So if you would like to close your eyes and just listen, drinking in the energy under the words, please do. Go for it. Take it in as a gift, just for you.
With love,
Alice
Like what you read here? Leave a love note in the blog Comments, subscribe to future posts, follow the blog withbloglovin’, and join our community by clicking Like on the Reiki Pulse Facebook page. And share! Spread the love wherever it is needed.
People often think of Reiki as a practice of giving blessings.
Which is true.
Reiki is a blessings practice.
But often I am reminded of what it truly means that this practice (and other sister practices) is a blessings practice.
We give, yes. And we receive, true.
But ultimately, we are reminded through the practice, again and again, of the blessings that already are.
Blessings ready for the plucking.
Ready for the recognition.
Ready to be who we already are.
We are already blessed. Infinitely so.
Reiki practice and all spiritual practices make us aware of the blessing of being. And all the smaller blessings that rain down from that essential blessing.
It is like going into a snow fall and putting our faces and arms up to the snow.
Tilting our heads and sticking out our tongues to catch the shimmering flakes and taste them.
All my love,
Alice
Like what you read here? Leave a love note in the blog Comments, subscribe to future posts, follow the blog withbloglovin’, and join our community by clicking Like on the Reiki Pulse Facebook page. And share! Spread the love wherever it is needed.
A few years ago, at a multi-day class/retreat, I woke up feeling…different. Light, free, expanded, grounded, open, potent, limitless, and pure me.
I got ready for the day with ease and flow.
I went for a walk in the fresh mountain air and marveled at all the life that surrounded me and felt part of my own heart.
I returned to my cabin still feeling…different. Crystal CLEAR.
I couldn’t really believe it. I kept looking around me like I had this big hilarious secret, but that it must be ephemeral, it couldn’t possibly be real or sustainable or me.
I danced around the cabin singing “Defying Gravity” (“Something has changed within me, something is not the same…”) from the musical Wicked (because that’s how dorks like me roll with spiritual epiphanies).
I shared privately what had happened with the teacher leading the class/retreat, feeling sheepish but also like I had to share it with someone who might just possibly know what the hell I was talking about. We both sat there with tears in our eyes watching the lifting morning fog. Whoa.
The years since then have not been spent 100% in that spacious, miraculous feeling.
But I had tasted it. And it never totally went away. It became this new foundation I could rely on, no matter what else swirled within or outside of me.
I returned to my “normal.” I kept practicing and setting lovely intentions and crafting my life, imperfectly perfectly.
Sometimes there would be just a hint of that feeling woven in with my regular life. And sometimes there would be way more than a hint. For a sustained time.
There has been an ebb and flow as that feeling (Dare I call it joy? Happiness? Those words make it seem small somehow) has subsided to the background then surged to the fore.
This experience of the tides within me surprisingly hasn’t been unpleasant. It is like a primal dance. All states are just fine, they are just me now. There is no rush. There isn’t really even an endgame I’m aiming for. There is just this fascinating dance.
When that feeling is at the forefront, especially when it is sustained for big chunks of time, I am just in awe. While getting on with my everyday, challenges and all.
None of this is a panacea for life. I still get sick sometimes, or moody, or hormonal, and I still have bills to pay and dinner to figure out and loved ones who are suffering, let alone the world we live in seemingly going to hell in a handbasket on a daily basis if I focus too much on the news.
But my relationship with all that is totally different.
Sometimes now I can deliberately summon that feeling. Or it’s really more like an invitation. I don’t do it directly, exactly. I don’t try to recreate something I have already experienced (that morning singing “Something has changed me” in the cabin).
I am actually inviting the Divine Wholeness forward, sometimes in words, sometimes by anchoring in my practices, and sometimes with my wordless heart as I do the laundry or run around getting groceries. And that is the feeling that comes with it. One of unity and clarity and pure love, of grace and gratitude.
How can I express to you how much I wish this for you? For everyone?
And it is within all of us already. I am nothing special. That this formerly suicidal fat, hairy, moody girl can have this exquisite experience of divine aliveness, let alone repeatedly so for sustained chunks of time, says it all. All I have done is asked and shown up as best I can, as best I know how, which honestly ain’t all that a lot of the time.
