More on Learning

A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself.
Bruce Lee

The process of finding truth

In finding truth, in determining what is real and what is unreal, we go through a process.  It begins by seeking, asking a question, a somewhat quiet pleading for the truth. A teacher will then show up in some form with a lesson. The lesson may be offered by the body of an actual teacher, a book, a quote, a conversation, or scripture.   The lesson may come in the form of a loss, a mistake, a life circumstance, a challenge or opportunity in which case we could say Life was the teacher.

The Teacher's Lesson

 Regardless of how or in what form, the teacher presents us with a lesson.  If the lesson holds the truth...that which we all seek whether we know it or not...we begin to own it slowly and gradually.   We begin by reciting the lesson just like we recited the alphabet to our kindergarten  teacher.  We speak it out loud, testing how it feels on the tip of our tongues. We repeat it again and again and again.  When we do this we are breathing out the learning into the world.  We are actualizing what is now in our minds.  The more we repeat, the more we begin to accept it as at least partly true. 

We may still have reservation about it.  We may still doubt if it is true but at least we are beginning to accept it.  We then study it further.  We consider it more.  We question, examine, analyze it.  We practice it.  We apply it.  We live it. We become quite serious about our learning until the lesson makes so much sense to us it can no longer be disputed.    We finally own it as the truth. We file it away in our subconscious mind where it will live forever.  It feels good!  From there we begin to teach by pointing others in the right direction.

I figure that I am at the part of my learning where I am seriously considering the validity of it. I want to accept all of it.  I take my studies seriously!  :) I know someday...there will be no doubt about what I know and I will teach others by guiding them with no more than a gentle hand on the small of their backs.

Loss is not loss when properly perceived.  Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all.  Any suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream.  This is the truth, at first to be but said and then repeated many times; and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations. Then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth.  I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.
ACIM  Lesson 284