Reading the ACIM Manual for Teachers: Introduction

A Course in Miracles reframes traditional concepts of teaching and learning (and thus of student and teacher), with an eye toward bringing us to responsibility for healing in all our relationships.

In the traditional view, teaching is a profession, a 9-to-5 type of gig – you train, get certified, find a job, develop professionally. Teachers and learners are separate – e.g., students sit at desks facing the teacher who stands up front. Most significantly, the teacher has something the student does not – some knowledge or information, some skill – and “teaching” means sharing that something with the student.

But the Manural for Teachers of A Course in Miracles suggests that “to teach is to learn,” which means that “teacher and learner are the same” (M-in.1:5), and that teaching is “a constant process” that continues even as we sleep (M-in.1:6).

On this view, we are all students and teachers; we are all teaching and learning, all the time.

But what are we learning? What are we teaching?

The course suggests there are only two thought systems. The first – the most common, the one from which we are awakening – is ego. Ego is a fear and trauma-based understanding of self and other. When we teach and learn under this thought system, we bring forth a world and a way of living in which everyone suffers to some degree or other. In this system, there is hope of recovery or healing, and there may even be glimpses or hints of recovery and healing, but nothing actually changes in a sustainable way. There is no transformation.

For most of us, that is the world in which we live, and to which we contribute, through passivity, denial and confusion. We mean well but somehow we never quite reach a meaningful conversion, individually or collectively.

The other thought system – the alternative to the egoic system – is that of the Holy Spirit, symbolized by Jesus, in which we commit to a form of healing that involves recognizing that our actual identity is grounded in love, gentleness, open-mindedness and grace. When we teach and learn with the Holy Spirit and Jesus, we bring forth a world characterized by cooperation rather than competition, inclusivity rather than exclusion and mutuality rather than individualism.

The world and way of living brought forth under the Holy Spirit’s tutelage are the foundation of the Happy Dream, “from which awaking is so easy and so natural” (T-18.II.9:4).

In all situations, in all our relationships, what we teach and what we learn reflects which of those two systems we believe is true. Are we fearful critters bereft of love and beholden to conflict? Or are we creations of love, bent on remembering in relationship the beneficent nature and intention of creation?

Teaching is always a demonstration. Our behavior – the words we use and the actions we take – testify to others, and through them, to our self, what we believe we are. Teaching and learning are an opportunity to clarify our thinking in order to bring forth peace in all our relationships and thus to the world (which is relationship).

Teaching but reinforces what you believe about yourself . . . 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 (M-in.3:7, 9-10).

Given to ego, and the world ego brings forth, our teaching and learning is hopelessly redundant, forever recycling through the same errors of guilt, fear and powerlessness. That is what ego wants, and so that is what the world does (M-in.4:5).

God’s teachers – those who are devoted to changing their minds about who and what they are, through their relationship with Jesus and shared connection with the Holy Spirit – are the antidote to this “hopeless and closed learning situation” (M-in.4:7). They teach God’s “joy and hope” because that is what they want to learn, and their demonstration of God’s love – offered and received in the world – completes their learning (M-in.4:8).

That is our shared goal: to teach together and learn together what love is, what creation is, and what we are – together – in truth.

Teachers of God are not perfect, nor are they apart from the conditions of separation which they teach are unreal (M-in.5:5). We are all called to be teachers of God, and we all are teachers of God. A Course in Miracles is one way of reaching this state of helpful and dialogic creativity. The Manual for Teachers – following the Text and Workbook – is designed to help us realize our calling and respond to it in clear and helpful ways.

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But what does this look like in practice? That’s always the important question in A Course in Miracles, right? Our study has to sugar out in a sustainable and transformative practice.

How does this new configuration of teaching and learning fit into that?

The curriculum of A Course in Miracles arises out of an underlying spiritual identity crisis. It arises from our confusion about what we are in order to help us undo that confusion and come to clarity.

Therefore, the ACIM curriculum is literally the life before us, with all its challenges and joys, disappointments and cruelties, ecstasies and everydayness. It all fits; it all belongs. We couldn’t exclude it if we wanted to.

To teach is to demonstrate (M-in.2:1). Helen was a perfectionist and a skilled writer by the time she began working on the Manual. “Demonstrate” is not an accident, which means that its range of meaning – including, significantly, behavior – is intentional.

Our words and our behavior – the living that our belief system brings forth – is perceptible to others. We demonstrate it for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters. They do the same. It is an intelligible shared performance. We teach other how to see us and they teach us how to see them. All our behavior, all the time, is a testament to what we believe we are and what we believe others are.

A Course in Miracles suggests that its purpose to “provide you with a means of choosing what you want to teach on the basis of what you want to learn (M-in.2:5). If we are unhappy in a relationship for any reason at all, it is an invitation not to assign blame but rather to deepen our commitment to “[t]each only love, for that is what you are” (T-6.I.13:2).

This requires us to be in relationship with one another. Since nobody can be excluded from the teaching/learning dynamic, the classroom goes with us everywhere. We are always the student and always the teacher. Nothing required to facilitate our shared education in love is kept from us. Everything is given in every moment. Understanding this liberates us from our mistaken identity – and the mistakes that identity calls forth. All healing is an awareness of God’s presence to us now.

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Critically, when ACIM refactors the teaching/learning relationship, it makes an important statement about our relationship with fear. If the classroom is literally the life before us – without qualification or condition – then fear is also a part of the curriculum. Fear, too, has a place at the table.

In other words, we don’t have to be afraid anymore. In particular, we no longer have to be afraid of fear. There is nothing left to fear, including fear.

This is a deeply liberating understanding. It means that whatever comes up is okay to look at – it means that whatever comes up for us is supposed to come up. If we need to talk about family history, it’s okay. If we need to go out and be politically active, it’s okay. You want to go to therapy? Get sober? Take guitar lessons? Go to India? Quit ACIM altogether?

It’s okay. It’s more than okay.

“There’s nothing to fear” means there is no longer any reason for us to judge. We can let the Holy Spirit take that function over. Fear and judgment are related, and when we no longer fear fear, we begin to see how shallow and misguided our judgment is. We don’t want to hold onto it; all it brings us is grief. We want the other way; we are ready for it.

Thus, everything in our lives becomes a joyful lesson in what it means to love – to be remembered in love, recognized in love, held in love, offered up in love, gazed at in love and celebrated in love. We become happy together in natural, serious and sustainable ways.

In a sense, “teaching and learning” in a devoted ACIM practice are simply about giving attention to our lives and participating in them as gently and lovingly as possible. The function of the Manual for Teachers is to nurture this participation, strengthen our commitment to it, and helpfully contextualize its effects.