Reiki
The Year So Far
06/04/11 20:30
What a year its been, cyclones, floods, an earthquake and tsunami that has touched the whole world, and a nuclear event, all bringing to mind the fragility of life on this planet and awareness of the folly of our notions of being in control of our lives and the events in them.
In the midst of this comes heart warming tales of survivors and connections between human beings faced with events almost beyond imagination. Disasters do that, bring us to recognize whats important in our lives, to turn to the next person and offer help to go on.
I have observed as people have asked “What can we do, how can we help?” There have been many imaginative suggestions for “energetic” help, times of collective focus on areas where the need seems greatest. There has been mention of the Tokyo earthquake in Mikao Usuis’s time when he physically went and gave help.
It doesnt sound like much, but one thing we can all do is take care of ourselves, to do our daily practice, address the fears and concerns for the future of people and the planet within our own selves, to just be here now wherever we are. Where ever we go, thats where we are, thats where we have an effect. Peace, love and healing is held in every moment, in every breath we take.
In the midst of this comes heart warming tales of survivors and connections between human beings faced with events almost beyond imagination. Disasters do that, bring us to recognize whats important in our lives, to turn to the next person and offer help to go on.
I have observed as people have asked “What can we do, how can we help?” There have been many imaginative suggestions for “energetic” help, times of collective focus on areas where the need seems greatest. There has been mention of the Tokyo earthquake in Mikao Usuis’s time when he physically went and gave help.
It doesnt sound like much, but one thing we can all do is take care of ourselves, to do our daily practice, address the fears and concerns for the future of people and the planet within our own selves, to just be here now wherever we are. Where ever we go, thats where we are, thats where we have an effect. Peace, love and healing is held in every moment, in every breath we take.
Japanese Mind
16/10/10 12:49
Over the years I have been in gatherings of masters and listened as Phyllis Furumoto encouraged an appreciation of the history, the culture and times in Japan at the time of Mikao Usui.
On one particular occasion it roused a friend to anger. “How Japanese do I need to ***ing be! ...to do Reiki?
Actually what was being highlighted in Phyllis’s talk was not “becoming more Japanese”. My friend missed the point, which was nothing to do with getting a Japanese or any other sort of mind, but everything to do with stepping aside from the habitual viewpoints of our western mind.
That means being open to the experience of the discomfort of “not knowing”, of allowing the experience of uncertainty.
On one particular occasion it roused a friend to anger. “How Japanese do I need to ***ing be! ...to do Reiki?
Actually what was being highlighted in Phyllis’s talk was not “becoming more Japanese”. My friend missed the point, which was nothing to do with getting a Japanese or any other sort of mind, but everything to do with stepping aside from the habitual viewpoints of our western mind.
That means being open to the experience of the discomfort of “not knowing”, of allowing the experience of uncertainty.
Mind Changing
08/10/10 11:22
If I believed what you believe, I'd probably be acting exactly the same way you are right now ...Once we realize that it's not a matter of judgment, but a matter of belief, everything changes. ~Seth Godin
Seth was talking marketing, but the idea applies generally.
The flip side is that beliefs are not necessarily rational, some are simply “insane” by any measure we care to use. We are able to believe anything we choose to, and we are encouraged (even coerced) to support certain beliefs when it’s a group or societal belief. The world was once believed to be flat, the sun was believed to revolve around the earth, illness was caused by evil spirits witches and “vapours”.
We draw our beliefs from a wide range of sources, some get discarded with life experience , others are added. One thing we can be sure of is that foundation beliefs, and beliefs that support our personal agendas, are held sacred and are defended even when it literally kills us. Think of habits that we have been unable to drop, each one is attached to a belief system.
A favourite healing quote comes from Rachel Naomi Remen: "Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you --- all of the expectations, all of the beliefs --- and becoming who you are. Not a better you, but a realer you."
Letting go of outdated beliefs about what we think we are is a process. In my experience of the practice called Reiki, the practice brings awareness that creates this possibility. I say possibility because we may cling to our beliefs about who we are out of fear of letting go, fear that we may lose ourselves somehow.
The fear is normal, to be expected. The fear is called change, and the fear of change can be bigger than whatever other fears we might be holding. The curious fact we tend to overlook is that change is inevitable, everything is changing, every moment of our lives.
When we do get to overcoming our fear and letting go, then we suddenly get how simple it all really was, that the healing we needed in our lives was about changing our mind.
Seth was talking marketing, but the idea applies generally.
The flip side is that beliefs are not necessarily rational, some are simply “insane” by any measure we care to use. We are able to believe anything we choose to, and we are encouraged (even coerced) to support certain beliefs when it’s a group or societal belief. The world was once believed to be flat, the sun was believed to revolve around the earth, illness was caused by evil spirits witches and “vapours”.
We draw our beliefs from a wide range of sources, some get discarded with life experience , others are added. One thing we can be sure of is that foundation beliefs, and beliefs that support our personal agendas, are held sacred and are defended even when it literally kills us. Think of habits that we have been unable to drop, each one is attached to a belief system.
A favourite healing quote comes from Rachel Naomi Remen: "Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you --- all of the expectations, all of the beliefs --- and becoming who you are. Not a better you, but a realer you."
