In Jiu Jitsu we teach that there are two components present in every successful armbar: Pain and lead.

An armbar can be very painful. Effectively performed, you have no question how easy it is to snap a joint. If we administer only pain, there are some armbar locks where it is fairly easy to get out. But if we add in movement (lead), the armbar becomes much more effective. Conversely, with only movement present an armbar can have little to no sense of threat, no sense of “impending doom”.

Pain and lead can be a very effective way to neutralize an attacker. It has a way of leveling the playing field, because even the biggest man with the biggest arm is still very vulnerable to joint locks and breaks applied in vulnerable areas. There is very little he can do. If he’s smart he stops the attack and stops struggling.

So it is with life, don’t you think? It puts us in pain, into our individual versions of armbars and joint locks.

For all of our struggles one of the “rewards” we get is pain and lead - pain that’s designed to lead us to a place where we stop struggling.

And it is at that point that we begin to learn.

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We often think we are being efficient in our work or in our lives. I don’t think so.

In the heating and air conditioning industry equipment is often sold based on its efficiency. Electric motors, for example, range from 78% to as high as 95.8%. This means that if we put 100 units of energy into a motor, we will get 78% of work out of it.

In heating boilers, as pictured above, if we put a 100 units of fuel in we can get as high as 75% to 80% of heat out of it. We could call a boiler 80 % efficient, with the remaining 25% basically going up the chimney. So the best boiler has 25% waste, and the best motors have 4.2% waste.

Now, here’s why I don’t think we are efficient. Every day I eat and drink. When I look at how much energy/fuel goes in me, and then look (in the toilet) at how much waste comes out, it is very clear how inefficient I am. I am really, really full of… ah… shall we say - waste.

I look a lot worse than this pensive chap

Motor and boiler manufacturers couldn’t possibly sell equipment that inefficient. Everyone would say, “No way! Your equipment is crap!”

Efficiency is a very relative term, don’t you think?

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Krishna and Arjuna

The Gita is a text out of Hinduism, and Buddhism came out of this movement. As Christianity came out of Judaism, Buddhism came out of Hinduism. Of course, many people feel that Christianity also came out of Hinduism and Buddhism as well, because the Sermon on the Mount, for example, is classic Buddhism, clearly based on ideals and concepts that go back to Hinduism.

From the earliest times, Hinduism existed. It is a very, very old religion dating back thousands of years BC. The idea behind the one God gets lost because while Hindus proclaim there’s one God, they praise and honor and connect to God through an infinite number of deities. This is because God is in all things, and the Hindus feel just as clear about that as they are capable of feeling. They feel that if I’m going to now fathom God within all things and in everything, I can do that by identifying God in particular ways and by defining particular aspects of God. So what we typically call their deities are simply aspects of the one God.

In Christianity we have the Trinity of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit; we have angels, we have the archangels, we have the dominions, we’ve got the seraphim, the cherubim — we have all these realms and levels which represent aspects of God. And while our culture has angels that are written inside the holy scriptures of the Judeo-Christian model, the Hindus and Buddhists reference their deities, each in their own unique ways, as aspects of God.

So, some people categorize heavenly beings as angels, some call it different levels of being, some say Satan and others say Shiva. However you want to look at it, the idea behind it is that it breaks down to being one God, and that one God is in all things and all things are in the one God.

Sensei. “Course on Bhagavad-Gita”. Montvale: Great River Institute, 3 August 2003.

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What is the hardest thing to overcome in your spiritual journey? What gives you the toughest time? I didn’t know the answers to these things, nor was I questioning them until I was quite a ways along in my own journey.

Long before that I recall, as an entering college freshman, going to my minister and talking about my first year of college. I had little grasp of the above questions when I replied to a question he asked me.

“What are you really looking for in a school?” he asked.

“Well, it might not make sense, but what I’d really like is to find a teacher that I could ask any question of (and be taken seriously), who would either give me the answer or stick with me (and the question) until I got the answer.”

