Chapter 3 - Spirituality

My primary focus these days is spirituality, a quest more than 40 years in the making. It reached the top of my priority list in 2023 when I was 86 years old. I’m not sure why it took so long to reach that level of importance. During 2023, I watched many videos about life in monasteries and imagined that our lives could be like those of the monks and nuns depicted in them. It seemed to me that our house on its five beautiful, peaceful acres in East Taghkanic, New York, could become a retreat center, and it did on several occasions. This is not as weird as it sounds. A monastic life focuses primarily on prayer, study, exercise, creative activities, positive relationships, meal preparation, mindful eating, recreation, and work. Work at our age is not income-producing, but consists of gardening and beautifying our landscape, weather permitting. I thought that focusing on prayer and spiritual study would help me lead a meaningful life, one of holy significance, in which the sacred need not compete for attention.

Later in this chapter, I’ll describe the many spiritual activities my wife, Linda, and I pursue, but first I’ll focus on my own spiritual efforts, which have been devoted to A Course in Miracles, a psychologically oriented spirituality.

The Course

In 1965, Helen Schucman, a psychologist in New York City, after a series of inner visions and other psychic experiences, engaged in inner communication with an entity she believed was Jesus. She was never in a trance and could stop and start communicating at will. This was the beginning of seven years of “scribing” the Course. Helen would write the narration in shorthand and later dictate it to her colleague, Bill Thetford, who would type it. After seven years of scribing, this amazing set of teachings was published.

My initiation into that practice occurred one night in 1972, four years before The Course came into being and 12 years before I learned about it. That night, I got stoned on high-quality marijuana. It isn’t so unusual for people who are high to have difficulty remembering their thoughts, so I wasn’t bothered when I kept forgetting what I was thinking. My thoughts were like water on a paddlewheel, evident to me for a moment and then gone. Later that night, as I became more lucid, I thought about the thought-provoking experience I had gone through. I believed I had forgotten much, but I began to wonder if even that recollection was correct. I know this sounds convoluted, but I wondered if I had actually thought the thoughts I believed I had forgotten. I wondered if the whole night had been an illusion. Then I wondered whether the day-to-day experiences I thought I remembered had actually occurred. I wondered if everything I experienced that night was an illusion.

Later that evening and for the next few days, I read the views of several philosophers on the subject of illusion, including the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Gorgias and the eighteenth-century philosopher Bishop Berkeley. Both believed that nothing existed, and even if it did, nothing could be known about it. This was not an entirely new idea for me. By then, I had already seen the film Rashomon several times, in which the various characters offered contradictory versions of the same incident. I was also familiar with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which asks us to consider if what we think is real is actually real. These days, I regularly read the news and occasionally go on social media, but I don’t know what to believe anymore.

I decided I could live with the possibility that everything I perceived might be an illusion. But I soon forgot about all my insights as I tried to deal with the problems of what I considered my very real work-a-day world.

In May 1984, twelve years later, a friend said she was going to a workshop on A Course in Miracles. I decided to tag along so we could spend the evening together. But I was skeptical. I assumed this was simply part of the succession of New Age fads that had dropped anchor in the 80’s. Besides, I had pretty much given up on religion. I identified as a Jew, culturally, but was not interested in Judaism as a religion.

At the workshop, the leader said that, according to the Course, my body and the world were illusory. I tilted my head thoughtfully when I recalled the experience of getting high twelve years earlier and the subsequent days of exploration. I remembered accepting my own unreality as a possibility, not entirely believable, but a possibility nonetheless. I listened more carefully to what I was hearing.

But then, I began to detach. The workshop leader said that the Course had been channeled and its source was Jesus. I could not imagine having anything to do with Jesus. Perceptions toward Jesus vary considerably and may include love, admiration, fascination, fear, disdain, or hatred. Initially, mine was fear. I remember being very uncomfortable in elementary school when we sang Christmas carols. Whenever the word Jesus or Christ came around in the song, I would lip the words, as if saying them out loud would transport my Jewish ass directly to hell. To allow Jesus into my life felt like a betrayal. The thought of telling anyone, even myself, that I was involved with Jesus seemed out of the question. Nevertheless, the workshop intrigued me, and I resumed paying attention.

I heard that involvement in the Course would require me to become increasingly aware of my own thinking and behavior, particularly while interacting with others. By doing so, I could change my mind and, perhaps, my behavior if what I was thinking triggered reactions such as anger, fear, or other forms of distress. That practice, to me, was called self-observation, a subject I had studied and researched at the University of Chicago.

