Reiki

“Rei” means God-consciousness, or spiritual wisdom–the consciousness in the universe which is all-knowing. It has a thorough and intimate knowledge of every individual and of all problems. It also knows the solution to every problem within every individual (The Healing Touch by William Lee Rand).

“Ki” is the Japanese word for life energy (“chi,” “prana”). Thus, in reiki, the spiritual wisdom is applied to the healing life energy. It assesses where healing is most needed within an individual and then directs the healing energy to those places (The Healing Touch by William Lee Rand).

The purpose and intention of reiki is to heal. Healing, in this context, is returning to a state of alignment with one’s True Self. Ultimately, it is the intention of reiki to (perpetually) heal and guide the individual out of his or her suffering. Reiki is thus a path, a healing process, and you will progress as far on that path as you are willing to travel on it.

Results

Reiki relies on life energy flowing through the hands of the healer and into the client to enable the release of energetic negativity held in the body. The reiki healer has no control over what the client will experience or feel during or after a reiki session. It is the spiritual wisdom and the life energy which are at work in the client. The healer serves solely as a compassionate channel for the flow of this energy.

One would thus benefit from the faith that the unseen forces of the universe at large which are behind this healing process are always working for one’s highest good, even if it might not feel so in the moment. This may be difficult to do. However, it is a fact known from medical science that one’s physical body perpetually attempts and seeks to heal and renew itself. From this one can accurately infer that the force which causes the body to heal itself also seeks to heal aspects of the human body and mind which are not necessarily visible to us, in ways which we don’t necessarily understand. One does not need a medical degree, or even awareness of the workings of the body, for the body to go about healing itself.

Nonetheless, whatever philosophical or religious beliefs a person holds, reiki, like a scientific law, does not discriminate; it always works to heal, no matter who you are, what you’ve done or what you believe.

Uses

Physical ailments:
Reiki can be used to complement traditional medical treatment. It is known to expedite the course of a physical ailment, meaning that it will be processed through the body faster. This means that the client will still have to endure all of the symptoms, and likely an intensification of the symptoms just after a reiki treatment, as the ailment leaves the body. Thus, reiki is not magic; unless the ailment is quite minor, one will not have reiki and wake up the next morning cured. Once a person has internalized a negative element, it won’t just vanish from his or her system; it needs to exit. Before it can exit, it must be located and dislodged from its resting place within the individual.

Emotional issues:
Reiki can be used to treat all manner of emotional problems, especially as a complement to psychotherapy. If one has profound and deeply-rooted psychological issues, it may take some months to be free of them, depending on how many there are and how deeply one’s psyche has been affected by them. A person will not get a one-hour reiki session and wake up the next morning in joy, freed from suicidal depression forever. Full emotional healing from severe trauma, or deeply-rooted negative states of being, requires a devoted commitment.

Reiki is a healing process, or even a path of perpetual self-improvement, if you so choose.

A beautiful prayer, courtesy of the Rootlight website, associated with naam yoga and the yoga center I volunteer at, Universal Force Healing Center. I repeat this prayer every morning for 11 minutes as a meditation. You can also replace “me” with the name of another person to pray the same prayer for them as well.

Love before me
Love behind me
Love at my left
Love at my right
Love above me
Love below me
Love unto me
Love in my surroundings
Love to all
Love to the universe

Peace before me
Peace behind me
Peace at my left
Peace at my right
Peace above me
Peace below me
Peace unto me
Peace in my surroundings
Peace to all
Peace to the universe

Light before me
Light behind me
Light at my left
Light at my right
Light above me
Light below me
Light unto me
Light in my surroundings
Light to all
Light to the universe

Conscious love is self-sacrificing,
Unconscious love is self-serving.

Conscious love respects its beloved’s will,
Unconscious love imposes its own will on its beloved.

Conscious love results in freedom,
Unconscious love results in bondage.

Conscious love is constant,
Unconscious love is erratic.

