Featured Items

February Featured Items

Death is a major preoccupation of the world, witnessed to in our personal lives by our constant concern with the health, safety, and protection of our own body and the bodies of our loved ones. Death and dying is also a major focus and common theme in our news and entertainment. Despite all our apparent efforts to stave it off and maintain our lives here for as long as we can, the Course tells us we are in fact attracted to death. To make any sense of this seeming paradox, we must understand how the Course looks at death and what purpose it serves in maintaining the ego and its thought system of separation. As with much of the Course, this means looking to the unconscious mind for answers, where they are buried beneath veils of denial and fear. Any focus on the body for answers—the world’s focus—will leave us mired in feelings of confusion, anger, guilt, depression, grief, and victimization. For the month of February, we are featuring three programs where Kenneth explores the central role death plays in maintaining our separate existence and how through healing and forgiveness we can move beyond the guilt and fear that are associated with it in our experience to genuine peace and joy.

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The Specialness of Death
or the Death of Specialness?
To Be or Not to Be

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.

In this program, Kenneth focuses on what is ultimately a very empowering thought, that each of us chooses our own death. But that choice is not made by the dream figure we think we are, but by our unconscious dreaming mind whose power to choose we have deliberately denied from our conscious awareness in order to protect our individual separate identity. To accept this power, we must be willing to acknowledge that sickness and death are not thrust upon us against our will—a major premise of our ego defenses—but come at our own invitation. Kenneth emphasizes that there are two and only two purposes for that invitation: the ego’s purpose, which keeps this power out of our awareness in order to protect and maintain our special self as a victim, and the Holy Spirit’s purpose, which asks us to look beyond the specialness of our own physical death to the joy that is ours when we no longer desperately seek to keep our specialness and our illusory individual identity alive. Bodily death then simply becomes just another step on our journey back Home to the Life that has always been awaiting our return.

Available in Following Formats: Audio CD, MP3 Audio Download, Audio Stream

To Be or Not to Be
Hamlet, Death and A Course in Miracles

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.

The Course tells us that what we view as the death of the body is in fact only a shadow of an illusory thought of death we cling to in our mind. And we have chosen that thought as part of a clever ego strategy to protect our identity as an individual self, bought, the ego tells us, at the expense of God’s death. All this remains unconscious and so it is the Course’s purpose to help bring our decision for the thought of death, which underlies all its various expressions in our lives, increasingly into our awareness. Only then can we make a meaningful choice to the question, "To be or not to be", with a clearer appreciation of what it means to be in the ego’s arena of existence, and what it means to be in the Holy Spirit’s realm, reflecting our reality as pure Being. Kenneth takes Hamlet’s dilemma to a much deeper level, clarifying what the choice is really about. He emphasizes the role forgiveness and healing play in that shift, leading then to a very different perception of the body’s death and our life beyond it.

Available in Following Formats: DVD Video, MP4 Video Download, Audio CD, MP3 Audio Download, Video Stream, Audio Stream

On Death and Dying
Ending, Continuing, or Awakening?

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.

Near the beginning of this five-day program, Kenneth makes the perhaps startling statement that we can see our study of the Course as preparing us for our own physical death. There are many layers to uncover to appreciate fully just what Kenneth means by this opening observation, and he takes no time in beginning to lay out the metaphysical foundation for understanding the ego’s purpose for death, which is part of its deliberate strategy to make the thought of separation both real and serious. With this understanding, the only way out of the ego’s trap becomes clear: recognizing that we are minds, not bodies, who have mistakenly chosen to believe in separation and death. This shift in identification from the body to the mind cannot be forced, Kenneth emphasizes, but will be acquired gradually through the practice of forgiveness with every aspect of our lives, big and small, under the guidance of our inner Teacher. The program’s length provided ample opportunity for audience questions, many focused on the theme of death and dying.

Available in Following Formats: DVD Video, MP4 Video Download, Audio CD, MP3 Audio Download, Video Stream, Audio Stream