Corresponding Manual for Teachers Section

Chapter 2: Characteristics of the Teachers of the Divine

10. Openness

The centrality of Openness – of open-heartedness and open-mindedness – is easily understood when Its relation to forgiveness is recognized. Openness comes with the letting go of judgment. As judgment shuts the heart and mind from the Guidance of the Divine’s appointed Teacher, so Openness invites It to come in. As condemnation judges the Children of the Divine as separate and flawed, so Openness permits all things to be truly interpreted and evaluated by the Voice of the Divine on behalf of the Divine’s Children. As the projection of guilt upon them would bind them to separation and hell, so Openness lets Divine Essence’s Likeness be lovingly projected onto them. Only the open-hearted and open-minded can be at peace, for they alone see reason for it.

How do the open-hearted and open-minded forgive? They have let go of all things that would prevent forgiveness. They have in truth withdrawn their own mis-projections from the world, and let it be restored to them in Newness and in Joy so glorious that they never could have conceived of such a change. Everything is transformed from what it was formerly. Everything sparkles now which seemed so dull and lifeless before. And above all are all things welcoming, for threat is gone. No obscurity remains to hide the Presence of Divine Essence.

Now is the Goal of this Course achieved. True and complete forgiveness, which is awakening, is the final Goal of our curriculum. It paves the way for what goes far beyond all learning.

Our curriculum makes no effort to exceed its legitimate Goal. Forgiveness and awakening are its single Aim, at which all learning ultimately converges. It is indeed enough.

It may be noticed that the list of attributes of the Divine’s Teachers does not include those things that are the Inheritance of the Children of the Divine. Thoughts such as Love, Perfection, Knowledge, and eternal Truth do not appear in this context. They would be most inappropriate here. What the Divine has given Its Children in Eternity is so far beyond our curriculum that learning simply disappears in Its Presence. Yet while Its Presence is obscured, the focus properly belongs on our curriculum.

It is the function of the Divine’s Teachers to bring true learning to the world. Properly speaking, it is unlearning that they bring, for that is “true learning” in the world. It is given to the Teachers of the Divine to bring the glad tidings of complete forgiveness to the world. Blessed indeed are they, for they are the bringers of awakening.