Conscious love seeks only the highest good for its beloved,
Unconscious love seeks its own immediate gratification.

Thus, strive only to love consciously, or not at all.

Diary entry 9

(Diary entries are intended to be read in order)

Having pinpointed the source of this hole as being my “female parental figure,” a.k.a. mother, I was able to focus a reiki session on this issue with the intention of healing my heart and mind from the trauma of growing up with the hole of perpetual fear, despair and loneliness inside me, which, probably, in combination with the other inhospitable conditions of my childhood, was the greatest source of my adult suffering. Once healed, I thought, I ought to be able to function in life on a more level playing field with other people, thus, hopefully, ceasing the perpetual series of waking nightmares that I was trapped in. Thus, I set aside a reiki treatment for myself in which I focused on this “hole.”

I carried out this reiki session on myself thoroughly. It was the longest session I have ever done. The results were immediate, effective and surprising.

I had already been reiking myself with quite successful results for a month or two. I had been feeling very optimistic and “up,” feeling I had left my depression and suicidal thoughts in the past, with the one exception of waking up in the mornings before the beginning of the day with the usual sinking feeling of doom and despair, fear and futility. Despite these relatively mild morning experiences of this “hole of doom,” I felt relatively happy and optimistic during my waking hours.

The Mother of All Healing Crises

So, I reikied myself concerning this hole on a Monday morning in February, without specifying a source or a cause for the hole. By the time I went to bed, unbeknownst to me, I began to feel the effects of my reiki session. I felt a cold coming over me. During the night as I slept, I became increasingly ill. I developed a fever with full-blown flu symptoms and a horrible headache.

When I woke up in the morning, I was hopeless and depressed. I woke up realizing that, after barely surviving the devastation of Lucifer and after coming within a broken foot of killing myself, I was pursuing a new life purpose, which was not truly my heart’s desire. I realized that my heart’s desire was a dream that fate and the nature of my past would not allow, or at least I acknowledged that I had this belief. I acknowledged in that moment, as I lay in bed with my eyes still closed, my belief that the spiritual love I had dreamt, the home, the cozy, warm and joyful place, with the love of my life, a faithful, safe husband going to work each morning, a baby…a life, a place I belonged, could never be. Thus, I basically woke up crying, and sick.

Not only this, but I fell as deeply back into suicidal depression as I had been the preceding spring when I had planned to kill myself (see My Suicidal Foot). I stayed in my room all day crying inexplicably and feeling horribly ill. I was as I had been throughout my 30’s—I would burst into tears with no sign of a reason, perhaps something on TV, something that was not even visibly sad. I cried a lot that day and for the days that followed. I learned soon that this sickness was no usual cold for me, because it did not follow the pattern of a cold. It did not let go of me easily. It stayed for over a week, going away very slowly.

On the Thursday of that same week, I had an appointment with my psychologist, during which I had a complete emotional break-down. I just cried and cried. It was on that occasion that my psychologist observed that my depression was suppressed anger I harbored towards my mother. Her observation seemed to support the previous observations I had made of my own behavior in the context of love relationships and of the inner feelings that gave rise to my behavior within love relationships.

During that week, I should mention, I was also engaged in a struggle with my mother, which magnified the depth and intensity of the hole, leaving me feeling scared and alone, desperate and abandoned again. The hole was sucking me up again, sucking me up.

Due to a massive emotional breakdown I had suffered the previous year, during which I quit my long-despised job and that had led me to therapy in New York City, I was being supported financially by my mother, who, together with my step-father, and despite the cost of rent, would prefer not to have me residing in her home. At the time I did this reiki session on myself, my mother had begun to express vexation and resentment at me for having to part with some of the abundance of her money to support me. I felt myself falling through that really thin film that was supporting my weight as I stood upon that hole. I, with no ability, emotional or otherwise, to take care of myself, began planning my death again, or at least began planning a life on the streets, which would inevitably lead to my death.

