“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us”
~ Marianne Williamson
As a teacher, the Reiki Level 1 can be one of the most challenging of the Reiki attunement classes, but it’s also the most fun. Walking in the students want to access the wondrous and healing Universal Life Force Energy that is Reiki, but they’re very disbelieving that THEY, mere mortals, can access and use something so seemingly intangible as Reiki. And it’s so amazing to show them that they can access this power on their own.
My experience is that Reiki is a very gentle and quiet energy. It whispers rather than shouts. We live in such a loud world. We talk loud, we play music loud. We go to restaurants with loud acoustics that we practically have to yell at our dinner mates over the background noise to have any semblance of a conversation. And our cars on the road are so loud. It is no wonder that most people who come to a Reiki attunement class expects the heavens to open up with a roaring thunder that we have acclimated our nervous systems to rather than the faint whisper that rides along the imagination that tends to be the communication pattern of Reiki.
Reiki seems like magic. You take a class that’s a day long that by the end of it you walk out with the ability to harness this healing energy in your hands. It doesn’t seem to fit in with how we think the world works.
Check out these lovely, shiny lights at the end of their first Reiki attunement! They each felt the energy in different yet very powerful ways through their intention of connecting to it. This was also my first group attunement class on 3/3/13. Even though I had been doing Reiki for 3 years at that point, It was a learning experience for me to share this energy with others in a leap of blind faith along with intention that they would have the Reiki energy sealed into their systems.
However in my experience it’s not magic. We are all born with a rich, multi-sensory awareness of the world. This awareness is not limited by how others tell us how we should see the world; or in other words, lack of categories. The categorical thinking of adults by putting things in boxes within our minds has not kicked in yet. When we are born, our brains as babies is a vast web of interconnected neurons, constantly firing. I often wonder if babies can see the underlying connections between everything that we strive so hard as adults to understand, especially those of us who are mystically inclined. As we grow older, we learn the languages and social patterns of our families, and then we enter into the school system, these multidimensional connections in the brain slowly change into the linear, structured brain format of a functioning adult that works a 9-5 and pays their taxes, more concerned about the rush and small details about daily life such as showing up for work on time, making enough money, and a focus on survival and material needs. While those aspects of life are very important, in the process we have become blind to to the mystical side of the world.
As the Reiki teacher, I am not creating new pathways and awarenesses for my students, I’m just showing them to look in a direction that they’ve been conditioned to no longer look towards. When they do get the hint that it exists, it’s a joyous shock to find that they can actually see/sense/perceive/understand it. It has been there all this time, but they didn’t trust themselves to know what was actually there. Or they’ve been seeing it, but it is a little scary to sense what others may not obviously or logically experience. While I need to do the ceremony to pass on the Reiki vibration to my students, it is actually them using the power of their minds through focused intention that allows them to access the loving vibration of Reiki.
I find that the saying “wherever your mind goes, that’s what you manifest” to be very true with working (or playing?) with Reiki. Our minds are so powerful and we don’t realize the extent most of the time!