Letting go of outdated beliefs about what we think we are is a process. In my experience of the practice called Reiki, the practice brings awareness that creates this possibility. I say possibility because we may cling to our beliefs about who we are out of fear of letting go, fear that we may lose ourselves somehow.
The fear is normal, to be expected. The fear is called change, and the fear of change can be bigger than whatever other fears we might be holding. The curious fact we tend to overlook is that change is inevitable, everything is changing, every moment of our lives.
When we do get to overcoming our fear and letting go, then we suddenly get how simple it all really was, that the healing we needed in our lives was about changing our mind.
A Secret
27/07/10 20:50
“It is a trade secret, but I'll tell you anyway, all healing is self-healing”. --Albert Schweitzer
So what are the “healers” doing? They are facilitators, agents of change, but you still have to do the self healing work. Sometimes we manage this on our own. Sometimes help is warranted.
Imagine you are the person on the therapy table. What in your heart of hearts would you want for yourself? Perhaps to be held gently, accepted exactly as you are, without judgement, without anyone needing to change a single thing about you. Then, finding yourself in that place, feeling safe and loved and accepted, possibilities open.
That’s the healing “art”, creating the space in which you are able to find your balance, and finding that balance point, gently tip yourself toward healing whatever is it is in your life that needs to be healed.
The techniques may differ, but the principle stays the same.
So what are the “healers” doing? They are facilitators, agents of change, but you still have to do the self healing work. Sometimes we manage this on our own. Sometimes help is warranted.
Imagine you are the person on the therapy table. What in your heart of hearts would you want for yourself? Perhaps to be held gently, accepted exactly as you are, without judgement, without anyone needing to change a single thing about you. Then, finding yourself in that place, feeling safe and loved and accepted, possibilities open.
That’s the healing “art”, creating the space in which you are able to find your balance, and finding that balance point, gently tip yourself toward healing whatever is it is in your life that needs to be healed.
The techniques may differ, but the principle stays the same.
Think Different
14/07/10 14:54
As in most aspects of life, there is a tendency to think that others have a similar experience (some do!), that others are like us, think like us and so on. For the most part these common aspects will be similar enough to live harmoniously together. But similar is not “the same”.
We know whatever it is that we know about Reiki through our experience of it. As such we tend to gravitate to like minded people that support whatever beliefs we may hold about Reiki. Many of these beliefs have little in common, are a place of division.
Mikao Usui lived in Japan more than a hundred years ago. The world we know, have grown up in, would have been science fiction to him. To imagine that he lived life as we know it, thought as we do, believed the same things we do, is a fantasy of our own making.
I often wonder what he would make of what we call Reiki, make of what we do, and our various explanations. I believe he would find these ways “very interesting”.
There are not a lot of hard facts that give us an insight into who he may have been, but there are enough if we are willing to think differently. Some things don’t change.
We know whatever it is that we know about Reiki through our experience of it. As such we tend to gravitate to like minded people that support whatever beliefs we may hold about Reiki. Many of these beliefs have little in common, are a place of division.
Mikao Usui lived in Japan more than a hundred years ago. The world we know, have grown up in, would have been science fiction to him. To imagine that he lived life as we know it, thought as we do, believed the same things we do, is a fantasy of our own making.
I often wonder what he would make of what we call Reiki, make of what we do, and our various explanations. I believe he would find these ways “very interesting”.
There are not a lot of hard facts that give us an insight into who he may have been, but there are enough if we are willing to think differently. Some things don’t change.
Live for Today
12/02/10 13:46
I was asked a short time ago if I was willing (along with many others from around the world) to write an article for “Touch” a UK Reiki community magazine. The topic was “Live For Today”. It appears in the current issue of “Touch”. (see ”Touch” facebook link below)
“I remember when I first heard the precepts and was touched by the notion of a deeper truth I imagined lay behind them, and at the same time intrigued by their ordinariness. Many years later nothing had changed - although a tastefully framed version now hung on my wall - and I heard others express, and experienced myself, meaningful insights into these words that related to our daily lives.
Thoughts on some deeper meaning stayed with me, but I always felt like I was somehow missing 'something'. Anger and worry were certainly good things to avoid; the other concepts were thought provoking, and 'Just for today' seemed like a practical and workable timeframe.
It took an encounter with my own mortality, a lengthy illness nearly resulting in my death, to awaken to the simple truth that 'today' does not exist. Only this moment is experienced, the here now, which itself is here and then gone. Being here now is all I ever had been able to do; the rest was my mind reworking the past, or projecting that past into some imagined future.
Then followed the awareness that I had been practising for this 'being here now' for years ...every time I put my hands on my body in self treatment, and found my still space. I knew in my body how it felt to be present, to be here now. I had experienced the difference when life choices flowed from that space. What I did not have was the ability to hold that space.
This 'space holding' is a work in progress. I ask several simple questions when awareness comes of not being present. I ask “Where are you Mark? Are you in the past, or in the future? Be here now!”. This works for me. 'Being here now' stays with me longer. The secret method that invites happiness' - could this be it?”
