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

The stories told of Mikao Usui, the founder of what we know as the practice of Reiki, begin with him going in search of an answer to a great question, the nature of healing, how the great healers performed their miraculous healings.

I don’t know if he had a sense of where this great question would lead when he began his search, but he surely found that this question led to the great question we all ponder at some point in our life, the nature of our being, “Who am I, and why am I here?” That’s where all the great questions inevitably lead.

The short version of the story is that he discovered that the answer he sought was to be found in himself, and this is so for each of us, in our seemingly separate lives.

Unlike the X-files, the answer isn’t “out there”.

Truth can be found in the most unlikely places. I was surprised to read the following as a chapter intro in a fantasy fiction novel. (The Farseer Trilogy, Robin Hobb)

“Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the now, the time that stretches eternal. and is the only time there really is. Then in that time, you will finally have time to BE yourself.”

If you’ve ever tried to “stop” thinking, then you will know what a process that is. But it can be done. It happens. And then the rest is a natural consequence, not that thinking ends, “monkey mind” ends and knowing begins. Knowing what is yours to do, knowing what is next to do, knowing that oneness IS.

Don’t be surprised if the experience slips away. That also happens, and it will find you again …and again.

I remember a teacher long ago who asked a question to which I hesitantly offered the answer “…Love?”

I remember the look in his eyes, like maybe I had finally got it, and his reply. “Yes! Love is always the answer.”

It was this sort of Love:

Love = Acceptance = Allowance = Forgiveness

The equation is my own (I think), it just formed in my mind, parked itself in a corner, and has served me well. Maybe it will work for you too.

“A realer you”, “who you truly are”, “when your stories end”, all lead to the same place, to the nature of mind. As the Buddha put it, “We are what we think. All that we are, arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world”.

In my experience, even though we interact with the physical body, which is a kind and compassionate thing to do, it is mind that must be “impacted” for healing to occur. The bodies ability to repair itself activates automatically. A repaired body does not however imply that healing has taken place.

Healing is magical, no doubt about it, so beautiful and rich to experience and witness. Ritual and out of the ordinary practices are powerful tools to impact the mind, but mind and belief are the power fuelling this magic.