The minister chuckled and said, “Mark, do you have any idea how incredibly expensive that would be? And you could never find a teacher like that. No one would ever be willing to spend that kind of time.”

“Yes, I know,” I replied. But that’s what I am really looking for.”

I walked out of his office somewhat discouraged.

What would help you the most? What would be an ideal solution just right for you?

Think and mediatate on it. It might just happen for you. Eventually it did for me, and I started learning how to get out of the chains and walk out from behind the fence.

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I’ve known about it for quite a while.
I started understanding it within the last 8 years or so.
I began supporting it around the same time.
But I have only very recently come to personally realize it.

Perhaps the greatest attribute of Sensei is his ability to show people how to experience deeper awareness. He has an absolutely amazing ability to help guide you into that experience. It’s one thing to study with a teacher and learn about deeper things; it’s all together another thing to actually have the experiences your self. I am talking here about life changing experiences and realizations, i.e. the kind that books are written about.

I realized the value of his unique ability a number of years ago, probably when I started studying for my second degree in Jiu Jitsu in 1997 or so. It is, to put it simply, amazing.

Now, to the point of the realization in my opening lines…

…the most valuable thing I can do with my life is to be a conduit/vessel/catalyst (whatever you want to call it) to help others have a conscious experience of heaven - so that they in turn can help others start having conscious experiences of heaven, and so on, and so on. I believe that’s the game. I deeply believe this is one of the keys to unlock the Age of Consciousness that we are entering.

It is not enough to have the experience for your self. If that is all that happens, it is my opinion that we (humanity) will fail “the test”. Why? Because as great as an incredible awareness of eternity or heaven is, if we keep that to ourselves it is still only a manifestation of selfishness. Heaven and greater awareness is not about selfishness; God is about giving.

We are to learn to have the experiences our selves so that we can pass theh ability on to others. That is what will cause awareness to spread and humanity to evolve. I know that my current, early realization of this is limited; Sensei has much more to say on this subject.

I have come to realize this is the purpose of all the deeper experiences I have had. And, for whatever reason, I have been being selfish.

While I have shared them and talked about them with others, I haven’t been out to learn and understand the dynamics of helping others have it to. So there is no denying my selfishness.

While other people have been affected in a positive way by my self improvements, I haven’t been out to make this thing my goal, to make it my life’s purpose – even though my Sensei has been demonstrating this for years and years and years. I have been missing the point, over and over and over.

At 54+ years of age, I have lived 656 weeks or so. Only in the last two or three weeks, am I finally getting it.

It is time to come out of my cave of meditation and contribute some value to the world.

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Sensei with his daughter

Sadiq M. Alam:
The more I read about Sensei the more I feel interested. Sorry for not knowing, but who is he? Is there any website by or about him? Do you have any pictures of him?

Mark replies:
I have put two links below that show Sensei. He is my younger brother, Scott Walter. However, I recognize him as my teacher from past lives. GRI does not yet have a website. My blog is a personal attempt to spread his teachings to a wider audience, as seen through the eyes of a student.

Sensei is in the center of the this picture (below), and next to me (he’s in the center with red, white and black belt on) in this picture. He is an astounding individual.

Sadiq’s replies:
Wow, what a wonderful thing to know. All praise be to God. He is your younger brother and you feel such a great bond in terms of teacher - student relationship. That is really wonderful.

Why does he not he start a blog? It’s so easy, I’m sure he can manage. Thus he can spread his wisdom and share with all of us and can touch hundreds of lives by his teachings.

Please convey my regards to your brother. Please mention that he has another fan in Singapore. Automatically I have become a disciple of Sensei by reading so many thoughts and ideas of him from your blog. Thanks also goes to you as well.

Thanks for sending me the pic of him as well. By the way, what does Sensei mean?

Mark replies:
It is a great thing to be his student. He is far too busy to do a blog. Thank you for your kind thoughts about him, and your sincere expression of friendship. I will certainly convey your thoughts to him.

