There was a time I only saw what stood in front of me.
A frown. A closed door. A creature baring its teeth.
I used to think that was the whole of a person. The whole of a moment. The whole of the truth.
I know now that a face is often just a wall. Built quickly. Built for safety. Built long before the person building it knew they were building anything at all.
Even our own hands, the ancient ones said, hold something sacred we forget to look for. If this is true of hands, imagine what is true of faces.
The wall is not the enemy
I met a bear once who only knew how to growl. I met a peacock who only knew how to preen. For a long time, I believed the growl and the preening were the whole story.
Then I learned to sit a little longer. To wait a little longer. To ask a quieter question than what is this creature doing to me — and ask instead, what happened to this creature, that they needed a wall at all?
The ancient ones had a word for the veil that sits between what we see and what is real. They called it avarana. Not a lie. Not a trick. Just a covering — the way smoke covers a flame without ever putting it out.
The fire is still there. It is only waiting for the smoke to clear.
We build walls the same way we build nests
Out of what we had. Out of what we feared losing. Out of what once kept us safe, and never got taken down after the danger passed.
A sharp word is sometimes just an old wound, wearing a new coat. A cold silence is sometimes just a heart that was punished once for opening. A mask of confidence is sometimes just fear, dressed for the day so it doesn’t have to be seen undressed.
I do not say this to excuse the wall. Walls can still hurt the ones standing near them.
I say it because seeing through the wall does not mean pretending it isn’t there. It means understanding that the wall is not the whole house.
How I learned to see
I stopped asking who is this in front of me and began asking what is this in front of me protecting?
I stopped meeting the growl with a growl. I began meeting it with stillness — the kind that does not flinch and does not fight, the kind that simply says, I am not afraid of what’s under there.
The ancient ones called this way of truly looking darshan. Not glancing. Not judging. Seeing — the whole way down.
And here is the part that surprised me most. When I began to see past the walls of others, I began to see past my own.
The same fear that built the bear’s growl had built mine. The same ache that built the peacock’s pride had built mine.
We were not so different, the frightened and the frightening. We had simply built our walls from different materials, using the same trembling hands.
What lives behind every wall
I have sat with enough faces now to tell you a secret.
Behind the wall is not another wall. Behind the wall is not nothing.
Behind the wall is what the Upanishads called Atman — the same quiet light in every chest, wearing a different disguise each time, forgetting each time that it was never truly hidden. Only covered.
Sat. Chit. Ananda. Being. Awareness. Joy. Not manufactured. Not earned. Simply there, the way the sky is there behind every cloud that ever passed through it.
You have this light too, dear one. So does the person who hurt you. So does the person who frightens you. So does the stranger whose face you have never learned to read.
This does not mean every wall deserves to be walked through. Some walls are asking for distance, not company. But even from a distance, you can choose to remember there is a fire behind the smoke — even if you are not the one meant to tend it today.
A small practice, for whenever you remember
The next time a face closes in front of you —
Pause. Breathe once, slowly, the way water settles after a stone has passed through it. And ask, gently, only to yourself: what wall is this, and what is it made of?
You do not need an answer right away. Sometimes the question alone is enough to soften the room.
A whispered truth
We spend so much of our lives trying to be seen. And so little of our lives learning to see.
But the two are the same practice, wearing two different names. Every time you look past someone’s wall with patience instead of judgment, you teach your own walls that they, too, are allowed to come down.
Seeing through the walls is not a gift given to the wise. It is a gift the wise simply remembered to unwrap.
May you find the fire behind every smoke you meet. May your own walls grow thin with kindness, not force. May the face you show the world, and the face you carry underneath, slowly become one and the same.
सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः। May all beings find their ease.
— The Wise Monster