Reiki Cairns Teaching Usui Shiki Ryoho, the gentle folk healing art of Reiki

I was recently on a group camping trip for twelve days in a remote area. With limited mobile coverage there was only occasional access to news of the outside world. What was fascinating was the experience of the very different quality of being together when mobile phones were working. The difference was something that was immediately evident, something one could feel. People were no longer present, they were somewhere else.

Arriving back in “civilisation”, I was aware that I had missed nothing by not checking email, or surfing the web, or accessing world news. I was aware of how I had not even missed not doing those things, that I was aware of being present in my daily life in a way that was more real in some way. The cold and the rain and the environment  were not something easily ignored. It was a great “be here now” experience.

As if to emphasise that awareness, I was amused to read an advertisement for a news media website for people on the go. “Turn your downtime into uptime, be in the now” it said. I had to laugh. It wouldn’t even be my now that I’d be in, it would be someone else’s, a now that someone else decided I should be in. No thank you!

It’s a great question to ask from time to time. “Where am I now? Am I really here or am I somewhere else?”

I have a friend who is a master at drawing circles. In this she has a been a great teacher, I know few who do it so well or so consistently. I am talking about circles of inclusion and exclusion, which I see as spirituality in action.

There are those who draw small circles to exclude others. What is beautiful to experience is the ability of my friend to be seemingly always able to draw a bigger circle again, to include the very ones who seek to exclude.

Ultimately this is what healing is about. At one end of the healing continuum is ego mindedness, the small, closed circles of “I”, “me” and “mine”. Expanded awareness, being willing to hold an ever expanding circle, to know the oneness in all things, is at the other end. “Healing” is everything in the space in between.

Small circles are driven by fear, which always involves suffering. Small circles are commonplace. The feeling that goes with expanded consciousness and willingness to hold the bigger circle is love. While this may also involve pain, ultimately it leads to peace.

“How big am I drawing my circles?” has become one of my “self check in” questions.

The book shop had several Reiki books and although I don’t usually give them any attention, I picked up one that looked nice on the shelf, a full colour glossy pages production.

As I flipped the pages I stopped at a page with a photo of Hawayo Takata, and there I read that her stories were untrue, that “she lied”, based on the opinion of yet another author of several well known Reiki books! I put the book back on the shelf questioning what possessed the writer to say that.

Had either author spoken with those whom Takata taught, and who knew her well, they would have been told that she would not do that, that she just didn’t lie. It was not something she would do. I have heard those very words from these persons.

So how did these words get into print, a judgement about someone that the authors didn’t know, and one that becomes fact for those without the experience to determine otherwise? As an author, one becomes an authority, its a context that the act of authoring a book creates.

It is too easy to repeat the words of another author. Its also easy to jump to a conclusion because it doesn’t fit with the facts or the story the author has decided are “the truth”. What can be true in one sense can and may not be true in another, and the truth suffers to the degree someone needs to make another person “wrong” to support a particular perspective.

The many stories from Takata all fit in my experience, though there were times I didn’t understand her meaning. But then, I was making them fit into my meanings. She didn’t explain herself. She didn’t lie. She didn’t need to.

In the first several years after I began the Reiki practice 20 years ago, I knew a lot of stuff about Reiki, what I was doing, what Reiki is, how it worked, and more. The truth was that I didn’t know much at all. The meanings I imposed on the practice were the beliefs  and ideas I had accepted from those whom I thought knew more than I did, who had more experience than I did.

However, as happens in a self healing practice, life events happened, I had my own experiences, and questions began to mount. The number of times I asked myself the question “what am I really doing”, and “what am I really practicing”, I couldn’t even begin to guess, until in the end my mind had no ready answer, and there was just an empty space of not knowing.

And one day in the midst of life and its doings, of doing my daily practice, of not knowing or even seeking an answer, I experienced a new and different mind space, was simply being “there”. All the “stuff” had fallen away and in that space it was as if Life itself was at last able to express its own meaning; the exquisite joy, the delight in the boundless possibilities and richness of all that is life; that the reality had always been this, of being whole, of all things being perfect just as they are in the now moment, of being held in what I can only call Love.

The older meanings and beliefs were not wrong. They are simply a perspective from a different point on the healing continuum. I still don’t know definitive answers to my questions, although it seems that I have been practising stillness and being present. Even so, as I allow myself to be in my not knowing, continue to heal the places of separation in my life, my new meaning seems to be being expressed in my everyday reality, a reality that I believe is there for everyone. As Mikao Usui put it, a capability we are “endowed with since birth.”

Mrs Takata had a simple and direct style of teaching that was very “Japanese”. She was the teacher and the student was the student. As a student you were expected to do as she taught and the learning arose from your practice. She would say “Let Reiki teach you”.

One of many anecdotes is her response to questions and descriptions related to the personal experiences of the Reiki practice, that could be described as esoteric or metaphysical.  She would simply say “Fantasy!” and go on to whatever was of practical concern in that moment. She was seemingly uninterested in what these experiences meant or what they were about.

I was not one of those students, nor did I ever meet Takata. Even so, her response has exercised my mind over the years when the same sorts of questions and stories were received from students taking my own classes. It was, and is, in fact a brilliant and practical response. She wasn’t saying that the experience wasn’t real, just that the mind’s meaning was without a basis in reality.

Imposing meanings and making explanations about our experiences is something the mind does automatically. It makes up a story of what happened, or why something just happened, which doesn’t need to be based on fact, can be fanciful and even magical. With so many facets of our experience that are genuinely in the realm of the unknown, the mind’s “meaning” is easily just a fantasy.

Ending the stories that lie at the heart of our human suffering is the way to the healing of our lives and hearts. The mind’s fantasies about what could be, are only another distraction from what is real, the “here now”, and “what is”.

For the most part, life is full of busily doing things. Our minds are busy naming things, sorting through the inputs from an increasing variety of sources, thinking about the next thing that might be catching our attention.

 The end result is that we can be left thinking our lives rather than living them, reacting to the next thing, making up stories about what just happened, making judgements on what each and every thing means to us.

Even when we take time out, it can be more of the same. We can go into nature, and still be looking at it, and thinking it …trees, flowers, birds, clouds, hot, wet, and imposing our own meanings about those things. However, every once in a while something changes in our perception. 

In a moment of stillness, maybe in awe at the beauty in front of our eyes, we stop the naming and the thinking. We are just being there, and a space opens up that allows nature to give its meaning to us; that we are not separate from it, that we are an integral part of its vastness, its richness and its beauty.

That experience is there in every moment of life, but its necessary to let go of everyday mind to let it in.