The Blessed Light at the End of the Tunnel

After one week, my sickness had subsided and after about 2 weeks, my depression began to subside. I noticed a new emotional experience in myself—or lack thereof. I was waking up in the mornings in an emotional void—a true hole. What I had always believed to be a hole, I saw now had really been a black hole, a vacuum that was actively sucking into oblivion all things positive, for what I was experiencing these mornings was a true hole—a hole is empty, not filled with fear and despair. I was now awaking with emptiness—no fear, no despair, no doom, not even a little tinge, but there was no good feeling present in the hole either. It was a marked improvement over a hole of despair, or a black hole that sucked up positive thoughts and feelings and left me with the most horrible, devastating feelings, thoughts and fears about myself and my life. I felt the nothingness was quite ok. It left me feeling a certain kind of relief.

A few days after waking up with emotional emptiness in the place where used to dwell the greatest doom and fear of my life, in a meditation, I felt Angel Mother begin to fill in the new void in my heart with love. I felt it more and more every day.

And this is the story of how I healed what I believe to have been the greatest source for my suicidal tendencies and thoughts. This constitutes a massive milestone in my healing process.

Diary entry 8

(Diary entries are intended to be read in order)

With my new-found healing treasure, I began reiking myself for everything I could think of, starting with my most prominent issues and sources of continued and most poignant suffering, including my ingrained behavioral patterns or deep-seated, self-destroying emotions and thoughts which had become states of existence for me since childhood. My experience in psychoanalyzing myself and my continued visits to my psychologist enabled me to understand and articulate angles of my issues which, in turn, enabled me to target certain multi-faceted, self-destroying attitudes, beliefs or past experiences in my reiki.

My Living Death

The greatest and most firmly ingrained and most devastating state I had been imbued with was a state which had grown in me from my youngest formative years, my toddler years, prospering and transforming, like a viral bacteria in its ideal reproductive environment, into increasingly invincible strains, as I became more and more laden and buried down day by day beneath the traumas and neglect that came to constitute my childhood, and then my adolescence. By the age of 20, this state had taken the outward form of ever-present suicidal depression.

Over the years, I observed that this state was limitless in its degrees of intensity and in the situations and aspects of situations in which I would feel it rearing its ugly head within me. I came to view the two extreme degrees of this state as two separate images. When I was at my best, this state felt to me as a hole deep in the core of my being, manifesting most often in mornings, as recently as this past winter, when I would wake up alone in my bed, no matter what the weather, what the country, what the city, what the situation, and, before thoughts of the day ahead would begin to fill my mind, deep in the pit of my soul, I would feel this hole; a hint of doom, despair and futility, which I could perpetually find at the very nucleus of my being. It brought worry and fear to my heart and mind. On the best days, I would get up feeling the hole and then begin my day and the hole would be covered over with daily concerns and activities. On my worst or more sensitive days, it brought me to endless cascades of tears, especially in the Finnish autumns.

At its worst, this state was my living death. By my definition, “living death” could be said to be like being slowly and painfully tortured every day to within inches of death, just close enough to death, that you may wake up the next morning, barely functional, to again be tortured to within inches of death, day, after day, after day, after day.

My living death found its expression in me regularly in my poems, but, in time, more and more it was expressed in plans of suicide, in suicidal depression, in floods of tears, set off by God-knows-what, or by nothing external at all, consumed in fear, in despair and loneliness, the intensity and depths of which you simply cannot imagine.

My living death consumed me with fear and despair each time I would love a man—fear that he would abandon me, or pull away from me. I would feel the slightest hint of discontent in his voice, or in his email, or in his behavior and feel and fear him pulling away from me, and I would feel that shakey, precarious floor I had finally almost found my footing on being pulled out from under my feet again. Again, I would be alone and insane with desperation, in tears, falling again, losing my grasp on something safe, something stable, over and over and over again.

