This morning I was reading in A Course In Miracles Manual For Teachers. There’s a section at the very beginning on page 10. It’s a funny section because it’s denoted with a letter, the letter A. It’s the only place in the book that they have a section enumerated with a letter. As I was discussing it with my spiritual partner we read:

The teacher of God needs this Period of respite. He has not yet come as far as he thinks. Yet when he is ready to go on, he goes with mighty companions beside him. Now he rests a while and gathers them before going on. He will not go on from here alone.

ACIM T:4:I:A:6.9-13

This is from the section development of trust and the quote comes from a section after the person who is going through several periods of growth.

teachers describing the characteristics of God’s teachers. It’s trying to help us see how we are all teachers all of the time through demonstration of how we live our life. We show who we are to others and teach what we think is important to others through our actions.

With all of the dramas of life dealing with money, cars, jobs, for children, and resources needed for children it’s hard to build on the spiritual work that I do. Life’s two directions seem at odds. How do we live in the world but not be “of it.” The spiritual journey is not about what goes on in our day-to-day lives however the piece we desire is what we want in our every day lives.

Trust

A Course in Miracles describes the characteristics of God’s teachers being founded on trust. Without trusting that your teacher knows what you need to learn you would never follow a teacher who doesn’t know what you need to learn. You wouldn’t go to medical school to learn how to be a rocket scientist. You don’t plant corn and expect beans to grow. Without trust we are nothing.

The teachers of God have trust in the world because they have learned it is not governed by the laws of the world made up.

ACIM T4:I:1.4

The drama that we live in and the games that people play are the laws of the world. God the eternal is beyond time and therefore beyond a dimension we can sense. It makes it elusive and difficult to understand, the only way to get to the peak is to stand on the shoulders of the spiritual people that have come before us. Following a teacher and being a teacher are swirled together like a gray Ying Yang.

Development of Trust

Subsection A starts on page 10 of the Manual for Teachers and it describes the stages (or periods) that a teacher goes through in order to become… I’m gonna call it effective.

The first one is called “a period of undoing.” Jesus tells us that this. Need it not be painful, but it usually is so experienced. T4:I:A:3:2.2 Adding at the end “these changes are always helpful.” T4:I:A:3:2.7

We come back to this theme over and over; that things need not be painful, however, we usually experience them as such. And it’s because we invest in the things that we ultimately realize value. And that no matter how much we strive to achieve, we earn and it’s never fulfilling. Unfortunately money, property, and things that are seen as valuable in the world fall into this category. Even the money that makes the world-go-round. B a teacher of God may ultimately mean giving up the way of the world.

To this is suicide and there’s no way out of it. I might even put myself in that group today although based on what I read I may end up moving through that.

After that comes “The Period of Sorting Out”, “The Period of Relinquishment”, “The Period of Settling Down”, then “The Period of Unsettling”, just before “The Period of A“

Presently the period of unsettling is the most unsettling to me right now and might be indicative of where I’m at, although it’s pretty easy to see that you can’t really tell from the inside. It’s even unsettling it comes after the Period of Settling Down.

It’s like having a snow globe that never settles.

The idea of sacrifice so essential to his own thought system had made it impossible for him to judge. He thought he had learned willingness but now he sees that he does not know what the willingness is for. And now he must attain a state that may remain impossible to reach for a long, long time. He must learn to lay all judgment aside, and ask only what he really wants in every circumstance.

ACIM T4:I:A:3:7.5-8

This paragraph ends with something that I would think is sarcasm if Jesus was capable of it.

Were not each step in this direction so heavily reinforced, it would be hard indeed!

ACIM T4:I:A:3:7.9

More on these six stages as I learn, until then peace be with you.