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Teaching and Learning
The role of teaching and learning is actually reversed in the thinking of the world. To teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same. Teaching is a constant process; it goes on every moment of the day, and continues into sleeping thoughts as well.
To teach is to demonstrate. From our demonstrations others learn, and so do we. The question is not whether we will teach, for there is no choice in that. We must choose what we want to teach on the basis of what we want to learn. We cannot give to someone else, but only to ourselves, and this we learn through teaching. Our teaching is not done by words alone. Any situation must be to us a chance to teach others what we are, and what they are to us. No more than that, but never less.
It is the teaching underlying what we say that teaches us. Teaching but reinforces what we believe about ourselves. The self we think is real is what we teach. This is inevitable. Everyone who follows the world's curriculum teaches solely to convince himself that he is what he is not. Herein is the purpose of the world. What else would its curriculum be?
Into this hopeless and closed learning situation, God sends His teachers. As they teach His lessons of joy and hope, their learning finally becomes complete. Without God's teachers there would be little hope of salvation for the world of sin would seem forever real. The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. And what else is hell?
The teachers of God are not perfect, or they would not be here. Yet it is their mission to become perfect here, so they teach perfection over and over until they have learned it. Then they are seen no more, although their thoughts remain a source of strength and truth forever. Who are they? How are they chosen? What do they do? How can they work out their own salvation and the salvation of the world?
The book, A Course in Miracles, attempts to answer these questions.
