Your role as a teacher is often to help people through their pain. Our instinctive response is to take someone’s pain away, but it’s important to remember that only God can do that. Our role is to give people permission to feel their feelings, then help them surrender those feelings to God.

A lot of lessons come with emotional pain, for often the pain is due to things that are difficult to look at. The pain isn’t just that our lover left, but that we behaved in ways that made it more probable they would. The pain isn’t just that we lost our job, but that we behaved in ways that made it more probable we would. It’s only when we can look at our pain with brutal honesty and self-awareness that we can make the changes to ensure better results next time.

Your job as a spiritual teacher, then, is to bear witness to someone’s suffering but always with an eye to the growth that can come from it. And part of that growth is the realization that this too shall pass. “Okay, you’re down today, but this is not the end.” As they say, it’s not over ‘till the happy part. And if the happy part isn’t here yet, then it’s not over. The end of the journey—the Promised Land, the resurrection, the enlightenment—is the evolution of our consciousness, the point from which we can recognize that all is truly well. Your own faith in the morning that follows every night of darkness is the greatest gift you can give your student.

The art form of teaching is the capacity to be fully present for your student’s pain, yet not enrolled in the illusion that is permanent. Try always to bear witness to their agony, but stay absolutely convinced that joy awaits them beyond this moment.

Marianne Williamson