Background

Following is a lesson from my teacher, based on questions I submitted from a series of posts on the Art of Giving. Normally, this is a private dialogue between teacher and student, however I am making his lesson to me transparent on my blog.

In his response, Sensei is not answering any questions that have to do with blogging itself. Rather, he is laying some groundwork and focusing on what some would consider to be a subtle nuance: the order in which I listed, and was applying, the four principles of Giving. He is also addressing the issue of giving back to the source.

I have been studying these principles with him for years, and upon seeing that I had reversed the order of two of them, he said, “This is a problem because source is not being honored. This mis-order causes many things in life to malfunction.”

You may find, I as do, that his teaching has a certain flow to it that makes it very easy and natural to read and follow. Do not be lulled into complacency by this; there is a depth occurring that can be quite difficult to understand. This one lesson has years of study available in it.

If you find auditing this lesson to be interesting or valuable, I recommend you spend some time, as I shall, studying. Perhaps you will end up coming up with a good question or two.

Introduction

As an introduction, I have selected the following quote from my teacher. Once you click on the (…more) button, you are reading his direct word-for-word teaching (not my notes). His lesson is called “Giving and its Principles”.

“Most people who tithe are giving out of duty or kindness. But they are not realizing an improved connection to source each time they give. The same thing happens to most musicians - when they play and have a moment of connection, they don’t know how to build it into a further one, where it just keeps getting better and better. It is the master musician who knows how to do that, and it is the master in life who knows how to do that. Mastering life should be certainly about doing that, otherwise we’re not even in tune with our reason for being. How can we master something, including our reason for being, if we are not even in tune with it. It is almost unbelievably embarrassing.”

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Update: Sunday, 29 Oct 2006 - I have been very busy over the weekend, and apologize for the delay. I hope to get with my teacher in the next day or so, and I am looking forward to the next post on Giving. Thanks for you patience.
Background:

Below are some questions being assembled from the previous post. These questions are, in part, the result of my teacher (Sensei) actively participating in my blog for the first time. So this may be a unique opportunity to ask a teacher some questions.

The questions below have evolved out of a series of recent posts on the Art of Giving. The Art of Giving is comprised of four principles that create a sequential circuit which, if you run it correctly, results in a constantly building or increasing value. Now, out of correct application and running of this ‘formula’ can emerge superconductive Giving - something I am wanting to learn more about.

Newcomers may want to read through those posts and comments to get some background. Sensei entered the discussion as a result of the first post, Giving:

Giving

Why Blogs Don’t Work

Giving Back to the Source

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Here are some questions gleaned from comments to the last post - some are over my head to answer, and I intend to present them to my teacher. Thank you so much for your great questions. Hopefully, this can turn into something fun, challenging and stimulating, and hopefully you will find value and benefit.

Questions:

1. - Is it really that complicated to give back to our source? Do I need to be told how and in what order? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
2. - What are Sensei’s principles for giving back to the Source?
3. - I was going to ask if you had further thoughts on being careful with a giver. Can somebody take more than is given and hurt the giver?
4. - The write up on static principles versus their part in a dynamic process to connect deserves comment, but I don’t know if I can grasp it enough to ask one. Maybe try to explain the dynamic process and when a specific static principle is used in description, link to an old blog on that principle. Are these processes steady state? Or is it more biological with things happening at varying rates? Feel like I’m shooting in the dark here.
5. - I will add: Why is the order so important, and what is the nature of the overall sequence that creates superconductivity?

Feel free to add further questions or comments. Also, feel free to change or modify via comments (I will adjust the post accordingly).

Additional questions and comments:

1. - Clarity on some terms would be welcomed and differentiating between them would also be helpful. I too am interested in the order and why that is important in creating superconductivity. Further, I always think clarity is heightened when an example is provided, if possible.
2. - What is the potential of a fully functioning superconductive circuit?
3. - Can we create superconductive Giving through our blogs, and do it in the sense that we and others are inside an actual deeper experience and connection versus only mental or intellectual understandings?
4. - You’ve made some really important points, which are very useful for where I am at the moment. Sensei’s distinction between the ‘principles’ and the ‘machine’, in particular. As an aside, many years ago a long time student of these matters pointed out to me - in the casual, almost ‘throwaway’ manner of someone who has been with a real teacher - the importance of ‘priming the pump’. This is a different point, but it is connected with the art of giving, and I think with Sensei’s point of offering something back. The issue here is that if one wants to receive, one needs first to put the machine in motion by giving. My own master makes another point, related to this, which is that in order to make more money, we need to spend more. In fact this is really about all giving and receiving - if we want to channel more energy or to have more wisdom, we have to allow the ‘flow’ to become greater. Once again, a New Testament parable comes to mind - that of the ‘talents’. Keeping our money in the bank, not sharing our energy or applying our knowledge effectively inhibits the operation of the ‘pump’, and nothing flows.

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Oops… that last post? My teacher came back to my blog today, called me and told me I had gotten off track with his comments. For the record, the main topic wasn’t about blogs; the blog topic was only a momentary aside. And what is interesting, and reflective of something I believe we all do, is that the main thing he was showing me yesterday? …well, I pretty much ignored it.

Read on and check it out. After a few introductory comments, you can read what he actually said to me today.

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Sensei was talking yesterday about the Art of Giving, and how these principles are in a certain order, and that inherent in the running of these principles, or (as we call it) ‘the loop’, there are elements that often get overlooked: including the order, that it is a sequential, dynamic loop, and that we should always give a portion of the proceeds or benefits back to the source. Not understanding these things, we end up practicing and living the individual principles of the Art of Giving, but never get the machine, so to speak, up and running.

