A Course in Miracles Monk

The following constitutes about six pages of a twenty page interview with Ken and Gloria Wapnick.  The interview was conducted in 1991 by Paul Ferrini and Jim Galla and was published in the Winter-Spring issue of Miracles Magazine which apparently is no longer being published.

Interview:

Jim:  Can you talk a little bit about what was going on with you during this period, when you first encountered Helen and the Course? You were between marriages, right? Was there a lot going on personally in your life?

Ken:  Actually, no. When I met Helen and Bill I was at the end of kind of a whole private journey. I’d been divorced for a couple of years, and I had become Catholic because I was going to be a monk. I was very drawn to the Trappist monastery, Gethsemane. I read Merton’s books and I was drawn to the Trappists. It didn’t have a lot to do with Jesus. I just wanted to be alone with God, so I became Catholic, not because I believed in any of the rituals and dogma. In fact, when I met Helen, she said, “You’re a very funny Christian.” Until then I had no conscious experience of Jesus.

When I met Helen and Bill, I was on my way to Israel. I was planning to enter the Abbey Gethsemane, but I had to wait a year until my baptism, so I thought I’d go to Israel. And I went because I woke up one morning hearing a voice telling me I should go. I didn’t know why I was going; I didn’t particularly want to go, but it was very clear. So I went, and I met Helen and Bill a few days before I was going to leave, and we spent the evening together, most of which was spent in my telling my story, how a nice Jewish boy in Brooklyn ended up becoming a monk. Something was said about the Course, not where it came from, but that it was a book Helen had written on spirituality. I could have seen it that night, but it was seven big thesis boxes and I was going to leave in a few days. So I put it off. But I kept thinking about this book all the time I was in Israel. I ended up spending three months in a Trappist monastery and two months in another monastery which is on top of a mountain. That’s where I was going to stay. But I thought before I stayed there permanently I should come back to the states for a month. I wanted my parents to know that I was okay and that I was not being abducted. And I wanted to read this book.  And I was amazed when I came back and saw the book. I’m not sure what the sequence was, but it didn’t take me very long to realize this is what I would do for the rest of my life.

Paul:  You mentioned that you heard a voice telling you to go to Israel. What other experience have you had hearing an inner voice?

K:  Before I was in the monastery, I could hear voices very clearly. I always identified the voice with God, not with Jesus. I never thought consciously of Jesus at all until I was back in the States. And when I saw the Course and I started reading it, it was the same presence.

P:  Previous to your connection of the voice with Jesus, did you have the experience of the presence and simply characterize it as being an impersonal energy?

K:  Yes. I had a very clear sense from the time I was a child, somehow knowing things and being guided. When I left the Yeshiva, which is the parochial school, at thirteen, I lost all interest in religion, and had no belief in God. But I had a very strong interest in classical music, in Mozart and Beethoven. And that became like a spiritual guide, and I would feel things in the music. And in graduate school I bought this huge picture of Jesus. It was not a typical picture of Jesus; it had a very suffering kind of face. But that was the most important thing I owned, and I always felt a real presence coming from that picture. I couldn’t explain it consciously or rationally. So, yes, I had a clear sense of being guided, of being led. I think that’s what got me through graduate school, and the break-up of my marriage. After my marriage had ended, I lived alone in Poughkeepsie and that’s when I began to really directly relate to God. Up to that point my spirituality was very abstract; it was very much associated with music. Then it became much more personal.

P:  There must have been some level of struggle with your family as all this was taking place.

K:  Yes, my parents were not religious but they were very much identified as Jews. And they had a lot of trouble. I was always very close with my parents, but it was obvious I was very different from them. When I became a Catholic, they were very upset, my mother especially. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with our God. It was difficult to explain, because I didn’t believe in the Catholic Church. You know, I’d say to my mother, ‘I don’t go to Mass; don’t be upset.’ But of course the idea of my being a monk upset her. She couldn’t explain it to her family and friends, so nobody else knew except my father and my brother. And when I was in Israel I was writing to them, trying to assure them that everything was alright, but there was no way they could understand it. And that’s why I thought I would come back, so they could see that I was alive and well. Then, when I decided to stay in the States they were very happy. Plus my parents met Helen and Bill and liked them very much. In fact, my mother and Helen became good friends. They were an unlikely pair. They’d have lunch every two months or something, and Helen would come to Seder, for Passover, with her husband Louis. So that made it much easier, because I was now living in New York where I had what looked to the world like a good job at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. It was really a halftime position that paid practically nothing, but it looked good. And here were these two very mature people; professional, you know. So my parents felt okay about that. And Helen eventually became my mother’s confidante. So that worked out fine, and it made it easier.