This, fear, however, did not solely surface in love with men, but in all aspects of my life. From as far back as I can remember, I have been afraid for my safety, for my very survival, especially and above all the survival of my heart—it did not begin with men. Nothing in life had ever been stable or safe. My heart and mind were in pieces long before I was a teenager in love, but I had no idea there was something amiss.

This state, which I believe took root in me as an emotion of profound loneliness and desperate fear from a very young age, at first in absence of a mother and in absence of any source of even a small fraction of safety from the violent emotions and neglect of the “family” around me, found a permanent home in the core of my child-soul. It had become the roots from which I grew. I had no idea of the nature or vastness of this state, much less its power over all my life, but I became mildly aware of it in my 20’s when I was seeing a psychologist, who, according to society, is somehow supposed to fix my broken heart and mind, uproot the weeds that had been so deeply planted, which had now solidified and over-grown in my child-heart, or enable me to uproot them myself.

This state, from its cozy hiding place, wedged deeply in my subconscious, was the thing which was most profoundly sabotaging my efforts to survive, let alone succeed, in this world. Everything from finding a job, from having a loving relationship and friends to … finding a home … I can’t even begin to express on how many levels this devastating state was influencing my life and every effort I made at finding a peaceful, happy existence.

Realizing the Damage and its Extent

It took me decades to come to a sufficient understanding of the true nature of my plight and of my internal reality—that I had been formed from a tender age within a state of doom and fear and how this formation came to pass. I went through several misguided beliefs concerning this state of doom. Throughout my 20’s, when, as I mentioned, I was able to begin to perceive this state, or “hole,” I believed I had been created by God with a melancholy soul, because, even in the best situation I could imagine, I felt this melancholy, this hole, was so profound in me, that it was actually part of my eternal soul. At a later point, I believed this hole was the result of my medical condition, PKU, and the fact that, as a result of this condition, I had too much phenylalanine in my blood, which is a cause of depression and other psychological conditions (some of which I do suffer and have suffered from) and which is known to reduce serotonin in the brain, which is the chemical cause of the feeling of happiness.

Over the years, being perpetually misunderstood and looked down upon by the “emotional elite,” as I called “happy people,” I have endeavored in vain seeking at least to be understood, if there was no compassion or help to be had from anyone, by describing this particular state in such a way that “the happy people” might be a little kinder or more understanding, at least that they might stop reacting in ways that made me feel worse about myself and about my life than I already did. This was a Sisyphean undertaking, however. Even a willing person, and few were willing, could fathom the experience of my living death, but my best attempt to date can be found in the poem If.

During the years I had to live with family, the years during which I was being formed in this state of doom, I would escape the outward hell by withdrawing into my mind, dreaming of love, of a special husband who I could love and take care of, someone who would love me, who knew me on a profound, spiritual level that no one else was capable of. I had daydreams of perhaps forming my own little family of love with him, never having to speak to anyone from my biological family ever again. My father further punished and chastised me for my escapist tendencies and most interactions with family members were of a negative nature and only served to make me even more determined to escape those people and that wretched reality once and for all.

Outsiders said I was a dreamer and that I lived in my own world. True, but their observations were useless; not one person ever endeavored to understand or to help me deal with the real world. I was on my own, as in my living death, left up to my own undeveloped and inadequate devices to survive alone in this world.

Life After the Family

Once freed of the destructive familial environment, at age 20, the axe of despair fell upon me with a vengeance. When you are in the fire, your body reacts involuntarily in such a way as to protect you from feeling the full force of the pain, but once you are out of the fire, God help you; the pain of having been in the fire floods every cell in your body and the sensations of excruciating agony sweep over and through your body like a salt-sea wave on raw, burned flesh. This applies on the physical level, and I have observed the same phenomenon on the psychological level, with the brain providing defense mechanisms to dull the impact of the psychological devastation of the immediate situation. You cannot heal while you are in the midst of the fire that is burning you. Once out of the fires of your familial hell, your body and all of your senses awaken to the reality that it was living in hellfire and now it must suffer the aftermath in an environment that will only coat you with more salt and not offer you any first aid–or such was my experience. Once I was out of my “familial hellfire,” I fell into suicidal depression within a few months, and remained there until a few months ago, 21 years, roughly.

