Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
Hang on a sec…
The role of teaching and learning is actually reversed in the thinking
of the world. The reversal is characteristic. It seems as if the teacher
and the learner are separated, the teacher giving something to the
learner rather than to himself. Further, the act of teaching is regarded
as a special activity in which one engages only a relatively small
proportion of one’s time. The course, on the other hand, emphasizes that
to teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same. It also
emphasizes that teaching is a constant process—it goes on every moment
of the day and continues into sleeping thoughts as well.
2 To teach is to demonstrate. There are only two thought
systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true
all the time. From your demonstration, others learn and so do you. The
question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice.
The purpose of the course might be said to provide you with a means of
choosing what you want to teach on the basis of what you want to learn.
You cannot give to someone else, and this you learn through teaching.
Teaching is but a call to witnesses to attest to what you believe. It is
a method of conversion. This is not done by words alone. Any situation
must be to you a chance to teach others what you are and what they are
to you. No more than that, but also never less.
3 The curriculum that you set up is therefore determined
exclusively by what you think you are and what you believe the
relationship of others is to you. In the formal teaching situation,
these questions may be totally unrelated to what you think you are
teaching. Yet it is impossible not to use the content of any situation
on behalf of what you really teach and therefore learn. To this the
verbal content of your teaching is quite irrelevant. It may coincide
with it or it may not. It is the teaching underlying what you say that
teaches you. Teaching but reinforces what you believe about yourself.
Its fundamental purpose is to diminish self doubt. This does not mean
that the self you are trying to protect is real. But it does mean that
the self you think is real is what you teach.
4 This is inevitable. There is no escape from it. How could
it be otherwise? Everyone who follows the world’s curriculum, and
everyone here does follow it until he changes his mind, teaches solely
to convince himself that he is what he is not. Herein is the purpose of
the world. What else, then, would its curriculum be? Into this hopeless
and closed learning situation which teaches nothing but despair and
death, God sends His teachers. And as they teach His lessons of joy and
hope, their learning finally becomes complete.
5 Except for God’s teachers, there would be no 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? This is a manual for the teachers of God. They are not
perfect or they would not be here. Yet it is their mission to become
perfect here, and so they teach perfection over and over in many, many
ways until they have learned it. And 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? This manual
attempts to answer these questions.