had nothing to do with theirs.

The fellow shopper who seemed to be in my way, the child throwing a tantrum in a restaurant where I had planned to have a quiet meal at the end of a long day, the driver who raced to get the parking space up front that I thought was mine; these are all opportunities to set aside the thought of separate interests. I am going to open my eyes tomorrow. I’m going to be aware of these chances to offer salvation to that person in front of me and so to myself. I think it will be a happy way to spend the day.

The second thing that occurs to me is that I am still confused about levels within the illusion. I have thought of those chance encounters as small and so not important. And I have thought of the relationships with my friends and children and coworkers as being more important because they seem to impact me in a stronger way.

Paragraph 3 helps me to understand this. My work seems to be different in some relationships than in others, that is the level of work required for some relationships may be more intense, but the healing is equal. Perhaps my day of being more aware, and of taking full advantage of every learning-teaching opportunity will help me let go of the mistaken belief that there are levels of learning-teaching.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 1-11-12

3. WHAT ARE THE LEVELS OF TEACHING?

1 The teachers of God have no set teaching level. Each teaching-learning situation involves a different relationship at the beginning, although the ultimate goal is always the same; to make of the relationship a holy relationship, in which both can look upon the Son of God as sinless. There is no one from whom a teacher of God cannot learn, so there is no one whom he cannot teach. However, from a practical point of view he cannot meet everyone, nor can everyone find him. Therefore, the plan includes very specific contacts to be made for each teacher of God. There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship. They are ready for each other. 
Every sentence in this paragraph tells me something I am happy to know. Relationships have different forms but all have the same goal. Through the teaching-learning process they have the potential to become holy relationships in which they look on each other and see only innocence. While this can happen with any two, there are very specific contacts for all of us and they will show up in our lives.

In light of this information I look at the relationships in my life and see them in an entirely different light. My relationship with my boss has seemed to be complex. I work for my younger brother and over the past 16 years of this relationship, there has been a lot of adjustments as we learned to separate our relationship as siblings from our relationship as boss and employee.

There was sometimes a lot of contention as I often projected my frustrations onto him, and probably he did the same to me.  There was a time during those years when I wondered if our personal relationship would survive our work relationship. But there are no mistakes in salvation, so our coming together was for this purpose, and in every union there is always the potential for a holy relationship.

Slowly, over the years a lot of this has been healed and I now I laugh because I have no reason to see our relationship as separate in any way. He is my brother in every sense of the word, and now I see that the relationship was always only for the purpose of healing. Our relative positions, the work situation, all of it was just the backdrop of this healing. It is simply one more link in the chain of Atonement.

Each of my marriages was exactly the same although at the time I was struggling in the relationships I failed to realize this. I saw each of them as my hope of having my needs met. From this myopic standpoint I set about trying to achieve this goal, and failing to do so, moved on to the next possibility.

How different the relationships would have seemed if I had entered them in recognition of their only true purpose, which was to allow the special relationship to be transformed into a holy relationship. How different the outcome if I had known and accepted that we were always meant to be together for this purpose and the relationship had the potential to succeed regardless of how it seemed in the moment.

As I was reading this paragraph, a difficult relationship came into my mind. For the first time, every objection I have to the relationship and the person simply faded away. My heartfelt prayer was for the healing of this relationship. This teaching-learning situation no longer seemed to be about personalities and needs. All those things that had seemed so important just a moment ago no longer matter to me. This opportunity has been given to us that we might bless the world with its healing, and in light of that holy purpose all the petty grievances are seen as the nothing they are. Holy Spirit, thank you for this knowing. I will protect it with my willingness.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 1-10-12

Day 10

4 Time really, then, goes backward to an instant so ancient that it is beyond all memory, and past even the possibility of remembering. Yet because it is an instant that is relived again and again and still again, it seems to be now. And thus it is that pupil and teacher seem to come together in the present, finding each other as if they had not met before. The pupil comes at the right time to the right place. This is inevitable, because he made the right choice in that ancient instant which he now relives. So has the teacher, too, made an inevitable choice out of an ancient past. God’s Will in everything but seems to take time in the working-out. What could delay the power of eternity? 

5 When pupil and teacher come together, a teaching-learning situation begins. For the teacher is not really the one who does the teaching. God’s Teacher speaks to any two who join together for learning purposes. The relationship is holy because of that purpose, and God has promised to send His Spirit into any holy relationship. In the teaching-learning situation, each one learns that giving and receiving are the same. The demarcations they have drawn between their roles, their minds, their bodies, their needs, their interests, and all the differences they thought separated them from one another, fade and grow dim and disappear. Those who would learn the same course share one interest and one goal. And thus he who was the learner becomes a teacher of God himself, for he has made the one decision that gave his teacher to him. He has seen in another person the same interests as his own.

