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A
Course in Miracles
Manual
For Teachers
Introduction
(continued)
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 an 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.
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.
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.
How
can they work out their own salvation and the salvation of the
world?
This
manual attempts to answer these questions.
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