Chapter 3 - Spirituality

A major focus these days is spirituality, a quest more than 40 years in the making. It became especially important in 2023, when I was 86. I’m not sure why it took so long.  That year, I watched many videos about life in monasteries and imagined 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. I thought that focusing on prayer and spiritual study would help me lead a meaningful life, one of holy significance, in which the sacred didn't have to compete for attention.

Living in a pseudo-monastery is not as weird as it sounds. A monastic life focuses primarily on prayer, meditation, study, exercise, creative activities, mindful eating, recreation, and work. Work needs a little explaining, since I'm retired and don't need to work for a living. My work begins early every morning. It may sound a bit strange, but I consider making our bed part of my work experience. I once listened to an audio recording of a 2014 commencement speech by Admiral William McRaven, a Navy SEAL commander. He said that making a bed properly accomplishes the first task of the day and encourages us to accomplish additional tasks.  My other early-morning work commitment is to make a pot of coffee to drink when Linda and I have what we call CC&COTB. That initialism stands for coffee, conversation, and contemplation on the bed. Other work includes tracking our finances, working with Linda to beautify our landscape and grow some of our food, and assorted other household tasks including meal and beverage preparation. I frequently make alcoholic drinks in quantity, including Bloody Marys, Old Fashioneds, Manhattans, and Jalapeño Margaritas.

Every morning when I wake up, I review my intentions for my own thinking and behavior during the day. Then we go into CC&COTB, which usually lasts about two hours. After we talk for a while, we both meditate. Linda does Centering Prayer meditations, and I do what is called a Name of God meditation. Linda then prays the Rosary, and I do prayers using Mala Beads. Later, while I am exercising, Linda seeks guidance and insight from the I Ching.

Linda's primary religious focus has been involvement with an Episcopal Church, at first at the one in Hudson where she was baptized and confirmed. She initially considered Episcopal worship because of the writings and practices of an Episcopal Vicar, Cynthia Bourgeault, a modern-day mystic and proponent of Centering Prayer.  Linda has now focused her attention on the church in Woodstock, New York, whose Vicar is closely associated with Cynthia Bourgeault and brings a contemplative orientation to that church.  While in Woodstock, Linda and I occasionally participated in its Drum Circle, during which people gather weekly to drum, dance, and have fun. Feeling inspired, I bought a Djembe drum, and while practicing, I realized that playing the rhythm effortlessly felt like a contemplative practice.

Linda and I 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. Almost every night, we 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.

What I study and practice most is a psychologically oriented spirituality known as A Course in Miracles.

The Course

In 1965, Helen Schucman, a psychologist in New York City, began communicating internally with an entity she believed was Jesus after a series of inner visions and other psychic experiences. 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 wrote the narration in shorthand and later dictated it to her colleague, Bill Thetford, who typed 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 boat: evident for a moment, 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 illusory. Then I wondered whether the day-to-day experiences I thought I remembered had actually occurred. I wondered if everything I experienced that night, and perhaps always, was an illusion.

Later that evening, and for the next few days, I read several philosophers' views on 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 entirely new to 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 read the news and occasionally go on social media, but I no longer know what to believe.

I decided I could live with the possibility that everything I perceived, at least in its form, might be an illusion. I later learned that, even if it was illusory, I shouldn't disregard my experience, because there is much to learn from it. 

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 the Course was just another New Age fad that had dropped anchor in the 80s. 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 the unreality of my body and the physical world 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 as a Jewish kid in elementary school when we sang Christmas carols. Whenever the word Jesus or Christ came up 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 content of the Course as presented in the workshop intrigued me, and I started paying attention again.

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

In retrospect, the connections between these seemingly disconnected events became evident, 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 not be "real" 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. The channeled material includes many first-person statements, 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 becoming a better person. At first, I identified with what I learned about 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 get through it as well. His teachings were thought-provoking and eye-opening.

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.

I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that I was trying to adopt a pseudo-monastic life. Involvement with the Course includes the activities associated with monasticism -particularly prayer, meditation, and study - but it does not isolate itself from the world. In fact, it does just the opposite. It uses the rough-and-tumble of our current or past relationships to help us understand what is and isn't working for us in our quest for enlightenment. Through our relationships, we learn what aspects of our thinking and behavior need to change.

I think a great deal about what is not working for me from a Course perspective. Sometimes observing events in nature can set me off.  For example, during the bird migration season, a flock of about a thousand grackles, or a mix of grackles and other blackbirds, gathers around our house for a few days. Grackles assemble in communal roosts before migration, some containing as many as a million birds. We have six windows in our bedroom, and watching and listening to those birds can be stirring and breathtaking.

Periodically, we can watch the whole flock swarm past our bedroom windows in a synchronized oval-shaped formation, first going in one direction and then, abruptly, in another. They fly like a single life form rather than a thousand. Each bird has become one with the flock.

They might suddenly drift into an open field as if guided by a decree. Or they might collectively elevate into nearby trees, creating a whoosh of air and a viscerally uplifting draft. The grackles seem to whistle and make rusty gate-squeaks, as if sharing their delight with one another. Then they fall silent, as if meditating.

If we are lucky, they pull together and swarm again. We watch them not only with attention, delight, and admiration, but we also wonder why these birds behave so much more collaboratively than we do. I am not saying that I never collaborate or that there are never examples of close collaboration among people I know or know about.  But I know that I personally have had, and still have, much to change in that respect.

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 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 am not able to judge.

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 respond without anger or condemnation in far less provocative situations in my life. I 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, even though I constantly miss the mark. 

These problems notwithstanding, I believe I am progressively becoming a much better person. Over the years, I have continued to study and practice the Course, and I still do. Over time, I changed teachers, first from Ken Wapnick to Jon Mondy, a prolific author and speaker. More recently, I shifted to Robert Perry, a respected Course teacher and scholar since 1986, who teaches along with his wife, Emily Perry, the Executive Director of the Circle of Atonement. Each of my teachers has approached the Course from somewhat different perspectives, but that hasn't been a problem for me. I have found that looking at this extraordinary guide to living in different ways is enriching rather than conflicting.

So I’ve been at this for over 30 years, and I am still learning.  If the reader wants to learn more about the Course, several books by my successive teachers are good introductions: A Talk Given on A Course in Miracles by Ken Wapnick; Living A Course in Miracles by Jon Mundy; and Return to the Heart of God by Robert Perry.

The Course works for me, and I’m going to stick with it, but I have much to learn and understand, 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 not only in becoming spiritual, but 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.