What does that mean, giving back to the source? According to Sensei, this is an essential ingredient. It is something we may be doing in many parts of our lives and applications, but it is likely to be something we do not understand when viewed within the context of the formula for the Art of Giving. He reminded me that we keep missing that point.

One way to look at it is as a tithe - as we respect a value, and then appreciate it, we take part of that appreciation, and in gratitude for that increased value, we return some of it to the source of our understanding, bringing it, so to speak, into the temple of understanding, and placing it on the altar, that place which is the source of our understanding, guidance or improvement.

The ‘altar’ should be the thing or person in our lives who best represents that – within the context of our own individual applications. If it is a person, it isn’t necessarily the person delivering the message… since they may only be the messenger. Also, use of the word ‘altar’ is unimportant, as it is only being used to convey the idea of what is going on.

Anyway, after reading his insight about the principles being listed in an incorrect order - i.e., my last post - I didn’t think to ask (nor did anyone else) something like “Hmm, why would that be important?” We didn’t individually or collectively wonder why my teacher would say something like that. And he views that behavior as a problem. I have been studying with him long enough that I agree with his assessment, but I forget, slip, get distracted, etc. He doesn’t forget; that’s why he’s Sensei (teacher).

So, another perspective of giving back to the source is by asking a question, but not just a question for question’s sake - rather, a question that has emerged because we stopped and put a value on what was being said, found something there to respect, appreciated it and then took at least some of that increased value (resulting from the act of appreciation) and returned it to the source, in this case a question directed toward my teacher. This is only an example, but it makes the point.

Sensei told me today, “The principles of being a Giver allow you to continually improve your connection to the Divine, as giving becomes your reason for Being, and sharing that becomes your way of Being.”

Here is some more of what I captured, quoted directly (any errors are mine):

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I can see when people are giving [referring to some of us bloggers, and people in general] that it appears they are looking to give and share in ways that are significantly impacting. I definitely see that and respect that, and don’t take anything away from that.

But what I am trying to explain to you is in order to make this effort superconductive, there is a set of principles to do this by, and they have to be done in a certain order to make that happen. Superconductivity is something that improves as we improve our relationship to the source, or the current of a particular application. People don’t understand that, and don’t understand typically how to improve their coordination in that.

So the application to the Path of Understanding through the Art of Giving - where we are looking to improve our connection to the Divine, as a way of being, moment by moment, so that our lives become more conductive to what we are wanting them to be about - requires a particular form of principled application where we are looking to produce more of the value that will support that ideal, by cultivating a relationship with that ideal because we practice toward it, and then give a portion of our produced value and understanding back to the source or the current or to our connection to higher understanding.

We do this so that we can continue to grow that higher understanding in a more and more apparent way. This apparent growth takes something that is normally transparent and invisible, and brings it to become apparent and visible. As it becomes more apparent it is because it is using the creative force more conductively, and that’s what produces offspring. [He gave a nice big laugh here.]

I see this occurring, but the system only goes so far, because while the right principles are being used, the order and the formula for getting them in motion is not there. You are looking at principles as stand alone, versus a motor, a machine. This is a dynamic process involving a set of principles.

What people are doing is finding value in particular principles, and that is good, but they are losing sight of the dynamic process that these principles are a component of, and it is the process and your ability to have facility with that which allows you to become more purposeful and to improve your connection with the Divine, the current, the living thing.

This is the difference between static study and dynamic study. Both are important, but the static is only important in how it supports our understanding of the dynamic.

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Sensei came to my blog today. He read a recent post that included the following words:

Found in these few words are the essential principles of the Art of Giving: Respect, Appreciation, Gratitude and Value. Move sequentially, from one to the other. Find value, and learn to find it in anything. Then, respect that value, even if the respect is only a smidge. Once respected, be grateful, somehow, for the value and then appreciate it, finding a way to increase its value, no matter how small. Then, do that again. And again. Forever. This is the art of the Divine Giver.

Here is part of his lesson to me:

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“You are doing very good with these principles, but if you can open you mind for a few minutes, you are at a point where you can hear me say something, and you have an opportunity to make a very good adjustment.”

“The order that you have placed them in, while it works, is not actually creating a duplex [fully functioning] circuit. You have a circuit, but it is going to ground. What you should be striving for, if this is what you want to do, is building a duplex circuit, something that not only creates flow, but keeps returning each time it runs with a greater value toward source.”

My mind quickly flashed back many years to when I first began studying the Art of Giving. I was soundly rooted in selfishness, and yet, like many people, had no concept of that. I felt like I was a good guy - and I was a good guy, but also someone who didn’t have a clear concept of selfishness. Studying and practicing the Art of Giving had not only changed me, but had eventually turned me into a believer.

He went on with the lesson. He pointed out I had reversed the order of gratitude and appreciation when I said, “Once respected, be grateful, somehow, for the value and then appreciate it.”

I’ll post more about that later, but he also said something that speaks to all of us here. “This subtle change I am showing you is what’s causing blogs to not really work right. I have been studying and observing this. What happens is, someone puts up a post, a comment is made in response, and then perhaps a thank you and a comment back - and then, that’s it. It’s over.”

“Yes, that is exactly right,” I said; and, I thought, one of the reasons I had dropped out of blogging.

What’s the point of blogging? He was right, the circuit just stops. Nothing ever really ‘builds’. Oh sure, we can see there is value and benefit… no doubt. But what are we actually out to create and build?

“There is a way to correct this,” he said, and continued with the lesson, clearly demonstrating how proper firing of the circuit called the Art of Giving could completely change blogging.

While these things take study, it isn’t always rocket science, but you do have to study. How to do that? Look for a source; it’s all about Giving and about returning value to the Source.

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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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