P:  Do you think that your relationship with Jesus could have manifested in any way through the Jewish tradition? Was there any pathway there?

K:  I’m not sure I can answer that. When I first read Merton’s books, I felt so much at home with what he described, and it was very alien to my kind of background.  Then, when I went to Gethsemane to visit for the first time, I felt that I had come home. And I just started weeping. I would sit up in the balcony of the church and I’d just weep. I felt God’s presence so strongly there; it just felt so much like home to me. My basic way of living is monastic anyway.

P:  What was the attraction–the simplicity of the lifestyle?

K:  Well, the reason I wanted to stay in Israel, on this mountain top, is that I could be all alone. I could just be very quiet and be with God all the time, and not be with people. Not that I disliked being with people, because that was my work basically, and I always enjoyed it. But I’d be just as happy to be all by myself. It was the same way when I was a kid; I always had a lot of friends, but I was just as happy being alone. Anyway, when I left the monastery, I ended up living in New York City. In a sense, looking back on it you can see each step along the way led to what I’m doing now. It led me to meeting Helen and Bill and the Course. And certainly both my Jewish and Catholic backgrounds have been very helpful in terms of teaching the connection between the Course and the Bible. Since I spend a lot of time counseling nuns and priests, I have learned a great deal about Catholicism.

Looking back I can see how all my religious studies as a Jew, a Catholic, and a monk, as well I as my love for Mozart, Beethoven, and for Shakespeare, all fit in as preparation for meeting Helen and the Course. I was about the only person who could quote Hamlet as well as Helen could.

P:  Your relationship with Helen sounds very complementary-a lot of sharing, a lot of support, and yet you describe Bill’s relationship with Helen as being rocky.

K:  Well, my relationship with Helen was a totally different relationship. There were no forgiveness lessons for Helen and myself. Helen was filled with specialness. She was the prototype for the descriptions in the Course on specialness. And in one sense I was used to it because my mother was like that. I used to say to her, “You’re just like my mother, so my mother was preparation for you.” I saw my role as working to really love Helen and support her and just be there for her. Her relationship with Bill was totally different. They were peers, and they’d both had tremendous forgiveness lessons with each other. The whole origin of the Course is really to help them to be with each other. They both brought out the worst in each other. I think that the meaning of Helen’s taking down the Course in the context of her relationship with Bill, and Bill’s being such a help to her, was that even in the midst of this relationship that was really awful, they could still join to share a common purpose.

P:  What was necessary about the rockiness of the relationship?

K:  What was necessary was that Helen be able to set aside her projections onto Bill and say, “This doesn’t make any difference.” That wouldn’t be the case with me because my relationship with Helen was not a battleground. Bill and Helen’s relationship was.

P:  How did that facilitate the Course?

K:  It facilitated the Course because it enabled Helen to set her ego aside. In one sense, Helen’s ego was like a disguise; it was a mask she could just put aside at any time. And I think that enabled her to be with Bill and say, “I will let all this go,” at least in this area. But Helen didn’t need Bill to hear Jesus. Jesus even said to Helen, “You don’t need Bill to take this Course down.” But I think, whatever the last step was for Helen, joining with Bill was very important. And in fact, when Helen first met Bill, she heard herself say, “There he is; he is the one I’m supposed to help.” And then a little bit later she saw herself standing in front of God and saying to God, ‘Of course I’ll go, Father, he’s in trouble; besides it’s for just a little while.’ So it was very clear in her mind that she was supposed to help him. Now obviously Bill was very helpful to her. But it was not reciprocal in the same way. Helen didn’t need Bill for the Course.

P:  Yet clearly there is a need to set the ego aside to hear the voice, and the relationship facilitates that.

K:  Yes, of course. And the relationship became a prototype for what the whole Course is talking about. The Course says the Temple of the Holy Spirit is relationship, and in a sense the Temple of the Course was the relationship between Helen and Bill. So while in principle the Course could have happened without Bill, it is appropriate that it manifested in a relationship between two people who were, at least temporarily, able to set their egos aside.

P:  Ken, we have about 15 minutes before you start your class. How about telling us a little bit about your life before you met Gloria? For example, were you prepared to do the celibate routine when you were going to the monastery?

K:  Oh yes; sex was not a major issue for me. I was okay with the idea of celibacy. I had no plans or aspirations for getting married again, and then I met Gloria, and when it became clear that we should be together, that was fine.

J:  Is that a true story, that Gloria went to a psychic who said she was going to meet somebody on the weekend she actually met you?