In more recent years, however, due to observation of myself as I was suffering through relationships, and due to my own self-psychoanalytical abilities, it dawned on me that this hole/living death seemed to be directly related to my “female parental figure” (i.e. mother). By January of 2009, however, thanks to sessions with the psychologist that I had begun seeing in New York City in the summer of 2008, I had become quite familiar with the cause of this hole/living death; it was all about neglect, the lack of a mother, lack of love, lack of security, lack of being cared for as a very young child and right up until…

And this realization paved the way for my grandest reiki healing experience – the next milestone on my healing path.

Please note that the comments are closed on all “My Diary” entries. This category is to read like a book, and each post as a chapter. Please feel free to use the contact form on the “Contact” page for any feedback.

The Finnish autumn is setting in again, and with it, the usual feeling of emotional desolation, fear, loneliness and despair come creeping inside me morning by morning, more intensely with each passing day. What is it about the dark morning chill that seems to torment me with my solitude and fill me with emptiness? What is it about the Nordic autumn that leads my thoughts to the edge of dying and overwhelms my once love-filled heart with a desperate fear that all society, all family, all humanity has left me behind and forgotten me?

I wake up alone in my bed morning after morning, like every day of every season, but only with the onset of autumn does the full reality of my alienation and estrangement in this world come crashing down on me, filling me with ever-increasing despair and loneliness, replacing my hopes and sense of meaning with a desperate sense of futility and abandonment.

The dawn comes later and later, the darkness extends ever-farther into the day, ever-so-gradually snuffing out the light of life…and the chill in the air…how do these things bear with them these tragic emotions and place them into my heart? And why am I always alone? Why always excluded on the outskirts of lives?

This time last year, I sunk into a deep depression for weeks. I cried profoundly, every day, I don’t even know why, there was no logic. I could not control my tears and, of course, being alone, there is never a need to even try.

This year I am so much better. My depression was so severe last autumn, and my inexplicable crying so frequent and intense that it drove me right into the arms of my fiancé, at least in my imagination. Still now, I am only in his arms in my imagination, but at least we are close in heart and in mind. That is the only thing that keeps me from falling apart again. Still, I am left with an intense loneliness, a yearning to be with him that is tearing at me more and more each autumn day, and the fear growing in me of the autumn’s foreboding of a cold, dark and wintry death.

10182005-Finland

On Tuesday, July 7, at 5:30 a.m., I accompanied the amateur fishermen of my family on a half-day fishing trip. The location is Hyannis, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The morning began very foggy, but then the fog lifted and the sun shone bright on the sea…

Diary entry 7

(Diary entries are intended to be read in order)

My dad had had a girlfriend when I was little named…Julie . Given my dad’s nature, he and Julie inevitably broke up. Julie went off to live her life and basically did something similar to what I’m doing—she went to New York City to devote herself to therapy and getting herself and her life in order. In this process, she was drawn to a form of energy healing. She attended a school for energy healing and became the only genuinely peaceful and happy person I have ever seen in my life. Moreover, she had qualities and interpersonal skills that I looked up to, admired and aspired to. It also helped that she was more similar to me than anyone in my immediate or extended family, and, like me, she had never managed to find a working relationship with a man, albeit for a completely different reason; she was single and not just happy, but joyful and full of love. I have often wished that she had not disappeared almost entirely from my life throughout my 20’s and 30’s; she could have helped me immeasurably, altering the course and events of my life.

