Ken Wapnick as a Symbol
I sent this in to an online ACIM group last night in response to a discussion on Ken Wapnick:
Our experience is that we pick up this Course and get something from it. That it has an effect on us. That’s why we have a special relationship with it. To say the Course has an effect on me is the same mistake the Course is trying to correct.
If the Course has an effect on me, it’s not the Course, it’s a choice in my mind. It’s a reflection of this choice. If nothing outside us can give us peace, then that must go for the Course as well. The Course, like everything else, is a symbol of the choice in our mind, and like everything else, it has been used as a symbol for both parts of the split mind. It’s as much of a blank slate as anything else in the world. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work with the Course, but on some level we should know what’s going on. This takes away all the specialness from our work with the Course. It is simply a reflection of our right mind. It does nothing. It is a helpful symbol for a little while.
“I am a student of A Course in Miracles” is a helpful concept, but it won’t get us Home if that’s all we do. If a concept is helpful, we’d be a fool not to use it, we’d just want to be careful because it’s a two-edged sword. It can very easily turn into something that is used to maintain our specialness.
The same goes for the concept “I am a student of Ken Wapnick”. While I, as a decision maker, am still too afraid to acknowledge I am a decision maker, still need specifics, still need “special agents” to symbolize what is only happening in my mind, symbols like Ken, or ACIM, are extremely helpful and necessary. They provide a comforting compromise approach “in which something outside is temporarily given healing belief.” (T-2.IV.4:6) The key words being comforting and temporary. Ken has been used as a symbol for the wrong mind by those who would say they don’t like his teaching, and he has been used as a symbol of the wrong mind by those who would say they love his teaching. And it’s ok. We all do that — it’s part of the learning process — because we’re all frightened of love and sometimes would rather cling to the world whether it be through special hate or special love. We would just want to become aware of what we are doing and be willing to look at it with Jesus.
Sometimes I hear people say one should do the Course on their own, only with their Inner Teacher, not outside teachers. The Course isn’t the Course. That’s just words on a page. Black ink on white paper. The Course is who you do the Course with. Which means, the Course is listening to Wapnick, Perry, Renard, John Coltrain, Beethoven, hiphop, your nosey neighbor, a dishonest politician, a fervent activist, Marianne Williamson, Mr. Confusing Levels All Over The Place At Your Weekly ACIM Group, compliments, insults, a lawn mower, rain on the roof, wedding bells, a funeral march, a doctor’s edict, a plate crashing on the floor, a cheering stadium, your tummy growling… with the Holy Spirit. All of these are our teachers when given to the Holy Spirit for His purpose. They teach us by pointing us back to our mind.
To argue about teachers would be to argue about symbols, and symbols represent different things to different minds at different points on their Atonement path, and everyone is using the symbols they’re choosing to use in a highly individualized way. Neither Ken, nor Jesus, nor the Course, needs any defense whatsoever. We can share our personal experiences with these specific symbols, and then accept however someone chooses to perceive them. What does that have to do with us? And what would that have to do with the Course or Ken? Since everything is neutral, it is only the mind and its choice of teachers which infuses any symbol with the meaning it would have it serve.
God bless all symbols, for they are the toys we play with until we feel safe enough to grow up and return “to cause the function of causation.” (T-28.II.9:3)
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Please note: The first paragraph was largely taken from notes I took this past week… at a Ken Wapnick workshop. :)
