Miracles News

October - December, 2008

I Should Have Known Better

Rev. Larry Glenz

I attended the workshop, Undoing the Ego II given by Tomas Viera and Nouk Sanchez, the authors of Take Me To Truth: Undoing the Ego. Although I am a long time student of A Course in Miracles and an ordained minister of Pathways of Light, I had never previously been in the physical company of any assembly of ACIM students. I had some reservations about spending five nights in Kiel, Wisconsin with these spiritually inclined strangers that I was certain would be very different from me. I was sure that few, if any, from this group of spiritual seekers would share my background and interests or have experienced the same difficulties that have challenged me greatly in this “dream” that I think is real.

Nevertheless, I wanted to meet Mary and Robert Stoelting, and Sharyn Zenz personally, learn from the authors of this amazing book I read, and see the site of Pathways of Light before they move on to Florida. And, after all, it’s only four days; how boring and sterile can these people be anyway? I should be able to find someone I can relate to, I hoped.

As I look back on those thoughts now, I can see clearly that I should have known better. The ego always speaks first and loudest. Once I put the Holy Spirit in charge of these fears, He didn’t let me down. I wouldn’t have expected that my favorite part of every morning would be going from person to person and sharing long, powerful hugs — expressing love with every member of our group of about thirty people. Maybe my “story” is a bit different but so was everyone’s. There is no mold for the type of people seeking Truth and I came to feel so much warmth and respect for and from each person — and quite quickly too. Undoing the ego feels just wonderful!

What fun I had — we had — exploring how that damn ego has shaken us up all of our lives. I laughed a lot — in fact, we even practiced laughing at each other’s ego. All of us had stories of how we’ve suffered from our ego attachments; how we’ve defended beliefs even though they made us miserable. I learned about a different level of “trust” in the Holy Spirit’s answers than I’ve allowed my mind to previously accept. We explored what is “valuable” and “valueless” in our lives. We contemplated what we were willing to offer to Holy Spirit and what exactly we were still keeping for ourselves to decide.

Nouk and Tomas shared many personal and very inspiring stories about ego release — most of which made us belly laugh. They didn’t take themselves so seriously even though many of the circumstances they described were very serious by this world’s standards. Their examples made the rest of us open up to our fears more than we ever would have expected when we came. We weren’t always laughing but we could have — should have. Once we realize that our stories are all illusions, we could laugh at them and be right to do so. There is no need for us to suffer for even a moment. When we offer all our fears to Holy Spirit we will laugh and feel love all the time.

I felt a real lot of love this week from everyone there at Pathways. There never was anything to fear after all. I never expected to laugh so much; I should have known better. Thanks, everyone.

Rev. Larry Glenz is a Pathways of Light minister living in Long Island, New York.

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