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

What happens when we weave “question everything” with “feeding the good wolf”?

What the mind receives gets processed. That means everything, everything you see and visualise, whatever you listen to, what you enjoy, whatever gives you pleasure in life, both the positive and the negative.

Images are very powerful inputs. Your mind doesn’t discriminate when it comes to images, and especially moving images which generate strong feelings. Remember how many times you watched images of the twin towers falling for example. 

Films and T.V. shows (of every kind), video games, the nightly news, flood our minds with repeated images (some real, some created) that get processed and stored as if they were our own real life experience.

The screens big and small are illusions in themselves, just coloured dots that create an image. Believing what is presented on them has consequences. These images and the feelings generated can get woven seamlessly into own personal story. We can make them “real” even when they are not.

Its not like that you say, I know the difference between real and not real. The insidious side of this repeated exposure is desensitisation, a closing of the heart to what is not OK, what has never been OK. Desensitising leads to acceptance of the unacceptable, until it becomes our reality.

If your mind is being continually assaulted by negative images and the fearful thoughts that inevitably result, finding peace within becomes far more difficult when the appearance of the world “out there” seems to confirm the fears in the mind.

Be selective with what you feed your mind, question its reality. Is it fear making? Where is the love in it? Give time to, and be in real life, the here now. That’s the only place that love, happiness, joy and lasting peace will be found.

A Native American Cherokee elder tells a story to his grandchildren (all the children are “grandchildren”) about life .  

He says to them, “A fight is going on inside me,  a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil—he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, and false pride. 

The other is good —he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. 

This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too." 

The children thought about it for a minute, and then one asked, "Which wolf will win, Grandfather?" 

The Elder simply replies, "The one you feed.”

It’s a great story, with a powerful message, and with a question for each one of us. But its easy to dismiss its message.

The “good” wolf is a symbol of ourselves living consciously. The “evil” wolf is a symbol of our way of being when living unconsciously …a symbol of all those negative human traits that goes with ego mindedness.

Whatever we focus on, keep in mind, is reflected in the world we experience. Be mindful of what is being fed into your mind, be as aware as possible of the effect it has inside you.

Ask the question, “Which ‘wolf’ is this feeding?”. Then act on the answer.

Eckhart Tolle Quote:

“Deal with the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a ‘self’ out of it. Don’t misunderstand: Attention is essential, but not to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your behaviour, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There’s the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but non-judgementally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.”

This is a very real and practical approach. It combines “feeling the feeling” - not denying that something happened - with staying out of judgment about right and wrong, and with staying in the present.

It’s all too common that past trauma is re-created over and over again, by getting enmeshed in the emotion and pain, and then being carried away in it. That process takes us back into unconsciousness. It’s not wrong, but it reinforces victimhood and reopens old wounds.

Healing comes when we no longer identify with that past trauma, it isn’t who we are. It’s OK to feel that we had no choice in that story of the past, but by being conscious, which means being in the now, we get to choose how the story ends.

Theres an old saying that to get the choicest fruit you have to go out on the limb.

People are so very interesting. Some people want the easy “truth”,  a story from an authority figure that makes their choice the right or true one. It is then so easy to fall back on “But my teacher taught me that … (fill in the blank) ”.

Some don’t really care what the facts are, they already have a story that they have accepted as the “truth” and will disregard all other data.

Neither way works if you are seeking Truth.

It is human nature to cling to fondly held beliefs, to a sense of safety, to the comfort of the accepted beliefs of the community or the culture in which we are engaged. However this is can be easily become another prison for our minds, one that limits our perspectives and understandings. It’s just the way things are.

The courage to question everything, even those things seemingly least open to question, to see with new eyes,  is the nature of seeking Truth.

Sometimes you have to go out on the limb.

The thread of several previous posts has been an interpretation of the Reiki precepts as a path to “being in the now”. That doesn’t make the traditional way of interpreting them in a minded way any less valid. It’s not a “this or that” situation, it’s both.

To a mind engaged in a linear timeline, where the fearful or painful experiences of the past are dark clouds projected into the future, the concept of “now” is  a nonsense. The past creates the future in that world view.

The traditional interpretation is the one that has a practical application in that setting. Only with the healing of the pain and fears the mind holds regarding events past is there a possibility for a different world view that includes the freedom of different choices held in the now moment. That’s just the way it is.

And of course there are other ways to use the precepts, as a mantra or a mindfulness verse for instance. The precepts are all of these things, and all at the same time.