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=218518992016
“I remember when I first heard the precepts and was touched by the notion of a deeper truth I imagined lay behind them, and at the same time intrigued by their ordinariness. Many years later nothing had changed - although a tastefully framed version now hung on my wall - and I heard others express, and experienced myself, meaningful insights into these words that related to our daily lives.
Thoughts on some deeper meaning stayed with me, but I always felt like I was somehow missing 'something'. Anger and worry were certainly good things to avoid; the other concepts were thought provoking, and 'Just for today' seemed like a practical and workable timeframe.
It took an encounter with my own mortality, a lengthy illness nearly resulting in my death, to awaken to the simple truth that 'today' does not exist. Only this moment is experienced, the here now, which itself is here and then gone. Being here now is all I ever had been able to do; the rest was my mind reworking the past, or projecting that past into some imagined future.
Then followed the awareness that I had been practising for this 'being here now' for years ...every time I put my hands on my body in self treatment, and found my still space. I knew in my body how it felt to be present, to be here now. I had experienced the difference when life choices flowed from that space. What I did not have was the ability to hold that space.
This 'space holding' is a work in progress. I ask several simple questions when awareness comes of not being present. I ask “Where are you Mark? Are you in the past, or in the future? Be here now!”. This works for me. 'Being here now' stays with me longer. The secret method that invites happiness' - could this be it?”
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=218518992016
Oral Tradition
26/01/10 11:33
Usui Shiki Ryoho is described as being an oral tradition. Many people have understood this to mean that nothing is written down. This is not so.
Oral tradition refers to the way the system is taught, with a teacher and a student being together in the same physical space. What the student receives is more than what is communicated in words.
We all have tried describing an experience to someone who was not part of the experience, and ended up using the words “...well you just had to be there”.
That is what oral tradition is about. You dont get it from the written word. You have to be there.
Oral tradition refers to the way the system is taught, with a teacher and a student being together in the same physical space. What the student receives is more than what is communicated in words.
We all have tried describing an experience to someone who was not part of the experience, and ended up using the words “...well you just had to be there”.
That is what oral tradition is about. You dont get it from the written word. You have to be there.
Reiki Talk (jargon)
02/07/09 12:08
To talk about something, we need language to communicate our experience or our understanding. This means that we often adopt words and terminology from other areas with which we are familiar, and unmindfully transplant them into a different context.
Sometimes this works out OK ...and other times not, particularly when the listener doesn’t know we have used a transplanted concept, or doesn’t get that our words “...its like...” doesn’t mean that it “is” that thing that we used as a comparison.
“Reiki talk” is fertile ground for transplanted concepts, which is understandable as we are attempting to describe what is essentially a mystery, something that needs an experience to create a context.
Our word pictures, taken to a conversation somewhere else, out of context, easily solidify, until they can almost seem like fact.
It’s a curious place to be, when the simple experience of the mystery shared in silence, communicates more than can be adequately put in words.
Sometimes this works out OK ...and other times not, particularly when the listener doesn’t know we have used a transplanted concept, or doesn’t get that our words “...its like...” doesn’t mean that it “is” that thing that we used as a comparison.
“Reiki talk” is fertile ground for transplanted concepts, which is understandable as we are attempting to describe what is essentially a mystery, something that needs an experience to create a context.
Our word pictures, taken to a conversation somewhere else, out of context, easily solidify, until they can almost seem like fact.
It’s a curious place to be, when the simple experience of the mystery shared in silence, communicates more than can be adequately put in words.
Beginners Mind
26/01/09 14:18
A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked incessantly about Zen. The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's overfull! No more will go in!" the professor blurted.
"You are like this cup," the Zen master replied, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup."
Pretty much everything can be looked at in this way. It’s the way of our minds to need to know an answer, to make our “unknowns” into “knowns”. This is not a bad or a good thing, it’s just what happens. Often however, we settle for the first reasonable answer or accept the answer of those in “authority”.
To be able to see with beginners eyes, to look anew at what we know, the things we have accepted as being so, is a gift.
The practice of Reiki can be like this too. Empty your cup. Dont be satisfied with the answers other have handed down or created over the years. Keep asking the big questions, “What am I really doing?”, “What am I really practising?”
It’s OK to be with the discomfort of not knowing the answer, or having a different answer than others do. Keep practising, keep asking the questions, and watch ...as your answers change.
*If you have a comment, please write me via the contact page.
"You are like this cup," the Zen master replied, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup."
Pretty much everything can be looked at in this way. It’s the way of our minds to need to know an answer, to make our “unknowns” into “knowns”. This is not a bad or a good thing, it’s just what happens. Often however, we settle for the first reasonable answer or accept the answer of those in “authority”.
To be able to see with beginners eyes, to look anew at what we know, the things we have accepted as being so, is a gift.
The practice of Reiki can be like this too. Empty your cup. Dont be satisfied with the answers other have handed down or created over the years. Keep asking the big questions, “What am I really doing?”, “What am I really practising?”
It’s OK to be with the discomfort of not knowing the answer, or having a different answer than others do. Keep practising, keep asking the questions, and watch ...as your answers change.
*If you have a comment, please write me via the contact page.