K:  It’s partially true. But that had nothing to do with meeting me. She went to Pat Rodegast. Gloria had gone to her a number of times and liked her very much and brought her kids to her—this was 1977- and Emmanuel said to her, “Go to Wainwright House,” which is a new age center, “and you’ll find what you’ve been looking for all your life.” Gloria hadn’t even heard of Wainwright House. And she went home that night and looked it up in the phone book and called up, and found out what it was, and said, “Well, what are you offering?” and they said ‘This weekend we’re having a number of workshops on healing.” And so she went. There was a workshop on A Course In Miracles, not given by me, and Gloria bought the books, began to read them that night, and felt that she saw Jesus in the room reading to her. So part of the story is true. The psychic told her to go to Wainwright House and she’d get what she had been looking for all her life, and that was what she had been looking for all her life.

P:  But it wasn’t you!

K:  No. She heard me speak shortly after that in New York at the Barbizon Hotel. There were several speakers, but she felt there was something different about me. Then we had no contact until the following year when she asked me a question at another talk I gave, and we became friendly over a period of time. She had a group, so I would go up there every once in a while to speak to her group. I didn’t generally like to go to groups to speak, because a lot of them were real flaky, but her group was serious. So that’s how it was. I don’t tell it with quite the dramatic Italian gestures that Gloria does.

(Gloria Wapnick joins us.)

P:  Well, let’s hear Gloria’s version.

Gloria:  Where do you want me to start?

P:  Well, Ken sort of brought us up to the point where you went to Wainwright House. How did you meet Ken?

G:  Well, I started a group shortly after I found the Course, because I felt it was such a great release for me. It started my healing with God. And I got word that there was this event occurring in the city at the Barbizon Plaza. And, let me see, Judy was there, and Beth Byrd, Jerry Jamplosky, Bob Skutch and Ken and I don’t know who else. I didn’t know anybody at that time, of course. And I heard Ken speak and I really resonated with what he said. But he disappeared. Bad luck. Because I had two questions that I wanted to ask him.

So I didn’t see him again until the next year, when they had the conference again. And this time I made sure he didn’t get away. So I stopped him as he was coming up the aisle and I said, “Can I just ask you a question about the Course and Catholic dogma and theology?” And I asked a question about transubstantiation, and he looked at me and he said, ‘That requires a great deal of talking. We can’t just talk about it here like this lightly. So why don’t you call me; I’m in the book.” So I thought to myself, “There’s no way I’m calling him.” So I didn’t. And then a month or two later there was a meeting of the Foundation for Religion and Mental Health up in Westchester. And I saw his name on a mailing they sent me, so I thought I’d go and maybe get an answer to my question. So I went, and I think Ken remembered me. And I had a few more questions by that time. So Ken said, “Well, we really can’t discuss all this here, why don’t you call me?” Pat answer, right? And I didn’t. I just felt it wasn’t quite right.

And there was a third gathering about three months later at Paul Steinberg’s, and Ken was going to be a speaker. So I thought for sure I could get at least fifteen minutes of his time. And I did manage to sit next to him at dinner, and we talked about Catholic dogma and theology. And then I said, “I have two fears that I have not been able to cope with using the Course: I have a fear of heights, and I have a fear of snakes. And whatever I do doesn’t seem to work.” So he looked at me and he said, “That’s not really what you’re afraid of. What you’re really afraid of is that you’re running away from Jesus.” I was stunned. And I just started to cry; I had to leave the dining room, because I was so embarrassed. And I cried all the way home. I cried for two and a half hours, driving all the way home, and I knew he had something there. Then I called him.

K:  The moral of the story is, when all else fails, you try Jesus. Remember that!

G:  That’s how it started.

P:  So Ken, how did you know that this relationship was meant to be? I mean, you were about to become a monk.

K:  Well, at that point I wasn’t going to become a monk. When I met Helen and Bill, I dropped that, you know. I thought I’d be living alone and I had no interest in a relationship. Gloria knew something before I did, so it took a while, but we became friendly, and I visited her group from time to time. And at some point it became clear to me that something was happening between us.

P:  When was this?

K:  That was in 1981, before the Foundation was formed. I was finishing up Forgiveness and Jesus; I was still seeing patients; and I was doing some speaking. Gloria was a high school history teacher and a Dean of Students at a high school. We started the Foundation in the fall of ‘82, and it was incorporated in January of ‘83. Since I was on the Board of the Foundation for Inner Peace, it seemed that we should have a separate organization to do my books. By that time I had started to do some speaking, although I didn’t realize what that would lead to. I was clear that I would probably do more speaking and there would be more books. Gloria still had a class which met in our home and I still had a class which met there too. We converted a one-car garage into an office for me. And that was where we had meetings. It couldn’t hold more than twenty-five people. So we started very slowly, and then it just began to take off. Because we needed a bigger place, we moved in 1984 to a larger house outside of Peekskill in northern Westchester. But it had no facilities for people staying there. By that time we had three people on the staff besides us, who lived on the property. Gloria’s parents were with us, and one of her sons lived there. The room that we held workshops in could not hold more than forty, so it was very tight. It was lovely property, but it was only one acre. And within three years we had outgrown it. And by ‘87 we had found this place.

