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 years old. I’m not sure why it took so long.  During that year, 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. 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, study, exercise, creative activities, positive relationships, food preparation, mindful eating, recreation, and work. 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 H. McRaven, a Navy SEAL commander. He said that making a bed properly accomplishes the first task of the day and encourages accomplishment of additional tasks.  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 alcoholic drink preparation. I frequently make Bloody Marys, but also make Old Fashioneds, alternating between Rye and Bourbon, and Jalapeño Margaritas, both of which I make in quantity.

I will soon describe the ritual activities 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, engaged in inner communication 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 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. I will describe my involvement with the Course, but if you want a brief summary of its content, click here.

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 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 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 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, at least in its form, might be an illusion, although  I later learned that I shouldn't disregard my experience, whether what I was experiencing was real or not. My insights notwithstanding, I was committed to dealing 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 the Course 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.

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.

 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.

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, and an associate and student of Helen Schucman. More recently, I shifted to Emily Perry, the Executive Director of the Circle of Atonement, and her husband, Robert Perry, a respected Course teacher and scholar since 1986. Each of these teachers approaches the Course from somewhat different perspectives, but this has not been a problem for me. I have found that looking at this extraordinary guide to living in different ways enriching rather than conflicting.

So I’ve been at this for over 30 years, and I am still learning. I’ve written about my understanding of the Course many times, but each time, as I learn more, I realize that I had something wrong, and I revise what I’ve written. I’ve revised this part of this chapter a few times, so I’m not going to try again. If the reader wishes to learn more about the Course, several books by each of my successive teachers are good introductions. A Talk Given on A Course in Miracles by Ken Wapnick was where I started; Living A Course in Miracles by Jon Mundy is a good guide to applying the Course in one's daily life; and Return to the Heart of God by Robert Perry covers the principles of the Course from his perspective.

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, and it feels good to be doing them 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 sometimes do what is called a Loving-kindness Meditation. I then review 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, including meditation, after which Linda seeks guidance and insight from the I Ching, and we also use 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 there 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 weekly service at home that included memorial prayers for those family members and close friends whose anniversary of death occurred during the previous week. 

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, 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. 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.