Anyway, I basically wanted to be like Julie—I should be so lucky to be that content with myself and with my life as a single woman, when I had always known at a profound level in my heart and soul that I had been created to love and tend to a husband and a family. Thus, it was basically via Julie that I was initially drawn to energy healing. I saw her and how natural she was interacting with people and how content she was with herself and I wanted to do energy healing, like she did, so that I could let my love flow and become free and joyful, like her, even in the lack of living my life purpose.

Last summer I looked into energy healing schools and quickly found out I could neither afford the time, nor the money required. At that time, I had no idea what reiki was. I had the impression that it must be some inferior form of energy healing, since learning it didn’t require a special school or four years of my life at $10,000 a year. However, at roughly $400 for a 2-day reiki level 1 and 2 class, reiki fell into my accepted price and time range, thus, I took it.

At the beginning of December, 2008, I attended a reiki level 1 attunement class on a Saturday, and a level 2 attunement class on the day after, Sunday. That weekend was a transformational experience for me. Not only did it open up the world of energy healing and reiki to me, but it put me in touch with a “me” I had never experienced before—a joyful, more sociable, free and natural me, a me that could feel love and a me that felt like she had finally found a field that she actually felt natural and competent in and people that she could fit in just a little better with.

In my opinion, the only noteworthy event of the class, and, in fact, the only element of the reiki class I have intended to share in this article, is the attunement. The reiki attunement is the essence of the class. The reiki attunement is a process which permanently opens the recipient or student up to the reiki energy flow, and once opened to this flow, one can call on it at will and practice reiki on oneself or others, animals and even situations. The following is a concise definition of a reiki attunement from this site:

What is a Reiki attunement?
This is the process whereby the RM passes on to the initiate the ability to channel the Reiki energy. Without such an attunement whatever healing modality is practiced is not Reiki. Normally an attunement comes with instruction in the various techniques involved in practicing Reiki. However, nowadays this need not be the case, especially with reputed “distance attunements”.

They say that every person has a different experience of the attunement, and some experiences can be quite uplifting or unearthly. My personal experiences of the attunements (and classes) follow:

The Reiki 1 Class
I walked into the seminar room as I would have walked into any room full of complete strangers: unsure of my social footing, unsure of myself, and looking out at all the happy, socializing foreigners from a solidly protected and sealed-off sanctuary of speechless silence and of mute observation deep within myself. As natural as my breath, by virtue of their mere presence in my awareness at that moment, I emotionally scanned the group to achieve an understanding of each individual and for my own personal reference; who might I feel comfortable with, who might I not? I chose my seat, then, carefully, where and beside whom I thought I would feel most comfortable.

I took a seat in the semi-circle that was being formed around the teachers and the class begun. To my dismay, the teachers asked us to introduce ourselves before the group, giving our names, jobs, places of residence, a little background and why we are learning reiki. As usual, I was totally removed from what the people preceding me were saying, as all the slow little brain cells in my head were frantically scurrying around in panic mode, trying to put together the words for my own introduction and piece together what I would say and then remember all the pieces and the order to say them in. Meanwhile, my heart began beating faster and faster and I began to shake as I sat there, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, afflicted with this charge of having to speak in front of these strangers, who were, themselves, nonetheless speaking perfectly naturally, smiling and pleased to be the center of attention for a moment, with no panic in sight.

I survived the ordeal, but I felt as I always do: awkward, socially inept, nearly voiceless, having made a fool of myself and having forgotten to say certain things, though not having forgotten to leave out the fact that I was in New York City for therapy and healing (and reiki) because I had suffered an emotional breakdown in the summer (2008).

We began our attunements with our teachers (they were a husband-wife team) instructing us in a meditation with meditation music playing. The class and the teachers meditated for 5-10 minutes. Something about the setting enabled me to go quite deep in my meditation and I felt very peaceful, calm and deep. After the meditation time had passed, as the students remained in meditation, the teachers got up and began to go around to each student to perform the attunement itself, which seemed to be passing on of some healing energy (I don’t know exactly, since I haven’t taken the more advanced reiki classes yet).

