M
ikao Usui made his connection to Reiki after three weeks of fasting and meditating. Fortunately, fasting isn’t deemed to be a general part of Reiki practice. Healthy as it is to have a fruit day once a week and generally look after our diet, it isn’t essential for Reiki. But meditating very much is.Oh dear, some readers may be thinking. But those who already meditate will just smile approvingly. They know that meditation is the key to spiritual awareness. Buddha did it, Jesus too (he once retreated to the desert for 40 days).
Basically every spiritual master since the beginning of time has done it. But how can we ordinary mortals do it? ‘I can’t meditate’ is probably the complaint most often heard on my Reiki courses. A lot of people struggle with meditation.
And I know the feeling very well, as I struggled with it for almost 40 years.
So, before you give up, please let me assure you that the
in your palms and place them on someone, you are meditating. Reiki simply is meditation. When we give it, we don’t think, we experience. We move from doing to being.
And the more we let go of our thoughts and ideas, the deeper our connection to Reiki will become.
out of our mind
In meditation we are free of the constraints of time – and space. We enter a new dimension. Some people experience this as expansion, some as lightness, some as colours or pure light.
As this dimension is beyond what we normally identify with, to reach it we try the opposite of what we are used to; that is, we try to achieve a state of mind that is free of thought. Philosopher René Descartes famously stated,
‘I think therefore I am.’ When we look at meditation, this statement turns out to be rather superficial. Because even when we don’t think, we still are. We still exist. Not as our everyday selves, but as something deeper.
But how do we get rid of our thoughts? In everyday life, we try so hard to remember things and to work things out, and so often the right thoughts just won’t appear. And when we finally give the brain a rest, we’re flooded with unwanted thoughts. We try to meditate – and the first thing that comes into our mind is, say, coffee. Where the hell did that come from? Anyway, the thought is there. And it takes us back to the supermarket where we normally do our shopping. Last time, the coffee was out of stock. Thinking about it, quite a few products have been out of stock recently. I wonder if there’s a problem with their supply chain. Maybe it’s the
weather – it is very cold at the moment. Yesterday I stood at the bus stop for 15 minutes almost freezing to death.
Why is the bus always late when I’m catching it?
Stop! What’s going on here? Am I losing my mind?
No. It’s simply going into monkey mode, to use the term of the Eastern meditation traditions, jumping from one thought to the next to the next. I find the best way to deal with this is simply to accept it. Yes, my mind is thinking. So I spend a moment with the thought. It’s there. It wants to be acknowledged. But after a few moments I feel I’ve spent enough time with it and allow it to leave. It has come from somewhere – now it can go somewhere. I tend to put it into a vehicle that takes it away – a cloud maybe, or a train. This can be whatever you fancy: just imagine it or visualize it, place your thought in it and let it move on.
Then I return to whatever meditation technique I’m using. I may be concentrating on my breath, or on the sensation of Reiki. I find that concentrating on Reiki is much easier than using other techniques, as there is already a strong focal point: the sensation in my palms. But that is only the start. I can now move from concentration to meditation.
To do this, you just have to go in the opposite direction, as it were. You feel the sensation in your hands. But what animates them? Where is the energy coming from? You can actually trace this back! You may feel Reiki flowing through your arms, your shoulders, your head – and trace it back to the crown chakra. Or you may not feel the flow physically, but start to sense that Reiki is, in fact, all around you. And deep inside you. Reiki is … everywhere. And by
opening up to it, you begin to feel that you’re everywhere too. You may have a sense of oneness, vastness, expansion.
You may start to feel calm, peaceful, free… You may see a light, or brightness.
Making this connection to deeper levels is the ultimate goal of Reiki. We use energy as a means to an end – and become aware of its source.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to my ultimate Reiki meditation.