On Teaching: "Together, Not Separate"

Yesterday I found myself falling into a typical pattern: I was fretting about how I was going to “handle” my students. As often happens, I was seeing them as “objects” separated and somewhat distant from me, and my job was to figure out how to manipulate them into thinking and behaving the way I wanted them to think and behave. I felt almost like a military commander planning a strategy for defeating the enemy. Luckily, though, a wonderful, reassuring idea returned and rescued me from this mixed-up way of thinking. I remembered that my students and I are not separate, material objects, but rather ideas in the infinite, ever-present, all-powerful Mind (which some people refer to as God or Allah). My students are not “over there” waiting to be manipulated by me; they are simply thoughts existing in the same immeasurable consciousness that I exist in. This is the plain truth of reality, and I find it astonishing that I continue to lose sight of it during the school day. I often fall into the hypnotic state where I try to pressure my students into thinking this way or acting that way, when what I should be doing is merely enjoying the spiritual dance that we are all involved in. At any given moment, my 42 students and I are gracefully flowing in the eternal waltz of ideas. There really isn’t any separate “teacher” and “class”, but only the continual unfolding of new, breathtaking ideas. I don’t need to “handle” anyone. I just need to enjoy the dance.