Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 3: Oneness and Irreconcilability
7. Effective Therapy, Teaching, and Parenting
(Undoing the Misperceptions of Others)
The prerequisites for effective therapy and teaching will include the following conditions:
- The procedure or process must involve the recognition by everyone involved of the importance of thought, rather than the denial of this importance.
- The equality of everyone who is involved, including me when I’m invited, must be genuinely honored.
- No one should be designated in a fixed role of either therapist or patient, teacher or student.
- Above all, everyone involved must want to give up everything that isn’t true. This requires true open-mindedness, which includes open-heartedness and willingness.
The reason for the negative emphasis in therapy, that is, on giving up (everything that isn’t true), is that therapy implies something has gone wrong, and it is attachment to whatever this is discovered to be that must be let go of. Even though the purpose of therapy is to correct, which of course is positive, those who are ill, out of balance, or otherwise need healing are in a temporary state on the “negative” side of health.
Therapy is exactly the same as all other forms of miracle-working. It has no separate laws of its own. All of the points that have been presented for miracles in this Course apply to therapy. This is because unless therapy proceeds from miracle-mindedness, it cannot heal.
In a situation that would benefit from therapy, the therapist will likely be in a position, and act in the role, of being the better perceiver about the situation, that is, being more objective or being able to observe things the person benefitting from therapy might not so easily observe because of their temporary state of needing expanded perspective or healing. This can also hopefully be said about a teacher in a situation where the “therapy” is that of teaching. It does not follow that either the therapist or the teacher is the better knower. Temporarily, the therapist can help in straightening out distorted perceptions, and the teacher can help in filling in conceptual content or practical skills that are lacking. These are also the roles that I would contribute myself. All that therapy and teaching should do is try to place everyone involved in the right frame of mind to help one another. It is essentially a process of true courtesy of everyone involved, including me.
It was said before that frightened people are apt to act viciously. Any form of mental illness can accurately be described as a form of viciousness. If we were willing to forgive, or see beyond, other people’s misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all.
There is little doubt that a person can explain their present attitudes toward others in terms of how these others used to look upon them or have looked upon them even recently, but there is no wisdom in doing so. In fact, basing current attitudes toward others on their past actions can justifiably be called doubtful: first because those actions were likely not interpreted with full understanding; second because even if the interpretation of the past was flawless, change since then may have happened; and most importantly because our interpretations must by definition be limited. Only Those Who are One with Knowledge can know everything about each one’s motivations, and Spirit will share what will be helpful of this knowing if one is willing to lay one’s own interpretation aside and ask Spirit for Its Perspective.
Forgiveness of misperceptions by others toward oneself, and the compassion it evokes, should also extend to one’s own misperceptions about oneself, and to those who played the special role of parent in one’s life. No one has adopted all of their parents’ attitudes as their own. In every case, there has been a long process of selection in which the individual has discarded those parental attitudes that they vetoed for themself, while retaining those they chose to keep. I said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to demonstrate that nothing can threaten Truth. This also means that no amount of misperception need have any influence at all on a Child of the Divine. The Resurrection, in which I showed that no harm came to me in spite of the most extreme expressions of misperception and viciousness, may be rightly taken as a generalizable lesson that exonerates all those who misperceive, by establishing that in reality they have not hurt or been hurt by anyone, because, as noted throughout this Course, whatever is real is invulnerable and resides in a realm that cannot be threatened.
Those experiencing situations that appear to involve the misperception of others, which at the current stage of development may include most situations, must ask themselves very honestly whether they are willing to demonstrate that their sisters and brothers, including those who acted in the role of parent to them, have not actually hurt them, that is, harmed what is eternal in themselves, through these misperceptions. Unless they are willing to demonstrate this, they will not be able to forgive others or themselves.
The essential goal of therapy is the same as that of Knowledge in the sense of “knowing oneself.” No one can survive independently in this world as long as they are willing to misperceive themself through the eyes of others instead of knowing themself through their own spirit, obstruction of which will be removed through perceiving through their own spiritual eye. Misperceiving yourself through the eyes of others will always put you in a position where you are forced to understand yourself from different and conflicting perspectives, none of which are accurate.
Because no amount of misperception need have any influence at all on a Child of the Divine, parents do not ultimately form the images that their children when mature (i.e., all mature adults) hold of themselves. Still, parents and others in a child’s or young person’s life obviously may perceive or misperceive images in, and project or mis-project images onto, the child or young person that do contribute to forming their self-image, and may strongly influence the process. However, as was indicated previously, human beings are not an image. If you give your allegiance to image-makers, that is, to those who make and hold images or misperceptions of you or others, whether these are flattering or insulting, you are merely engaging in a form of venerating “graven images” or idols. In fact there is no justification whatever for perpetuating any images of yourself or others at all, because you are not an image.
The truth about you – your true being – is wholly benign. It is essential that you know this about yourself. However, you cannot know it while you choose to interpret yourself as vulnerable and capable of being hurt by the images others hold. This kind of vulnerability is a peculiar type of arrogance, the narcissistic component of which is easily discernable. In such vulnerability a person endows their sisters and brothers with the nonexistent strength to make or form them as an image in their likeness, and then decrees this miscreation as real. There are times when this strange lack of real courtesy to others – in giving them your power in this unfortunate way – appears to be a form of true humbleness. Actually, it is nothing more than the fear of one’s own true Strength in the form of simple discourtesy toward oneself.
