The Picture
The tales make it sound magical, and it is. But it’s also torture.
This essay has an introduction, a story called ‘The Picture’ and a commentary.
NOTE: If you want to study and journey deeper and deeper into consciousness, in my opinion it’s important to just take things as they come. Not to judge. It comes with being a monastery. Even if the only monastery in sight is you.
Introduction
Studentship on the so-called inner path or journey is something only rarely captured and written about. Some of it becomes fictionalized, such as Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior, or Carlos Castenada’s The Teachings of Don Juan. True-to-life accounts include Irina Tweedie’s Daughter of Fire. In many ways, the fictionalized versions are far easier reads and can certainly wet the appetite for master/apprentice relationships. Tweedie’s book is clearly a much harder read, and in no way romanticizes the relationship.
Some students, emerging from the shadows of their teachers, decide to start their own schools or movements, and become instructors and teachers in their own right. Tweedie’s successor, Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee, founded Northern California’s Golden Sufi Center. Exemplifying the martial arts, the senior-most student of Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, also founded a movement. Koichi Tohei founded The Ki Society, which now flourishes under the guidance of his son.
[In America] spirituality has become a commodity. And if you sell something to somebody they want to get something out of it. If I say: do this meditation, do these practices, listen to these tapes, and you’re going to feel empowered, you’re going to feel better, you’re going to have more insight, you are going to have a more meaningful life — you will hand over the dollars. But if I say to somebody: do this practice and you’re going to learn how to be of service, you’re going to learn how to give yourself away more easily, you’re going to become nothing — this is not so popular or inviting. — Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee
The monastery is a place of stories and mysteries
“You’re going to become nothing.”
For my part, I have enough material to write for the rest of my life. So rather than opening up my own Jiu Jitsu school, I chose to write. In that regard, I eventually founded a monastery.
We identify monasteries as homes to monks and scribes, people doing both the menial chores of the order but also the ageless and persistent tasks of the order — which often includes preserving the written records along with maintaining the order’s more esoteric truths.
The Monastery of Nothingness does a little of both, but I tend to shun the tagline of being described as a scribe, because a scribe is primarily known for copying and preserving. While I support such traditions, I’m personally not really interested in perpetuating. Because in my case, I have set as one of my monastic goals that of describing the indescribable. My premise is, if we think it’s indescribable, then it is.
If we think it’s indescribable, then it is.
The older I get, the more frank and forthcoming my writing. In a sense, maybe that’s wisdom. But is it? Because I don’t know you. We’ve probably never met. So, I can’t see you when you read this. You’re invisible to me, yet I’m exposed to you. Vulnerable for the rest of my life and beyond.
Nevertheless, presented below is another story about being trained. And because it’s a story, it has a way of submerging the torment that can accompany being an apprentice. Try to keep that in mind.
Because most people only want the stories. Think about it. Why would you agree to the torments? Unless you found out it was the only way to get the experiences and realizations for yourself?
The Picture
“It’s happening all the time. Are you beginning to see it?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I’m actually beginning to see it’s in everything. It’s all around you. All the time.”
It was 1997, and we were leaving the hospital cafeteria. On the wall there were some black and white photographs on matte finishes. The pictures were displaying hospital staff members together with former patients. Each picture had a short inscription, a patient testimonial regarding their stay in the hospital. As we were passing the wall of pictures, Sensei suddenly stopped and turned. He went over to a certain picture.
“I know that guy from somewhere,” he explained as he bent in to take a closer look.
It was a picture of a seated young man, with a young nurse posed and standing behind him. Both were in street clothes and both of them were smiling. There was a quote from the young man describing how the care he had received had been very good.
Sensei straightened up, and we continue to walk out of the cafeteria’s corridor when suddenly he stopped again.
“Would you like to see something really weird?” he asked, turning toward me.
“Sure!”
“Are you sure”? he continued. “It will freak you out.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” I replied. What could it be, I wondered?
He led me back to the picture and instructed me to bend over and gaze at the seated young man from a distance of about 18–24 inches. He told me not to zero in on any one particular feature, and then after a moment or two asked me if I had it.
“Yes, I can see it. No problem.”
“Good. Now watch his smile.”
Instantly, and I mean instantly, the smile turned into a grimace. The whole face shifted as well. As the mouth drooped into a scowl, the teeth started getting covered up. Then, the mouth went back to its normal position, grinning. Then, it went back to a grimace, followed once more by the smile. Teeth coming and going.
I was stunned. The picture was moving! It was actually moving.
“You see it?” he asked calmly. “Now watch.”
