What are the Levels of Teaching? · Mt.3

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v1.0 · Course text used under CIMS license

Manual for Teachers

Contents

Opening

Introduction

Mt.In

Question 1

Who Are God's Teachers?

Mt.1

Question 2

Who Are Their Pupils?

Mt.2

Question 3

What are the Levels of Teaching?

Mt.3

Question 4

What Are the Characteristics of God's Teachers?

Mt.4

Question 5

How is Healing Accomplished?

Mt.5

Question 6

Is Healing Certain?

Mt.6

Question 7

Should Healing Be Repeated?

Mt.7

Question 8

How Can the Perception of Order of Difficulties Be Avoided?

Mt.8

Question 9

Are Changes Required in the Life Situation of God's Teachers?

Mt.9

Question 10

How Is Judgment Relinquished?

Mt.10

Question 11

How Is Peace Possible in this World?

Mt.11

Question 12

How Many Teachers of God Are Needed to Save the World?

Mt.12

Question 13

What Is the Real Meaning of Sacrifice?

Mt.13

Question 14

How Will the World End?

Mt.14

Question 15

Is Each One to Be Judged in the End?

Mt.15

Question 16

How Should the Teacher of God Spend His Day?

Mt.16

Question 17

How do God's Teachers Deal With Their Pupils' Thoughts of Magic?

Mt.17

Question 18

How Is Correction Made?

Mt.18

Question 19

What Is Justice?

Mt.19

Question 20

What Is the Peace of God?

Mt.20

Question 21

What Is the Role of Words in Healing?

Mt.21

Question 22

How Are Healing and Atonement Related?

Mt.22

Question 23

Does Jesus Have a Special Place in Healing?

Mt.23

Question 24

Is Reincarnation True?

Mt.24

Question 25

Are "Psychic" Powers Desirable?

Mt.25

Question 26

Can God Be Reached Directly?

Mt.26

Question 27

What Is Death?

Mt.27

Question 28

What Is the Resurrection?

Mt.28

Question 29

As For the Rest

Mt.29

Back

Question 3

What are the Levels of Teaching?

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1The 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.

2The 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 accident," two students who happen 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 man 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.

3It 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 the 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.

4Each 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.

5The 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.