My personal experience of this reiki 1 attunement was not earth-shattering. As I sat meditating with my eyes closed waiting for the teachers to come to me, I felt anxious about what would happen when they got to me. Then I felt them at the people next to me. I felt intense heat from them and as they drew near to me, and then in front of me, the silhouette of them that formed in the vision of my closed eyes was that of a bright white light. I knew this was a good, something real, but intangible, was happening and I was happy about it, but, like I said, it wasn’t earth-shattering.

After the teachers had finished, we all came out of our meditation and, God help me, the teachers asked us to go around the room taking turns describing our experience of the attunement. So, once again I had my heart in my throat. “At least I have an experience to describe,” I thought. But it’s still not easy speaking with your heart in your throat. Like the first time, I also survived this, but I was a shaking, nervous wreck each time, and that was audible in my trembling and timid voice.

Attunement Aftermath
I can’t really describe well the nature and the intensity of the sensations I was feeling in my body after the attunement. The class was dismissed for lunch and I went to lunch with a small group from the class, as a wealthy man who was taking the class with his daughter offered to buy all of us lunch . While we were at the restaurant waiting for the food, I was overcome with physical experiences so potent that I couldn’t function. First of all, my whole body was “tingling” profusely. I had experienced the inner tingling of energy moving in me before, from EFT and yoga, but this tingling was intense and thorough, over my whole body. I was physically shaky, but not from nerves. I was exceedingly light-headed and dizzy. I had a feeling of being intensely “buzzed,” or very spaced out  (as when you drink too much and become very dizzy, disoriented and light-headed and cannot focus your eyes or your mind).

I asked the others if they felt anything, but they didn’t. I was a little surprised by the teachers’ responses when I asked them about it. One suggested I was catching a cold, the other suggested I was too hot; very strange, considering even I knew it was a direct result of the attunement.

The Reiki 2 Class
Saturday night, after the reiki 1 class, I went home and got a good night’s sleep. Everyone returned early the next day for the reiki 2 class. This time, however, others had finally reported feeling effects of the previous day’s attunement. One girl reported having a migraine, the likes of which she was not accustomed to. Another girl returned with a cold. None reported the physical sensations I had “been high” on since the day before, and I never got ill in any way either. I was certainly fortunate to have the experience of it that I had, because it was really a wonderful sensation, as long as you’re not driving .

Once again, we all had to take our turn in describing how our night was after experiencing the attunement. With the success and downright fun and delight of my personal experience, I was opening up, becoming less afraid to speak and more natural in front of the strangers. There was a feeling developing amidst us from the energy healing which I felt opening me up, making me feel as if I might fit in, or at least making me feel it was safe for me to be more natural there.

Reiki 2 Attunement
For me, the delight of the reiki 2 attunement began even before the attunement began, but even during the meditation. We sat, as before, in meditation to some meditation music of the teachers. I went into a profound meditation, it was wonderful. As I was meditating, however, I began to see a golden light shining in the periphery of my left eye. The golden light was spherical, with halos, as radiate from bright lights, and just entering my line of vision at my left eye. It would move further into my line of vision, appearing as if someone were holding an illuminated light bulb in front of my eyes and moving it slowly back and forth before my closed eyes. There were several times I believed that the teachers were not sitting in meditation, but that they were passing in front of me, somehow creating this light effect before my eyes. I was bewildered and puzzled by this light.

After the meditation, I opened my eyes and I, shy and insecure as I was, spoke up and asked the teachers if they had been sitting in their seats this whole time, to which they responded yes.