Parents do inevitably misperceive their children in many ways, and these misperceptions stand in the way of the child’s own knowing until they are let go of. There is no reason a parent’s misperceptions should stand in the way of their child’s knowing unless the child elects for this, an election that can only take place as long as they believe their parent did something real to them other than to bless them. The belief that your parent or any brothers or sisters have harmed you is extremely dangerous to your perception, and entirely destructive of your knowing. This is not only true of your attitudes toward others, but also toward yourself in your misperception of your “misuse” of others or your own self-harm. You may still think that responding to the errors of others and your own as if they were true is the only response that has integrity. However, by reacting in this way you are providing approval for misperceptions, which is hardly an integrative approach toward resolving this problem.
Varied responses to different circumstances never change who we truly are. Only actions, including perceptions and behavior, are capable of appropriate or misappropriate variation, but Being, Knowledge and Truth are incapable of variation of any kind. A person’s belief in themself, while belief still has meaning, will be constant through all variation if this is based on knowing the Truth of what and who they are. It is a person’s responsibility to establish beyond doubt that they are totally unwilling to identify with anyone’s misperceptions of them, including their own.
Right-mindedness is also essential in the formal teaching process, and it is obviously the teacher’s role to model this to their students. In fact, this could be said to be their primary responsibility. If a teacher becomes concerned with factors that are irrelevant to the content of their lessons, such as the physical condition of a classroom, the number of students they will be instructing, the hour of the course, and many other elements that they may choose to select for emphasis as a basis for misperception, they will have lost sight of the Truth of what any interpersonal relationship in the teaching-learning situation is for, which is ultimately awakening to the truth about our being as Children of the Divine. It is not true that the difference between student and teacher is lasting. They meet in order to abolish the difference between them.
At the beginning, teacher and student come together on the basis of inequality of ability and experience. The aim of the teacher is to give the student more of what the teacher has access to but that is temporarily lacking in the student. This process has all of the miracle conditions that have been referred to in this Course. Teachers (like all miracle workers) give more to those who temporarily have less, bringing their student closer to equality with them, at the same time having their own strengths increased. The only inequity in this situation, as in that of therapy, is that the teacher (or therapist) does not gain the same benefits from the process as the student (or patient), because they do not need the same things from the process. If they did, their respective, though temporary, roles would not be conducive to mutual benefit. Freedom from fear can be achieved by both teacher and student, therapist and patient, only if they do not compare either their needs or their roles in regard to each other in terms of judgments such as higher and lower.
Presumably, children must learn from parents. What parents learn from children is merely of a different order. Ultimately, there is no difference in order, but this understanding involves only Knowledge, which is only of one Order. Neither parents nor children can be said to have Knowledge if their relationship seems to exist on different levels according to the different roles played. The same is true of the teacher and the student.
Students when they become mature must ultimately forgive what they perceive as the shortcomings of their former teachers just as children must of their parents. Children will have an authority problem only if they believe that their self-image is being controlled or unduly influenced by an authority. This is an act of choice on their part because they are electing to misperceive the authority and give it this power. Teachers with an authority problem are those who have given the misperceptions of their students authority over their own self-esteem, and as a result refuse to truly teach their students, yet want to maintain themselves in the teaching role where they believe they can be misused by their students. This is a form of the belief in sacrifice, and makes them resentful of teaching because of what they insist it has done to them. Note that this authority problem can apply in the larger context to any miracle worker, and is the basis of a particular form of the martyr fallacy.
As with any “desert,” the only way out of this particular dysfunctional situation may be simply to leave it. The way to do this is to release everyone involved by absolutely refusing to engage in any form of “honoring” error through reacting to it miscreatively. Neither teacher nor student is imprisoned by learning unless they use it as an attack. This is the case even long after both have left the actual classroom. Any time anyone uses any situation as a basis or reason for attack of any kind, including the taking of offense or holding of grudges, grievances or resentment, they will be bound by their misperception even if they refuse to be engaged at all in the actual process activating their attack.
The role of teachers, properly conceived, whether in a formal or informal learning experience, is one of leading themselves and others “out of the desert,” i.e., out of a state of lack, meaning any state that is not genuinely nourishing. The value of this role can hardly be overestimated. It was one to which I very gladly dedicated my own life. I have repeatedly asked my students to follow me. This means that to be effective teachers, therapists, parents, and miracle workers in general, they must interpret teaching, therapy, and miracles as I do. I have made every effort to teach you entirely without fear being part of the process. If you do not “learn, listen, and allow” in fulfillment of your assignment in the Great Awakening, you will be unable to avoid the very obvious error of misperceiving teaching and learning as a threat.
Teaching is obviously a process the purpose of which is to produce learning. The ultimate purpose of all learning is to abolish fear. This is necessary so that knowing can happen. In order to abolish fear one must be willing to go through fear to understand that it is merely a faulty way of framing Reality. The trust placed in a parent, teacher and therapist is a major aid in being willing to be led through fear to Light, including the fear of facing what may be perceived as personal shortcomings that would in the first place require being helped in this way. Establishing this trust and honoring it with a child, student or patient is clearly one of the core aspects of the learning and healing process.
The role of the teacher is not the role of the Holy Spirit, i.e., to impart revelation or Knowledge to their students. This confusion is all too frequently made by teachers, therapists, parents, spiritual leaders, and anyone active in the realm of exchanging ideas in the teaching-learning situation. In addition, any teacher who believes that teaching is fearful because of the “power” of ideas to influence cannot be a learner themself because this belief is incapacitating. They also cannot really teach while they hold this belief.
The purpose of this Course is to prepare you for Knowledge, as is the only real purpose of any legitimate course in awakening. All that is required of you as a teacher, therapist, parent, or other miracle worker is to ask all things of Spirit, and to walk with me and all our sisters and brothers as equal Children of the Divine.
