I worked as a nurse on 3rd shift at the time of my first Reiki class. I don't know if you know about 3rd shift, but it is usually the shift that creates more stress in life for people due to the daylight sleeping and mal-alignment with friends and family who work during the day and sleep at night. Your whole life turns a little backward. The night before I was to leave for my Reiki class weekend I began to feel pretty poorly during my shift and made a doctors appointment that afternoon wanting to go home and sleep before I made the trip to Tampa. I was given the diagnosis of confirmed strep throat. GREAT! I chose to drive over to Tampa anyway, I needed the credit hours for nursing continuing credit.
Interestingly one of the attitudes (stubborn-ness) I have worked to balance is the one attitude that got me to Tampa in the first place, I felt terrible. I slept and slept and woke up early Saturday morning making a plea to God, I felt even worse than I had the night before. I said into the hotel room air around me, "God if my eyes do not open 10 minutes before that class starts, I am simply going to lay in this bed and sleep until theis weekend is over." I promtly laid down and fell asleep. My eyes opened at 9:50 that morning for a class that began at 10 a.m. I went to the class, and I was miserable. I can't really imagine how I seemed to the other participants. I was grumpy and growly and felt incredibly bad. Somehow my Reiki teacher recognized that I was in need of some kid gloves, she intuitively knew that if she pressed me too hard to participate in the class or pushed for me to give verbal answers to things about myself she was going to lose me. I was the lucky one though, because I was so filled with defensiveness, rage over what had transpired in my past, and simple anger and sadness that it most likely oooozed out every single pore, and she was sensitive enough to recognize how really fragile I was at that point in my life.
At the time of this monumental Reiki class I did not believe in angels, infact I believed that they were a mass hallucination on the planet! So of-course my Reiki master talked about them, and encouraged the students that weekend to pick up an angel card and read about the angel, and I adamently refused to do so. The class went on and on with my ego making regular appearances. "This is b.s., this is impossible, you already know about this, these people have no idea what they are doing, that teacher lady is wierd." If a judgement could be had I was having it, along with feeling badly, it made for a rather uncomfortable day. I couldn't wait for the class to end and get back to that bed in my hotel room, but first we had to become initiated into the healing system by attunements. GREAT! I not only was over being there with complete strangers, now someone had to touch me too. As my mind was wrapping itself around each concept that was being shared, my ego stalked the concepts like a rabid beast looking for anyway to break down the truth into a lie, I felt a bit like a ping pong ball. Little pings and pongs of truth were making it down inside the angry facade that I had unknowingly created to protect myself. I had gone from anger and disbelief to fear and hope, an emotion that I was really uncomfortable with.
We were given instructions on how to prepare for our attunement process. We sat serenely with our hands folded into prayer positions and I silently waited, okay; not absolutely silently because that rabid ego of mine was screaming RUN! At the time I felt so much fear I was shaking. I don't remember which moment it was that Spirit took over the process, but it happened. Because of the years of meditation I had previously studied, it was pretty easy for me to get into an altered state of awareness, my body seems to lock down and then at times I had been given to visions and information from the Spirit around me. At the touch of my Reiki teacher my body was in the lock down phase, ego screaming RUN!, and electric light shows and visions flitting across the surface of my mind. There I sat wondering and waiting, the visions became vivid and subtly the most gigantic angel I have EVER come across came into my field of vision, he seemed to be bigger than the building! The golden robes were all I could see and at the same time I was completely aware of the entire angel's being and the words and healing that were being poured into my heart and mind. Tears came, emotions flowed, and all I wanted to do was sleep. I wrote as my teacher had suggested after the attunement. I felt bigger somehow, expanded, and I almost ran not walked to the basket holding the angel cards, the angel I pulled was Raziel, and for me it meant an awful lot at the time. By the end of the weekend my strep throat was completely gone, my Reiki teacher had shown me kindness and compassion, I learned that I had not been the only person hurt by an egotistical spiritual teacher that abused their position and wielded pain and suffereing. Most of all though, I heard the sound of Spirit begin to stir within my heart and that was just like coming home.
It is interesting how through challenge and contrast many of us find our ways back into the innocence we were born with. It was through the contrast of my egoic experience, my pain, my drama that I could see how differently things could be and how I could strive to be a story of success and courage rather than yet another person in the ranks of the abused on the planet that had fallen into the cracks and stayed there. Reiki comes to the heart of humanity in an individual and special way. It whispers of hope and peace and reminds us through the 5 Reiki principles that there is indeed another way. Reiki and the practice of it's ideals in our lives opens up and encourages the use of intention in our daily lives. Of course it is a choice, how, when, where, and why we use Reiki is as individual and numerous as there are living beings on this planet and beyond this planet; yet it comes. Sometimes it finds us and shakes up our lives so loudly we are deaf after all of the shaking and rearrangement. Sometimes Reiki whispers to those of us willing to search and be silent enough to hear. Sometimes Reiki comes like cool and soothing spring water, washing the dust our own boots have kicked up, right out of our eyes leaving clarity and a sense of direction. However Reiki comes, it creates space in the mind and the heart for the budding of a new seed of hope. I wonder... how will Reiki bloom within you?