Sensei means teacher. It is a Japanese word, and is primarily used to refer to a Master or teacher or instructor of the martial arts. He is a Master or “Shihan” in Jiu Jitsu, and is referred to as Scott, Master Scott, or Sensei. I nearly always refer to him as Sensei, even though he is my brother by birth; I see him as so much more than my brother. Many people call him Scott, and he certainly welcomes that. I am also a Sensei, but not a Master or Shihan. I prefer people to call me Mark. In the Jiu Jitsu dojo (training hall), students refer to me as Sensei Mark, but outside of the dojo everyone calls me Mark.

Sadiq replies:
I wish the best of luck to GRI. If I can help in anyway, please do let me know. I would be more than happy to help in anyway.

Sadiq’s blog

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Deeper journeys mean more doors to go through

One of the greatest breakthroughs in my spiritual journey took place in 1997. I accompanied Sensei (a martial arts term for “teacher”) on a healing mission to Nashville, Tennesee, a journey that ended up taking about 30 days to complete.

Long before we started our trip, Sensei had been encouraging me to spend 24 consecutive hours with him. I kept blowing it off, what with a busy life in addition to the 3 or 4 times a week I was spending training with him. We had often spent time together, camping and backpacking, for example – but he was referring to something else, something I didn’t understand.

Before we started our trip to Nashville Sensei told me that I could go only on one condition: I had to be willing to stop being so negative, and immediately change the behavior that had been causing that. That was quite a tall order, but I was highly motivated and quickly indicated that I was ready to do that. My negativity was based in denial, so a big part of the cure was to stop denying.

This trip unfolded into a set of fantastic experiences far too numerous to detail in a single post. I’ll just share one of them here, the first one.

As we started driving south on Interstate highway I-81 he began talking. Within about 20-30 minutes I started becoming aware of a strange phenomenon. At first the awareness was just beneath my conscious awareness. It took another few minutes before I became consciously aware of what was happening. It was at this point that a critical turn occurred in my habit of denial.

I kept hearing him talking, and then interjecting the comment, “Right there”. He did this a number of times, and when I first noticed it I shrugged it off. But he kept doing it.

He would talk and pause. I would think and respond. And then he would say, “There, right there.” After a few seconds he would resume talking. The process would then repeat itself.

I began studying what was going on as we continued to talk. Suddenly it hit me.

“Oh man,” I said. “I see what you are doing!” He said nothing.

“Every time I get ready to say something, you say ‘There, right there’.”

He was driving, but didn’t reply. After a few moments we resumed talking and his “right there” comments also resumed. After several more repetitions of this I had another realization.

“Wait a second,” I said. “You aren’t just saying that when I begin to say something. You are saying that at the actual moment, at the very instant that I have the intention to begin to say something!”

“Yes,” he replied. “And I have been trying to show you things like this for a long time. Mark, I have been asking you to spend 24 stinking hours with me, and you have been refusing to do that. Maybe now you are ready to start learning. And to be successful on this trip and difficult mission we are on, you have to continue opening up your mind this way. Now are you ready to have some fun?”

“Yes,” I said. And while our journey to Nashville was very challenging, it provided me with the opportunity of a lifetime. I saw and experienced hundreds of things during that trip, any one of which most spiritual travelers would yearn to have, and to have the memory of that single profound experience to take through a lifetime. Since that trip to Nashville I have had thousands of such experiences. I am truly blessed to be this wonderful man’s student. It is the opportunity of many, many lifetimes.

I didn’t understand how he was “reading” my intention, but there was no doubt that he was. The change in my negative thinking occurred when I refused to deny that he was doing that. This was a critical change in my spiritual journey. This was also the beginning of another understanding that I came to realize: I stopped trying to understand it. I just recognized the truth and accepted it. Trying to understand deeper truths is a big mistake. First you have to accept deeper truths. The reach for understanding prohibits advancement. It’s just like somone saying, I refuse to accept and use electricity unless I understand hydropower, fuel power and nuclear power plants, and every aspect of everything between the powerplant and the electricity in my home.