Connections between these seemingly disconnected events became evident in retrospect, and I concluded that getting a Ph.D. with a focus on self-observation, getting high that night, and accepting the possibility that my body and the world might be illusory had possibly been part of a calling, so I went for it. I signed up for a series of workshops with Ken Wapnick, who had worked closely with Helen Schucman, the scribe of the Course

With Ken Wapnick, my first Course teacher

It didn’t take long to make my peace with Jesus. There are many first-person statements in the channeled material, and he clearly stated that he wants to be seen as an older brother rather than a savior. I saw Jesus as a model for learning how to be a better person. At first, I identified with the behavior of the historical Jesus, and soon focused on his way of thinking as demonstrated in the published Course material. It seemed to me that since he had been through his own transformative process, imitating him would help me also get through it.

The Course involves mind training and thought reversal and has helped me reduce negative thoughts and emotions, such as anger, antagonism, contempt, and envy. With my expanding capacity for self-observation, I was able to capture my thoughts and feelings when interacting with friends and family, or when reading or listening to the news.

Over the years, I have continued to study and practice the Course, and I still do. Over time, I changed teachers, first to Jon Mondy, a prolific author and speaker, and an associate and student of Helen Schucman, and later to Emily Perry, the Executive Director of the Circle of Atonement, and her husband, Robert Perry, a respected Course teacher and scholar since 1986.

In my involvement with the Course, I was initially distressed to discover that my thinking was quite the opposite of the values that Jesus exhibited in his life and in the Course, including love, compassion, mercy, and humility. Many of my thoughts about other people were negative, particularly toward those I worked with who disregarded my requests or disagreed with me. I seemed to take pleasure in natural disasters in countries with which the United States was in physical or ideological conflict, and in states where most of the people fell on the other side of the political spectrum. Those with whom I interacted were usually unaware of that side of me since I was much too socialized, repressed, or deceptive to express those ideas openly. Nevertheless, I was not happy with the way I perceived others. I learned, in the Course, that my judgments about people are invariably wrong because I cannot understand what they’re really like from bits of perception, which are all that I can experience. According to the Course, “In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present, and to come.” I realized, not that I should not judge, but that I could not.

The Course taught me that I am never upset by a fact, but rather by its interpretation. I learned that interpretations were projections from my own mind, revealing aspects of my unconscious. In psychological terms, projection involves attributing one’s own traits, feelings, or impulses to others. When I see someone doing something, I try to figure out what they’re doing and why, but I give every action all the meaning that it has for me.

Accordingly, I learned not to blame others when I got upset, because I believe they are not responsible for my thoughts or feelings, no matter what they are doing. That is not condoning the other person’s behavior. It is simply acknowledging that my being upset is my own responsibility and not theirs. The other person's behavior can push one of my buttons, but when that happens, I need to manage my buttons, not the other person.

Periodic anger was one of my exasperating emotional buttons, and I tried to minimize or eliminate all expressions of anger. But ridding myself of anger is no easy task, and my failures reached a crescendo back in 2016 when Donald Trump entered my emotional consciousness. It was his lying and deceptive behavior that generated the most loathing. As I went through the Course process, I realized that I actually shared those characteristics, although not to the same extreme. During my political life, I, like Trump, lied about many things. We called it spinning. I would downplay errors or problems caused by my actions, or those of my associates, and spin our activities in the most favorable light.

After Trump left office in 2021, it was revealed that one of his close homeland security officials had signed an agreement with the immigration agents’ union the day before President Biden’s inauguration. Initially angry about this when reading the newspaper account, I recalled doing precisely the same thing while I was a public official in Ohio. I negotiated an agreement with a Civil Service union within days of the end of our administration.

I knew I was also very deceptive in how I presented myself. Through many phases of my life, I deliberately modified my presentation of self to highlight the presumed life I was living. For a while after I returned to college after being discharged from the Marine Corps, I emphasized my spit and polish appearance and my take-no-shit body posture. I came off as a pontificating intellectual during and for a short time after getting my PhD. Shortly after getting involved with the Course, I adopted a somewhat “holier than thou” demeanor. Once, while attending a Course workshop, a participant approached me and, during our conversation, said, “You are not real.” I was initially offended, but, even though I dislike being subjected to such judgments, it didn’t take long to realize he was correct.

