Interviews – Kenneth Wapnick

My dear friends: Below is the announcement from the Foundation for A Course in Miracles about our beloved Teacher Ken Wapnick’s passing yesterday. Ken was the most beautiful, kind, generous-to-all person I have ever known. With deep sadness as well as infinite Love and gratitude for all he has  given us that lives on to lead us home, I offer these interviews I did with him over the last several years. May we all grow into the certainty (through moment-to-moment practice) that our all-loving, forgiven connection has never, and can never, be broken!  https://www.foraysinforgiveness.com/interviews/interviews-kenneth-wapnick Love always, Susan Kenneth Wapnick  It is with the utmost sorrow that we inform you of the death of Dr. Kenneth Wapnick on Friday December 27, 2013. He died peacefully at home with his beloved wife Gloria and family at his side. The family will have a private service and plans are being made for a forthcoming public memorial. “There is no ...

I recently sat down again to interview Ken Wapnick while attending a weeklong Academy class at the Foundation for a Course in Miracles (FACIM) in Temecula, California, in which Ken emphasized more clearly than ever the importance of looking at the ego’s guilty story of separation realized through the eyes of the part of our mind that knows nothing really happened. He also urged us to make asking that inner teacher of forgiveness to show us how he looks on everyone and everything our top priority, if we truly want to experience sustainable peace, not of this world. While there, I also had the pleasure of interviewing Ken’s wife and Foundation Co-founder Gloria Wapnick, the first in what I hope will prove a series of interviews with her. Unfortunately, I had a new recorder and must have pressed the wrong button because the conversation did not record. Although Gloria kindly invited ...

I recently sat down again to interview Ken Wapnick while attending a weeklong Academy class at the Foundation for a Course in Miracles in Temecula, California. I am still processing the deeply helpful and healing messages from the week in which Ken emphasized, among other great themes, the importance of shifting the purpose of the seemingly specific issues that appear to arise in our lives from strengthening the ego’s lie of separation realized to returning us to the decision-making mind and choosing to look with the teacher of gentle forgiveness. Asking ourselves from moment to moment whether siding with this feeling, judgment, thought will further the goal of healing our split mind or plunge us more deeply into the dream of exile from all-inclusive love. A no-brainer of a practice, really—pun intended! 🙂 In this conversation, Ken talks about the idea that we all carry imaginary “grab bags” filled with the ...

I was fortunate enough to sit down again recently with Ken Wapnick while attending a workshop at the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM)  in Temecula, California. Many of my questions arose from listening to two of Ken’s newer CD sets: On Death and Dying and Cast No One Out, as well as from my moment-to-moment journey practicing the Course’s unique forgiveness in the classroom of my life. As always, Ken’s generosity, consistency, patience, and gentleness shine in his responses. I hope you will find them as illuminating and helpful as I did. I’ve listened to your CD set On Death and Dying and have a few questions related to that. I think I know the answers to most of them but the Course has taught me to question all I think I know; to always make sure I know which inner teacher I’m really listening to. So, to start, ...

I was fortunate enough to sit down recently to interview Ken Wapnick again while attending a workshop at the Foundation for a Course in Miracles (FACIM) in Temecula, California. I felt more than ever the radiance of Ken’s unwavering faith in an innocence that includes everyone and everything, even this mess of a Course student. 🙂 His responses to my often babbling questions reached far beyond their form to the fundamental content which is always some version of why can’t I stop pushing love away? His answer in all circumstances for all A Course in Miracles students remains the same. You can, you have, and you are. Just quit beating yourself up and making such a big deal about it. Just do what the Course is saying as best you can every single day with whatever appears to arise in the classroom of your life. And then forgive yourself when ...

Renowned Psychologist, Teacher, and Author Kenneth Wapnick, PhD, has been studying, teaching, and writing about A Course in Miracles since 1973, and worked closely with Course Scribe Helen Schucman and Collaborator Bill Thetford in preparing its final manuscript. With his wife, Gloria, he is president and co-founder of Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM) in Temecula, California. OK, so admittedly I did most of the talking when Ken Wapnick once more generously agreed to answer some questions about practicing forgiveness and looking with Jesus. Along with the other characteristics of God’s teachers mentioned in the Teachers Manual, he also demonstrates honesty, defined in A Course in Miracles as consistency. I found his response to my overly complicated questions newly humbling. “Don’t take it seriously,” he answered, in response to every query. He has said this before and will likely have to say it again because eventually we begin to try ...

NOTE: Clinical Psychologist, Teacher and Author Kenneth Wapnick, PhD, has been studying A Course in Miracles since 1973, and worked closely with Course Scribe Helen Schucman and Collaborator Bill Thetford in preparing its final manuscript. With his wife, Gloria, he is president and co-founder of The Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM) in Temecula, California. In the following conversation, Ken Wapnick generously answers my questions about the daily practice of forgiveness, the fear and resistance that arises on our journey home, and how to keep our faith and focus on being kind, gentle, and patient with ourselves and other Course students while learning to with our inner teacher at all we still use to push love away. Happy Thanksgiving! I recently found myself in a lot of fear around this Course; feeling stuck and judging myself for it. You told me to remember not to take it seriously. How can we ...

During a recent visit to The Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM) in Temecula, California to attend a workshop with friend and fellow Course student Deb Shelly, I interviewed premier Course scholar Ken Wapnick, PhD, about his journey with the Course. I wanted to know how Ken perceived his role in communicating the Course’s unique message, how he viewed awakening, how he avoided specialness, how he handled celebrity, and how his application of forgiveness has evolved since his early days with Helen and Bill. His answers may surprise you as much as they did us. I have never been around an enlightened being–my teenage daughter notwithstanding J–but must say that sitting in Ken’s presence with Deb felt healing for both of us in ways we found difficult to describe. He offers the gift of his complete, unwavering attention, and seems to listen more deeply and carefully than the hundreds of people ...

Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, and turned off by organized religion and the messages of his family’s Jewish faith, Ken Wapnick nonetheless suspected something beyond a world of bodies. “I grew up in a family with a lot of sickness and it became very clear to me that sickness had nothing to do with the body; that it happens in the mind.” His exposure to classical music as a teenager confirmed his suspicions. “That was my opening and then my window,” he says. “It allowed me to know that there was something more than you could see, than you could study, than you could understand. It was my entrée to spirituality.” His interest piqued, Ken studied various spiritual teachings while earning a PhD in psychology and went on to become chief clinical psychologist at a mental hospital, all the while fielding an increasing pull toward a monastic life. After deciding to enter ...