Rather than trying to untangle my thoughts about this whole time issue, I am going to simply accept that in time this began so long ago I cannot even imagine it, and at the same time, outside of time it happened… well, not at all. A thought considered an instant and then rejected. And the meeting of teacher/student which seems a revelation to me was actually inevitable. In time a new and surprising event, but not really. Ok, now that we got that straight… Ha ha ha.

I love the way paragraph 5 begins. Right away the stage is set to express the fluid nature of the teaching-learning situation. I have students I work with every day. It appears as if I am the teacher and they the student, and those are the terms we use to make things simpler to speak about. But actually, when we come together for the purpose of true learning, that is checking our egos at the door, leaving behind our separate agendas and all expectations based on what we think we know, neither is the teacher and both are the teacher.

In our emptiness we have made a place for the Teacher to come forward in our awareness and to teach through us. Since He knows the gap of personhood is an illusion He moves seamlessly from one to another, healing as we speak our inadequate words, or say nothing. All that is needed is a true Heart’s desire to be healed through our union of purpose. This profound event, this holy instant may even go unnoticed and unremarked by the two who have come together, but it is a miracle, non-the-less. It is the fulfillment of our purpose.

My experience of the process is that I have absolutely nothing to do with its fulfillment. I simply show up where prompted, follow guidance as best as I can, be as willing as I can be, and even all this is only vaguely in my awareness, and sometimes not at all. It’s not my job to choose where and with whom this is to happen. Jesus is in charge of the Atonement and knows where the chain needs to link next. What a relief to be moved, to be lived, to let go of the intolerable burden of making decisions and taking action on my own. And what an illusion it was anyway. It’s amazing how thoughtlessly I will pick that burden back up again.

Holy Spirit, I invite you to guide me today in all things, to speak through me, to move me where I am needed, and above all, to tap me on my Heart when I start running around on my own thinking I am doing something.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 1/9/12

Day 9

2 In order to understand the teaching-learning plan of salvation, it is necessary to grasp the concept of time that the course sets forth. Atonement corrects illusions, not truth. Therefore, it corrects what never was. Further, the plan for this correction was established and completed simultaneously, for the Will of God is entirely apart from time. So is all reality, being of Him. The instant the idea of separation entered the mind of God’s Son, in that same instant was God’s Answer given. In time this happened very long ago. In reality it never happened at all. 

3 The world of time is the world of illusion. What happened long ago seems to be happening now. Choices made long since appear to be open; yet to be made. What has been learned and understood and long ago passed by is looked upon as a new thought, a fresh idea, a different approach. Because your will is free you can accept what has already happened at any time you choose, and only then will you realize that it was always there. As the course emphasizes, you are not free to choose the curriculum, or even the form in which you will learn it. You are free, however, to decide when you want to learn it. And as you accept it, it is already learned. 

Yikes! What am I supposed to do with this? When the Course messes with my idea of time, my mind wants to shut down. I have trouble with the idea that my friend from Singapore is calling me, not only from a place thousands of miles away, but from the next day! Its too weird for my mind to deal with. What Jesus is telling us in the Course about time is stranger than strange to my ego mind. I want to say time does not exist and leave it alone. But it is important that I grasp the effect of time being a made up concept, at least important that I understand how this affects the teaching-learning plan.

Ok, here is what I understand, though my understanding is incomplete. I think I came into this classroom to learn something I don’t know and need to know. I think that I made all sorts of decisions during my life, choices that brought me from one understanding to the next. I think that I have met all these interesting people and that sometimes we clicked and became friends or enemies (sometimes first one then the other) and that I get to choose whether or not to continue in the relationship.

None of that is true.

To keep it simple, and not too get too bogged down in the metaphysics (which I only think I understand anyway), what is actually happening here is that I am witnessing a script long ago completed. All that other stuff from the first paragraph only seems to be happening now. Its over. A done deal. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. And by the way, it never really happened. Its an illusion, a dream, a story on an amazingly broad screen appearing in the real deal 3D.

Well jeez, am I so enamored of this story that I just can’t quit? Maybe. This is where it gets fuzzy for me. But what I do understand is that I can step out of this fairy tale at any time because while I can’t change the script, I can decide when.

To get back on ground that doesn’t move under my feet, I will turn my attention to something I can do. I can choose to see what is happening in any way I want. I can choose to see the illusion as if it is real. That’s pretty painful, but it is my choice. I can choose to see the illusion with the Holy Spirit, my Right Mind, and this interpretation is not painful. In fact it ends all suffering, and turns the story from a tragedy into a comedy.

While this would seem to be the obvious choice, I notice that it takes a lot of my made up time and all my attention just to notice when I am making poor choices, and to choose again. Still, what else have I got to do here in la la land? And what has this got to do with being a teacher of God? I am not choosing the learning/teaching situations or the teacher/students. So I can relax, sit back and enjoy the show. And, oh yeah, keep my eye on my runaway mind so that when I notice a lot of drama in the script, I can choose to listen to a different interpretation.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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