Realizing how deceptive I could be—subtly, socially, even spiritually—was one of my more painful awakenings. My distortions were not malicious; they were protective. But protection comes at a cost. Each distortion moved me a little further from my true self.

I could accept that it was not Trump’s lying and deceptive behavior that caused my anger. Instead, he was a primary object of my projections, a mirror that helped me become aware of aspects of myself that were impeding my ability to be at peace. He was, and remains, an extreme example of many of the things I dislike about myself.

Nevertheless, there is much about myself that I do like and do not wish to change. I identify with Abraham Johannes Muste, who was, during his lifetime, a prominent clergyman, labor leader, pacifist, and activist. During the Vietnam War, he stood in the rain outside the White House and held a single burning candle. A reporter asked if he thought his protest would work. He replied, "I don't do this to change the world. I do this so the world won't change me." I feel the same way. I do want to change, but I want those changes to be restricted to those aspects of my behavior I consider objectionable.

The Course works for me, and I’m going to stick with it, probably for the rest of my life. But that is not the only spiritual activity I’m into. Linda and I are involved in a lot more. It felt good to be doing this together. We do not pray in identical ways, but over time, I have come to see companionship itself as a spiritual discipline—one that requires patience, humility, and the willingness not to judge.

Our Spiritual Routine

Every morning when I wake up, I recite a statement, asking God to be with me throughout the day, and then do what is called a Loving-kindness meditation. I then read a statement that itemizes my intentions for my own thinking and behavior during the day.

A little later, Linda and I begin what we call CC&COTB. That initialism stands for coffee, conversation, and contemplation on the bed. It usually lasts about two hours and includes what is referred to in Christian circles as Lectio Divina, a traditional monastic practice of reading, meditation, and prayer. Linda refers to her meditation as Centering Prayer, a Christian contemplative practice that she learned from Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and priest, and from Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest. I do a Name-of-God Meditation. After our meditations, Linda seeks guidance and insight from the I Ching, and we also utilize prayer beads.

We started using the beads in 2025, when we joined others in prayer at the Shrine of Our Lady of Woodstock, which was established in 2018. The figure at the Shrine is a manifestation of the Divine Feminine, embodying an archetypal energy of receptivity, compassion, intuition, nurturing, and creativity. It was installed to mark the site of Clark Strand’s mystical vision in 2011 of what he identified as the Divine Mother.

The Shrine with Linda's marigold garland

The Shrine is an hour from our house, and about 5 minutes from the center of Woodstock, New York. Before joining the Rosary Circles on Sunday evenings, Linda and I frequently arrive in Woodstock an hour early to participate in its Drum Circle. People gather there weekly to drum, dance, and have a good time. Feeling inspired, I bought a Djembe drum, began practicing, and then learned that drumming can also be a contemplative practice, surrendering my mind and attuning my body through rhythm.

Linda recently joined a nearby Episcopal Church and was baptized and confirmed there. She regularly attended church services and activities. I went with her to the Friday Evening Service because it always began with communal meditation. Eventually, we stopped going to that event and began doing a more ecumenical Friday evening service at home that included memorial prayers for those family members and close friends whose anniversary of death occurred during the previous week. After each service, I play related music, such as spirituals and Gregorian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Hindu chants.

Almost every night, Linda and I watch and listen to lectures and documentaries relating to a variety of religious and spiritual traditions. I have learned a great deal from those teachers, but hearing how much they know has made it clear that I have much more to learn. I often ruminate about my unfulfilled expectations. My biggest one is to successfully emulate what Jesus did. As the channeled source of A Course in Miracles, he has become a primary role model. I study his teachings, try to apply them, and try to adopt both his behavior, as I understand it, and his manner of thinking as models for my own behavior and thinking. A striking example of his capabilities was his behavior during his crucifixion. I believe he reacted peacefully, without anger or condemnation, and that became a model for how I can react without anger and condemnation to far less provocative situations in my life.

However, even when dealing with seemingly minor provocations, I still find it challenging to live up to Jesus’ example. I don’t think that lowering my expectations is the answer. Rather, I want to spend the rest of my life emulating Jesus. I am diligent, but still miss the mark, which is why I was so touched by a statement I read by the late Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk and prolific author: "We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!" Of course, I am a beginner in almost every aspect of my life, a sobering thought, since I am now almost 90 years old. I think it’s about time to try to get it together.