This can be especially confusing for new students. Therefore, if you’re drawn to a particular teacher, by all means, learn all you can from them. But remember that when it comes to A Course in Miracles there are no experts, gurus or saints. We are all both students and teachers—we teach and learn from everything we do or say—and the Course itself holds all the answers we need.
Longtime students share their wisdom while newer students can ask questions that spark helpful discussion. But groups can also still e-learning when dominated by a leader who insists that they and they alone understand the Course. In all things, we are wise to use discernment and trust our inner guidance in determining whether or not a particular study group or teacher will be helpful.
The Course itself says nothing about learning from an outside teacher. It does, however, have a great deal to say about learning from our Inner Teacher. One of the cornerstones of ACIM is the idea that we each have within us an Inner Teacher, which the Course calls the Holy Spirit, Who is the Voice for God. (Please note that it is the Voice for God, not the Voice of God.)
The Holy Spirit is the communication link between our mind and God’s Mind, as long as we believe that we are separate from God. If invited, the Holy Spirit can become our source of guidance in all things, once we have learned how to listen to and trust His Voice. The Course instructs us that, “The curriculum is highly individualized, and all aspects are under the Holy Spirit’s particular care and guidance. Ask and He will answer.”
(Manual for Teachers, Section 29, paragraph 2:6-7) This means that the Holy Spirit knows exactly what you uniquely require to shed your mistaken beliefs about yourself and the world and return to your true Self in God. We learn to turn to Him and trust His answers over our own. Of course, trust in the Holy Spirit can only be developed over time with practice. We must be willing to ask for guidance, then listen and then put that guidance into practice, if we want to experience its results. We cannot see spirit with our physical eyes.
It is invisible. But we can experience its effects and through them become certain of its reality. This is different from prayer as it’s commonly practised because we are not asking for the things of this world or any particular outcome to our problems. We need only to release everything to the Holy Spirit in the understanding that we are incapable of knowing what will truly help us. As Workbook lessons 24 and 25 states: “
I do not perceive my own best interests” and “I do not know what anything is for.” Given this, we ask for help in seeing our problems differently, correctly—from the Holy Spirit’s perspective. It is this changed perception that brings with it release from conflict and opens the door to miracles.
