Jacob Glass wants you to learn to help yourself. A spiritual teacher and writer with a quick wit, Glass has a penchant for clarifying esoteric material by way of a well placed “Sex and the City” reference – making the ineffable available to the public.

“I consider what I do kind of an adult education, in a way,” Glass said. “I call it something like spiritual coaching, in that what I’m trying to do is help people find inner peace.”

Inner peace is hard to find outside of ourselves, though that is where most of us look. The 1990s influx of self-help gurus has settled into a profitable market, with infomercials, conferences, videotapes and books addressing every type of problem, from weight loss to business savvy, quitting smoking to living with less clutter. Still, the antidepressant nation is unhappy, stressed out and exhausted. People are beginning to look within to solve the problem, focusing on meditation and spiritual counseling rather than medication and traditional therapy.

Glass bases his teachings on Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles, which is designed for the reader to be able to find his or her own internal teacher and truth. The Course is arranged throughout as a teaching device, emphasizing application over theory and experience over theology.

“There are aspects of it that are very similar to a lot of ancient traditions,” Glass said. “There are aspects of it that are very much like Eastern thought, that are like Buddhism and all of that. What is different about A Course in Miracles is that it also brings in a lot of psychological terminology to that spiritual aspect.”

The Course is almost the antithesis of a group, he explained, though the book is well known worldwide as a popular inner wellness study guide. “It was designed to be read by individuals; it says that it is a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy. People go to groups more as a social support system, but there is nothing within the course that encourages you to go to classes or groups … some people just find groups helpful.”

Formally trained as a practitioner (spiritual counselor) through the Church of Religious Science, Glass attended classes in the Course taught by a woman named Marianne Williamson for five years while living in Los Angeles in the 1980s. He started out as a student and eventually became a teacher of the Course, holding the occasional workshop and lecturing in conjunction with Williamson.

“In 1990, I moved to Santa Barbara, and I was looking for a class like the one I had taken before and there was nobody doing it, so I started my own,” Glass said.

He began doing live lectures at Unity Church in Santa Barbara shortly thereafter, and has been teaching spiritual classes full time ever since.

Glass holds weekly lectures in Palm Springs on Tuesday nights, and in Hillcrest on Mondays and Wednesdays, plus periodic lectures in Santa Barbara. All of his classes run on a donation basis, with a suggested donation amount of $15 per class. Classes do not need to be taken in any particular order; the material is ongoing, like going to the gym, he said.

With a weekly commute that covers most of Southern California, Glass does not do individual sessions very often, though he has done them in the past. He has been invited to hold staff workshops at several companies and small businesses, which is becoming more common as companies seek new ways to boost productivity.

Asked why he thought the demand for spiritual guidance has grown, Glass said it is because we have tried everything else. “Really, what A Course in Miracles and Buddhism and all of these things teach is that the problem is really not in the world, the problem is in our thinking,” he said. “All of these things begin to address our thought processes and how, really, the torment that we have is from our minds – that all of the war that’s out there in the world is just a reflection of the fact that we’re at war inside of ourselves. I think what really attracts people to this is, you know, ‘I’ve got the car, I’ve got the job, I’ve got the mate; I’ve got my body the way I want it to be; I keep struggling to do all these things, and yet even when I have everything I want, there is still part of me that torments myself.’ I think that’s what attracts people – the idea that ‘I could be at peace, but instead I’m in torment’… We’re sold things under the premise of, ‘You’re not okay, but if you got this, you would be okay. If you smelled better and had shinier hair you’d just be happier.’”

According to the Course, this phenomenon is rooted in the belief system of the world itself – a world based on lack, scarcity and separation. When we perceive ourselves to be separate and have separate interests from those around us, Glass said, that perception provokes fear. “What that makes us do, then, is struggle to protect ourselves; to get what we need and sometimes – oftentimes in fact – that might be at the expense of someone or something else. Everybody is sort of trying to get what they can, not even in a mean-spirited way, but out of fear.”

After years of teaching, it came time for a book. Invocations, published in 2000, is Glass’ personal process of morning prayers, written exercises, mission statements and daily intentions. The book contains a collection of these prayers, several essays, and suggestions for written exercises to give shape and focus to the day ahead.

Glass would ultimately like to open his own center, because he would be able to teach more consistently. “My real goal is just to keep sharing the information,” he said. “Not to have any particular form of it in the world, but just to make it available to people.”

Feedback is crucial, because it helps Glass fine-tune his approach for maximum audience benefit.

“What stands out in my mind really is how simple the principles are, and how much resistance we have to it,” he said. “It’s just sort of that look in someone’s face, when they actually get that the problem has been in their mind all along. Someone will come up after a class and you’ll see that they’ve figured it out for themselves – that it’s just this story they’ve been telling themselves that’s really tormenting them. Even though what maybe happened in the world was difficult and hard, really what made it unbearable was their story about it.”

For more information about Glass’ work, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com and link to his website.