IV. Teaching and Healing, P 5
5 Teaching is done in many ways, above all by example. Teaching should be healing, because it is the sharing of ideas and the recognition that to share ideas is to strengthen them. I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which arose in me because I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have learned, because by so doing you can depend on it. Make it dependable in my name because my name is the Name of God’s Son. What I learned I give you freely, and the Mind that was in me rejoices as you choose to hear it.
Journal
As Jesus says, he taught in many ways. He taught with words and by performing miracles and by living what he knew to be the truth. And now he is teaching through the written word. He is sharing ideas and thus strengthening them. He tells us that teaching what we learn is important, that sharing makes it dependable.
He had a specific path as do each of us. To know our path we only need to want to know it and it will reveal itself to us. I think we know this even when we don’t know it consciously. I went to school to become a teacher, but when I got close to graduating I dropped out. I decided I didn’t want to be a teacher. But I think that desire to be a teacher was the desire to be a teacher of God and I just didn’t know how to express it.
Later in life I often lamented that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and I thought I was the only one who had no purpose because everyone else seemed perfectly happy doing what he or she was doing. I think that longing for purpose was the subconscious desire to be on my path as a teacher of God. I just didn’t yet know it.
After I found a Course in Miracles the desire for purpose grew and I often had the thought that I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, but I still didn’t realize how it could happen because I was so involved in raising children and making a living. I didn’t give the Course or the idea of being a teacher of God my full attention. It wasn’t yet time. But once in a while I got an opportunity, seemingly out of the blue, to allow Spirit to work through me, and I never forgot those times and how they made me feel.
Then, it was time for that submerged desire to reveal itself. It seemed to happen all at once as I “decided” it was time to get serious with my study of the Course and then “decided” to take courses and become a minister. I don’t believe we decide things like this, we just follow our script pretending that it was our (ego) idea.
As you can see, the seed of desire took years to grow. It happened without my conscious effort, but it sometimes requires patience as we wait for circumstances to align. Now I am a minister, a writer, a teacher of God. I have purpose and I make a difference. All the things I longed for and could not imagine in form did take form.
The way I lived my life before this transformation made me seem the unlikeliest of people to be a teacher of God. But all that is required of us is the desire to be God’s messenger and the willingness to follow guidance. And looking back on my life, I see that the ego self doesn’t even make these decisions at all. I cannot find a moment when the little me chose the path. It was more like I just felt the promptings and acted on them, or read the script and played it out.
But however it works, the more I surrender to Life and let It live me, the more peaceful and happy I am. If it had been part of my life’s plan to teach through simply living a good and kind life, then that would have been fine, because as Jesus says, teaching is done ABOVE ALL by example. For some reason I am not privy to, and although I would have been a lot more comfortable being in the background rather than in the spotlight like this, I was given this path to follow, and so I do. Probably I got this job of speaking out because I felt so unworthy and my teaching included learning that I am worthy because that is how I was created. I marvel at the intricate and perfect plan of Atonement that Jesus has provided for our Awakening.