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Becoming More is a paradox. The journey of healing oneself, that many have begun with the concept of "becoming more", is actually a journey of discovering an authentic self, becoming less of what we think we are, and more of what we have always been.
When we meet someone for the first time, the immediate conversation usually goes to safe questions of, "What do you do?" or something similar. Hopefully we get answers to the big questions like, "Can I trust you?" or, "Do we connect?" which are the questions behind the initial question. These are good things on which to be clear!
Two questions I am asked often are, "Are you a Reiki Master?" and, "Do you teach Reiki?" After the "yes" part of my response to both of those things that I do, there's a story. The life story before "Reiki", and the one that came after, are not separate. This is the short version of that story.
My childhood dream was to fly, to be a pilot. This actually came true, but differently than expected. I went into the RAAF as a cadet pilot and exited some months later into another life in civil Air Traffic Control that lasted twenty years.
Life was good to me. Marriage, raising a family, escaping the big city radar centre to work in country control towers, becoming Officer in Charge and Manager of a country airport, was all a great adventure in life. I learnt about people and systems and politics and managing change. More importantly I learnt about myself, my abilities and talents. And then I turned forty, and change was in the air.
I encountered a "something" called Reiki in what turned out to be the last year of my Air Traffic Control life. I took first and second degree classes, and awakened an awareness that I was really not on course for how I wanted to be in my life. In six short months the life I had lived for 20 years was history. It was not the first, or the last, experience of the disappearance of whatever identity I believed to be “me”.
I remember clearly the very first First Degree class I taught in 1993, and my mind picture of the future that lay ahead of me. Life however took a very different path; I had to let go of my mind picture, to just be a more present father to my teenage children, partner to my wife, to care for my parents when they were ill, to be with them when they were dying.
In the midst of this I kept at my daily practice, simply living life, living the folk healing art called Reiki as I had learnt it from my teacher. I taught a class from time to time, experienced Reiki practice and people in different parts of the world. The way and the means were provided for. Life was still being good.
In 1994 I joined an international body of Reiki Masters, The Reiki Alliance (TRA). I was looking for a place, a tribe perhaps, where I felt like I had come home ...and found it. I was elected to the Board of The Reiki Alliance in 2000, serving until 2003. TRA became, and is still, my connection with masters in my form of practice from all over the world, and a point of connection with the original masters who took this form of practice.
My search for answers to unresolved questions about the Reiki practice led me into a personal connection with Phyllis Furumoto, granddaughter of, and successor to, Hawayo Takata who first brought the practice of Reiki to the western world. I took the Masters' Intensives Phyllis offers for Reiki Masters who wish to practise the form of the system which she holds as the Lineage Bearer. This personal relationship endures; we are in contact, visit with each other when we are in the same place, wherever in the world that happens to be.
These broad experiences colour the context in which I hold, practise and teach Usui Shiki Ryoho (Reiki). Out of these experiences arose the motivation to offer classes in this specific form of practice, to offer enrichment workshops to people who have already taken Reiki and who wish to explore or to simply reconnect with their practice. The practice is a path to a way of being, which is gained only with regular practice and the passage of time. Time and experience is what I am able to bring to the place of being with people in my classes and workshops.
I have a simple vision: in a world that seems ever more complex, full of the latest, the next big thing, of situations over which I have seemingly little or no influence or ability to change, there is a place where I am able to have an effect. The place that I can change is in me, and in my response to what I experience in the world. The way I am being impacts on the people and the world about me. It's not magic, it's just how it is.
The tool I use, the way that has made this opening to the space of simply being, is the practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho, the simple folk healing art called Reiki. There is a richness and depth, even mystery, in simplicity. This is my experience.
I also hold this possibility for others, that they may choose to learn and live the ways of this form of practice. The system has a purpose; it holds the pathway into an ever deepening knowing and experience of who we really are, the possibility of entering into a place for the heart to deepen in its own knowing, and in its own truth. This is a good and life-affirming thing to do ...perhaps the only thing really worth doing.
Life is still good, rich beyond measure.
Please feel free to phone me on 0400 079 846 or email me via the contact page with any questions.