My deep meditation and peculiar vision of light continued while the teachers were going around giving attunements to each student. Not only did this vision continue, it developed. In my meditation, as the teachers were circulating among us, the golden light I saw shining in the periphery of my left eye continued and I began to feel real heat on my face where I saw the light shining. I was dead certain someone had opened the curtains and there was sun shining on my face. I sat with a smile on my face, as if basking in the warmth and light of the sun. Several times I opened my eyes to find the sunlight, but there was no sun on that cloudy, windy day, and the shades were drawn closed. I marveled at how this was possible. I felt heat on my face as real and as strong as the heat we feel on our face from the sun. I had determined that it was bad for me to keep peering out from my meditation to look for the sun, so instead of opening my eyes, in my continued disbelief, I would take my hand up as I sat in my meditation and I would pass my hand in front of my eyes to determine an outside source for my vision and for the heat. Amazingly, when I would pass my hand in front of my eyes, no shadows would come before my sight as I sat with eyes closed, and the flow of heat was not interrupted. Somehow, I was seeing and feeling inside myself a source of light and heat that was not in the outside world! Now this was fun!! I didn’t ever want to come out of that meditation! I was beside myself with delight and excitement and couldn’t wait to tell the class what I had experienced! )

When the time came for me to tell my story, I know I was smiling and beaming through the whole thing! Some others seemed to have possibly more interesting experiences than I had, but I loved my experience and I was overjoyed with it!

Weekend Conclusion
By the end of the day on Sunday, I had already gone through an enormous transformation. I was so open that when it came time for us to all leave, I was crying . I had such a wonderful and altering experience with the others and with the attunements that it was as if a long time had passed in the course of two days and I had emerged a different person, and I couldn’t imagine it would even be possible for me to become how I had been just 2 days before. Towards the end, the teachers were discussing the changes that had occurred in people over the weekend and the vote in the class was unanimous; I was the one who had transformed the most, and I was so embarrassed as all “the strangers” looked at me with such approval and acceptance, that I smiled more widely than one would think I was capable of and I began to cry…again.

As I was packing my things to leave (with tears in my eyes), a girl from the class came over to me and offered to help me in my endeavors to heal myself and get my life back on track. She told me that, from what I said in my introduction (despite how shaky and bad I thought it was) she was amazed and impressed that I had come as far as I had, that I was there seeking healing in reiki, and that she thought I had a lot of courage and determination to be where I was.

All in all, this was the best $400 I have ever spent in my life and the experience I had that weekend will go down in my history as one of the best and most positive and transformational experiences of my life.

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A man of silent dignity. You carry yourself with an air of wisdom that commands respect of others.You have a strong determination in your eyes and poetry in your soul. You are virtuous, serious, deep, self-controlled (a master over yourself). You have a strong mind. You have the power of determined focus, of mind over matter, of mind over body and over mundane enticements. In your wisdom and love, you know the folly and perpetually unsatisfying nature of earthly pursuits and desires, thus, you reject them. Truth and Wisdom form the true north by which you navigate your life. Thus, you are a man; you are a master over earthly desires—you love, reach for and understand the Divine, above and beyond the earthly. You will never suffer yourself to become a beggar or a clown, a fool or a puppet, by any earthly pursuit or distraction, nor allow yourself to reduce another to such a lowly state; you are a man.

And beneath this noble exterior, you hide a gentleness, a softness, a loving nature … and sensual passions, which, alone, you know not to think of.

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where you are; one day we will meet; you are the man I love—my husband. Your wisdom is glorified in my heart and uplifting to my spirit. Your understanding of Truth and unfaltering devotion to a life of Righteousness and Goodness is a beacon to my feminine soul, which is overwhelmed with love and admiration for you.

You know me. You find the sweetness and compassion of my spirit a divine beauty in which your soul delights, and my deep and tender love for you is as your own breath.

A worthy man, you come inside me and you know every flowing contour of my supple soul. You see my intuitions and you give them words. You understand me; you understand my blessing and you lovingly guide me in the wealth of your wisdom. Through your knowing and your love for me, you cradle my fragile heart within the fortress of your masculine mind. You touch me at profound depths, penetrating my virgin soul with your loving, masculine strength and I shudder at your firm and guiding hand, as you caress my softness.