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Created page with 'Image:lighterstill.jpgright|frame <center>'''What Are the Levels of Teaching?'''</center> The teachers of God have no set teaching level. Each teac...'
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<center>'''What Are the Levels of Teaching?'''</center>


The 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.

The 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 chance," two students "happening" 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 adult 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.

It 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 a 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.

Each 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.

The 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.

[[Category:Manual for Teachers]]

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