Identifying Your Inner Teacher
When I write articles like the past two where I emphasize the centrality of your awareness of your inner teacher (Holy Spirit) to your sense of inner peace, I hear from those who say they are not aware of their inner teacher. Everyone experiences their inner teacher at some point, but they may not identify it as such. So, let’s look at some obstacles to identifying your inner teacher.
The expectation that your
inner teacher will stand out, be
something dramatic, lofty, or special in some way. Your inner teacher is always
in your mind, and its ordinariness may make it hard for you to pick it out from
ego’s many, also familiar experiences. So, it sounds and feels like you, but a
quiet, rational, detached you.
Your inner teacher is
quiet, so easily lost in ego’s
cacophony. However, this quiet can be how you distinguish it from ego—in time.
Ego will try to be quiet to mimic it, but you will sort that out in time through
other indicators (see below).
We discuss your inner
teacher as a “voice”, and we say things like “hear it” when it does not
always come as a voice or with words. Often it is an
intuition or unformed thoughts, or simply an unexplained, comforting presence
or peace, or a strong feeling to say something or act in some way.
You may feel “unworthy of
God”, so even when you do experience your
inner teacher, you do not identify it as coming from truth within.
What your inner teacher
says may be what you have decided it will never say, so you dismiss it. For example, it may suggest setting
boundaries with someone or even letting go of a relationship when you expect it
will tell you how to “forgive” so that the relationship is “healed”. Or, you
may have decided that because A Course in Miracles says (or anyway you
think it says) that you should heal the body with the mind that it can’t
possibly be your inner teacher telling you to get to the doctor pronto for that
persistent pain you’re having.
Your inner teacher may
say what you do not want to hear. In
this case, you may recognize it is your inner teacher but play an elaborate
game with yourself to deny it is your inner teacher. Later, when you’ve dropped
the denial, you will say, “Well, I always knew that was my inner teacher, but I
didn’t want to do what it said.”
Your inner teacher may
say what you do want to hear so
you think it cannot possibly be your inner teacher. Sometimes, what ego wants
and what is to happen line up, although ego and your inner teacher will have a
different perception or interpretation of the situation. For example, ego in
you may want a certain job for prestige and you recognize this is ego, so you
feel you shouldn’t apply for it. But you still feel strongly prompted to apply
for it. Just because ego comes along doesn’t mean the situation is not to
happen. In fact, while your mind is split (ego is still there), ego will
be coming along all the time, and you will have conflicting motivations,
perceptions, and interpretations. The trick is to learn to sort ego out from
your inner teacher so you know which is which, not to avoid situations just
because ego is using them for itself.
Some refer to their inner
teacher as their wiser self or higher self. This indicates how it
can show up, how it can feel. It is detached, never emotional. This includes
its love, which is not personal, but is just love itself. If you wonder
if you are experiencing ego or your inner teacher, your inner teacher leads to
a sense of liberation from guilt and fear. When it is ego, guilt and fear
remain the same or increase.
It can take a long time to sort out your inner teacher from ego. In a way, that process never stops while ego is in your mind, because not just religions but all spirituality occurs only in ego-consciousness. So, your experience of your inner teacher is a distortion of truth. This doesn’t matter, of course, because none of this has any effect on truth. What we’re concerned with here is your experience in the framework of ego, which becomes more peaceful in direct proportion to your awareness of and trust in your inner teacher.
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Comments
You're just in the wrong place. There are almost endless spiritual programs.
The point is you are not alone.
When you (the reader of this) lie down to sleep and begin to dream, the dream characters and dream events are not human beings. That’s obvious to see looking from the outside in at the dream. The person having the dream is projecting it out from his mind. Everything our mind wants to see is projected out in the dream.
But the dream characters believe they are human. You see this by their reactions to events. When your pet dog is asleep and begins to whine and his legs begin to move, we know he is having a very active dream.
If the dream characters in the dream, suddenly turned to you during the dream (the one having the dream) and said, “Hey we are not real, we are part of your dream” you would most likely waken very startled. Best for everyone if the awareness is gradual. That’s what MIRACLES do. Wake all “the dreamers” gradually. But for this to ever happen you need to know what is going on. The big picture, like what are MIRACLES for? Maybe some One will write a book… or a course better still.
Gods Son in Heaven fell asleep and is projecting His dream. It is about earth. His dream is taking some pretty crazy turns. All this happened long ago. We are seeing a necessary re-run. The re-run is for the dream figures to wake up to their situation on earth. This will waken “the dreamer” in heaven… or at least change the dream.
Chapter 28 III
A father walks into an intensive care unit in a hospital where his only son is lying there unresponsive. The Father feels intensive grief to see his son lying there. He is not asleep dreaming. He is in a coma. There is nothing the father can do. Shaking him won’t work…
A famous neurosurgeon comes in and says there is only one hope that the father will ever speak to his son again. Somehow the deep mental state his son is in has to awaken him. Make him aware that he is in a coma and to awaken. The cure has to come from within his sons mind.
What his son is experiencing in his comatose state is a dream like state of being in a place called earth.
God talks to His creation the Son of God.
“Think you the Father lost Himself when he created you? Was He made weak because He shared His love? Was He made incomplete by your perfection? Or are you proof that He is perfect and complete? Deny Him not His witness in the dream (us) His Son (Son of God in heaven) prefers to his reality. He must be savior from the dream he made, that he be free of it. He (Son of God) must see someone else not as a body, one with him without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live.” Chapter 29 III.
“Condemn your savior not (sleeping Son of God dreaming) because he thinks he is a body. For beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a savior first, before he ( SOG) can remember what he is. And he must save who would be saved. On saving you depends his happiness. For who (SOG) is savior but the one who gives salvation? Thus he (SOG) learns it must be his to give. Unless he gives he will not know he has, for giving is the proof of having. Only those who think that God is lessened by their strength could fail to understand this must be so. For who could give unless he has, and who could lose by giving what must be increased thereby?” Chapter 29, III, 1