We were not looking for anything this large, but nothing that we saw seemed right. And when we saw this place, which was not in the good shape it’s in now, we both felt that this was the place. We didn’t think we should be this far out of the city. But we knew this was the place.

P:  How did you get the money to pay for such a large property? Did someone make a donation?

K:  We had friends who actually gave us the money for the place.

G:  Bob and Kathy Draper.

K:  So that’s how we did it.

P:  And it’s continuing to grow, I gather.

K:  Yes, we’re actually able to cover our daily operating expenses out of revenues from books, tapes, and workshops. We’re in the black.

P:  That’s great.

K:  We’ve even been able to lower our prices. We try to keep them as low as we can.

P:  So your goal is to basically break even.

K:  Yes, our goal is to break even with a small surplus for any capitol improvements. When we put up a new building, we need donations to cover the expenses. But on a daily basis, the revenues that we receive pay our expenses.

P:  Are you going to outgrow this location, too?

K:  No, I don’t think we’ll outgrow this. One of the reasons that we were attracted to this place and felt it was right was because it was ninety-five acres.

P:  So you can build?

K:  We can build. We did put up a building on the other side, which you can see later. There’s all this space, all this woods. But we are growing rather rapidly. We’re astonished. I think we both felt that we would grow, but not with the impunity with which we are, both in terms of our books and tapes sales and the numbers of people attending workshops.

P:  Do you have any idea how many people come here on a yearly basis?

K:  We have figures; I don’t know what they are. Several hundred.

G:  Oh, it’s a lot more than that!

P:  Where do you see the Foundation going?

K:  I don’t think we have any specific ideas about that. Actually, the way that we’ve done it is really just to take one step at a time. Gloria’s model used to be small is beautiful, and that’s how we started out. But each year we keep getting bigger and bigger.

P:  So this is almost happening in spite of your own ego preferences.

K:  Well, I think I’d like to live a very simple, quiet life. But it’s not working out that way.

P:  Yet you seem to be comfortable with all the people that come here.

K:  Yeah, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just I like I was very happy at the monastery all by myself, and I was very happy with Helen and Bill. They used to apologize for having dragged me down from my mountain top. But obviously I wouldn’t change that even if I could.

P:  Do you have plans for another book yet?

K:  Yeah, two other books. The first book will be called Choose to Listen. There’s a passage in the Course where Jesus refers to the biblical theme “many are called but few are chosen,’ but He renders it as “all are called but few choose to listen.” The book will be about mistakes people make with the Course in terms of really not understanding the language when it speaks metaphorically. There will be a section on listening to the Holy Spirit and a section on Jesus. The second book, And God Makes Everyone, will be about the Course and the Bible.

P:  What do you see as being some of the key mistaken ideas that people have around the Course?

K:  The core mistake is underestimating the ego, not recognizing how much we are identified with it. That leads to the idea that we can just set the ego aside and give it to the Holy Spirit. People try to skip over steps. And one of the important steps is learning to look at the ego without judgment. That’s what I was talking about in the lecture this afternoon.

P:  Yes, I was fascinated to hear you say that this afternoon. Because I’ve always believed that the real forgiveness comes when you can look at your own darkness without judging it. But that’s a very different kind of approach than the magical thinking approach which says, ‘I’ll just give it to the Holy Spirit.’ Actually that approach is just a denial of the emotional difficulty that faces us when ego comes up. It’s a Pollyanna kind of attitude. It doesn’t come to grips with our feelings or those of others.

K:  Right. The principle is very simple, but the practice is something else. The fear is so great that people simply try to dismiss the ego as an illusion and leave it at that. The problem is, they haven’t really dismissed it. Another mistake that people make is doing the workbook without reading the text. Several years ago Gloria and I did an Australian tour and people would tell us they’d done the Course two or three years, and it was obvious they had no understanding at all. And it came out that what they meant was that they had done the workbook. And while the order in which one does the books is up to the Holy Spirit, nonetheless at some point you have to do both or else you really can’t deal with the Course as an integrated curriculum. And the workbook without the text really doesn’t have any meaning.

P:  Don’t you feel that there’s also the possibility that people can focus on the text and become preoccupied with the intellectual aspects? Then they need the experiential exercises of the workbook.

K: Absolutely. Our experience is that that happens less frequently than the other, but yes, there’s no question.