At the end of my time in Nashville I wept. I was so upset because I knew the incredible experiences I had undergone were coming to a close. Sensei had powered up “the field” during our trip. He had spent time helping me learn how to be conductive when “the field” powers up. But on our return home, things had to be tuned down… the strongest “field effects” are too strong for most people - it takes training.

So I cried, because I knew that I was being de-tuned. Sensei told me that I wasn’t ready to live with this yet, that it was too strong for me. I knew it would be years before I finally got to the point of being able to “handle it” on a regular basis. I knew a lot of training and self improvement lay ahead. But despite my forlorn sense of despair, I also knew that I had made a significant change. I was determined to do my best to cling to that change and improve it.

Years passed and I continued my studies with Sensei, including Jiu Jitsu studies. Along the way, as my training unfolded and advanced, I began having glimpses into intention. I trained long and hard, and my awareness skills improved. Finally it happened. I was actually having the experience of sensing my training partner’s intentions. With more study I began to sense their intentions before they were consciously realizing them themselves.

These things happened not because of any particular religious beliefs, nor did they happen from the use of drugs or artificial shortcuts. Nor did they happen because I was specifically focused on learning how to sense intention. It happened because I learned and used principles, and practiced them daily – as I continue to do in everyday life applications, everyday. And I did my best to consistently work to improve myself, including my tendency to deny. I am still working on all of these things, and more.

In the process of doing these basic things, I have learned many things. And one of the things I have learned is to “stand up for the truth”. This is the counterbalance for denial.

Sensei often says that deeper truths should be self evident. I believe we all have a place at the core of our being that unquestionably knows and recognizes deeper truth, whether it is emanating from us or someone else. When we encounter such truths, we need to turn our back on denial, and demonstrate a sign of maturity that shows we are transitioning from being “children” of God to becoming “adults” of God.

These are principles of responsible growth. Few students go into a classroom with the supposition that they have to understand everything the teacher knows before they will begin to learn and study. That is a laughable and absurd approach. Yet this is how we often approach our training for deeper spiritual awareness: With conditions, and an ongoing generational, conditional bias of embracing our denial.

So this story is simple: Face your denial and embrace standing up for the truth.

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Who am I? Why am I here? Perhaps some people prefer to ask the question this way: How do I know my purpose?

The answers to these questions are residing behind denial. Denial surrounds the answers, and prevents them from being revealed. Penetrate denial, and things start opening up.

How do I know this to be true? Because I have penetrated denial within my self, at least certain aspects of denial. To penetrate denial we have to learn to look at and/or accept the things we are in denial of. It’s not as easy as it sounds though, because we all have problems with denial. We even deny that we are in denial. That is a particularly difficult problem to overcome.

It’s like wanting to learn how to swim, but refusing to go near water. Even worse, it’s not only about refusing to go near water but also acting like you already know how to swim. That’s a real tough position, because in that case you won’t even listen to an instructor.

Which team are we serving?

The most frustrating position to be in or to deal with is when you are so deeply immersed in denial that you actually start telling the instructor how to swim. And that’s where humanity is at.

The way to overcome denial is to start by accepting and admitting you are in denial. Do you admit you’re in denial? I do. Whew, I am definitely in denial.

There are a lot of things to deny and plenty of reasons and justifications. But at the end of the day, all of those reasons and justifications are blocking us from realization, awareness and fulfillment of purpose.

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The path to deeper awareness is just like climbing a summit. It is tough. Some people turn back. Others persist.

The ones that persist have to stop and rest, and often need to take time to acclimate to the environment before going higher.

The rewards of the summit are not only about the view but about the development of the character of the individual.

The summit in the inner journey is not the end; it is just one in a continuous series of summits.

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