I was trying to maintain my composure. This time, the picture’s smile turned into a full-mouthed grin. A huge grin, exposing more teeth than you could normally see in the photograph. As the mouth widened and changed, the face and eye muscles changed correspondingly.
“Okay,” he said as he straightened up and walked away. “What do you think of that?”
“It’s the most incredible thing I have ever seen,” I replied slowly. He laughed and we quickly moved on. His walking pace was rapid and I scurried to catch up, hastily scribbling notes of the encounter.
I can’t explain it. All I can tell you is, the picture moved.
Commentary
I’ve come across metaphysics being defined as a branch of science that seeks to explain the unknown.
In my own experience, counter arguments offered for experiences such as “The Picture” are pretty standard fare. Within the context of the unknown, most people will, of course, be a bit dismissive of the experiences of others. Their dismissiveness may be based in their belief that they acknowledge that I, Mark Walter, ‘believed’ the picture moved, so they have no reason to contradict that I believed something occurred. The net outcome being, if I believed it then it was true for me. This ties into the whole notion of my truth versus your truth, which somehow ends up completely diluting and marginalizing more fundamental, universal Truth.
Then there are fellow students who have witnessed similar things themselves, what we might call groups of witnesses. In such cases, people will tend to dismiss collective experiences as hallucinations, group hypnosis, or otherwise suggestive influences upon the mind — perhaps being unduly persuaded by a particularly charismatic individual.
In all of these instances, the net effect of such predictable reactions is to keep unknown experiences from being discussed, much less legitimized or even openly and reasonably examined. Such experiences are somehow made heretical, pushed into the same pile as banned books or forbidden thinking. Is all this some kind of intentional plot? Of course not, but like the Red Scare of the 1950s, don’t get caught in such conspiracies.
For all the talk and writing that I’ve encountered over the course of my life about people being open-minded, most aren’t. Many people are far more superstitious then they’ll admit. Therefore, the mainstream itself is what’s truly marginalized. And experiences like mine become ‘fringe’ to people who refuse to acknowledge that deeper truths may actually exist. This is what makes it so conveniently and readily reflexive to develop an ‘us versus them’ mentality.
Yet, ironically, many people in the mainstream are deeply fascinated by films and books which depict odd events or inexplicable twists in the known fabrics of reality. Between films like The Matrix or Inception, or stories of ghosts and hauntings, or science fiction plots posing the concepts of advanced life forms or alternate realities, we are consumed, on some level, with imagination, glimpses of the unknown, challenging ways of thinking, and even death and the concept of an afterlife.
At the same time that we are so busy paying Hollywood and authors to entertain us with unimaginable visions or various forms of fantasy, that the very people who actually set about making their life’s work or mission one of exploration and discovery in such matters are pushed off to the side.
Better Approaches
This arguing back and forth — of which I plead guilty — gets us nowhere. It never has.
To overcome the arguments, it’s essential to find areas of agreement. I happen to think one of those areas is found in the overlap between the mystic and the quantum physicist.
Magazines and books help, too. But we also have institutions, institutions that have interjected themselves into research of the paranormal. The idea being to bring scientific rigor into worlds that seem to defy explanation.
In my opinion, one place all of this legitimate inquiry gets off track is that our researchers typically ignore going to the source. For example, I’ve written an article that describes Irina Tweetie’s journey with her teacher. If that teacher were still around, that’s the kind of person to go interview. Although, interestingly, if you ever managed to do that, I can nearly guarantee that he or she would immediately start training you, whether you were aware of it or not. Because why else would you have gone to all the trouble, to actually show up and be there?
My point is, talk to someone who understands the veil or the pinhole. Talk to someone who understands the whole notion of teaching people how to overcome their personal biases, at least sufficiently enough to experience the so-called deeper experience, the realities which lie just beyond our typical sense of reality.
Talk to the teachers, the guides themselves.
About the teachings: Not all teaching is ‘torturous’ to students. In Tweedie’s case, as in mine, the teacher wanted to know if we wanted to take the easier or smoother road, or the harder and far more challenging path. One way was a bit more leisurely, while the other might end up being faster. Either way, there were no guarantees. And neither choice was presented as superior to the other. In Tweedie’s case, she chose the harder approach, as did I with my own teacher. The point is that the answer you give to that kind of question makes a big difference in the atmosphere of the relationship, as well as the level of difficulty that gets put down in front of you.
To be clear, I’m not claiming in any of my accounts that some kind of ‘miracles’ took place. While I’ve witnessed inexplicable phenomenon, that’s just what it is: inexplicable. That’s why such things are called studies. Science will eventually catch up.