I simply have opened my eyes repeatedly, and now sometimes I get to SEE. To see the reality. The reality that has always been with me and in me, the reality that has been me all along. Amazing.
And it is you, too. It is all of creation.
This I wish for you. You have it. Please, step up and ask. Please step up and practice, whatever that means for you.
Be a musician in your life, doing the scales over and over so that finally, in what seems like a miraculous instant, divine music pours forth through you.
It will be easier for some and harder for others. Some musicians can pick up the violin and through pure gift, pure affinity and talent and grace, play it immediately, without a single lesson.
For most of us, inviting music from a violin would take a lot more guidance and practice and sour scales along with the sweet tones before the music flowed forth.
But you can. You can, if I can, for sure.
This I wish for you.
All my love,
Alice
Like what you read here? Leave a love note in the blog Comments, subscribe to future posts, follow the blog withbloglovin’, and join our community by clicking Like on the Reiki Pulse Facebook page. And share! Spread the love wherever it is needed.
I’ve been in a bit of a funk this week. I was flying free and clear for weeks, and then I crashed. Why? I don’t know, a combination of factors: some upheaval in my family/home situation, some inner questioning and doubts, hormones, and who knows what else. Life!
This morning, I was looking at retreat centers online, fantasizing about being able to get away to somewhere pretty and do nothing but alternate meditation and writing practices with self-indulgent dips into peanut M&Ms and fantasy novels.
On the website for the New Camaldoli Hermitage,a monastic and contemplative community in the Benedictine tradition, I came across this quote:
Saint Romuald’s Brief Rule
Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms—never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God’s presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.
Now, you can see from my comment above about peanut M&Ms that I am no ascetic, like our friend St. Romuald apparently was. Nor do I find myself with a true longing to chuck the everyday world for a monastic life full time, with or without peanut M&Ms.
In fact, I have developed a passion for devoting myself to spiritual awakening within a regular life, integrating them together in acknowledgement that spiritual life is not some special separate thing. It is right here in every movement, every relationship, and every breath.
But there is something about those simple words, “Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God,” that evoked dueling feelings in me today:
“Hell no! What am I if I am ’empty’? Just a shell?”
versus
“Yes, what a relief, let it all go and just allow the divine to fill me.”
Maybe the truth is a combination of both. If I let go of the idea of me, the spaciousness and lightness left behind makes room for the divine. So it’s not so much that I am a mere shell as that I allow myself to realize that I am both me and the divine all at once.
What I think of as me is an expression of the divine nature of all existence and beyond existence. I am the divine, and the divine is me, in form and without form.
I do love a good apparent paradox, don’t you? The truth seems to lie in the contradiction – or rather what seems like a contradiction but in a more holistic viewpoint is merely layered truth.
The trick is to remember that we are not solid. We all know we are made up of water and air, as well as earth. We have within us the electricity of fire and the space of the cosmos. These elements are in our bodies and personalities and souls.
So when we “empty” ourselves and wait, we merely let go of the illusion of being solid so that the divine can shine through. We can then see and feel ourselves in constant fluid motion, intermingled with and one with the divine.
We realize that the illusion of solidity brings with it the illusion of heaviness. We can be light, and we can be free. We already are!
May you each let go of the burden of the illusion of “you” and let the spaciousness within allow the Great Bright Light of your true nature to shine through. May this be a lighter, more joyful way of living.
With love and some lingering grumpitude,
Alice
Like what you read here? Leave a love note in the blog Comments, subscribe to future posts, follow the blog withbloglovin’, and join our community by clicking Like on the Reiki Pulse Facebook page. And share! Spread the love wherever it is needed.
Spread the love, be the love! Share this image wherever you like. It’s a new kind of Free Love.
Dear Reiki Pulse peeps,
I’ve been thinking about you and me and this blog lately. I don’t write you nearly as much as I’d like, and this morning it hit me:
Almost all I want to do is write you love letters, love notes, love missives, and love poems.
I want to leave you little knickknacks to remind you of how beautiful you truly are.
I want to sing you love songs.
I want to romance you, get intimate with you, share all of me and all of you. The real me, the real you.
I want this blog, this website, the Reiki Pulse page on Facebook, every one of my healing sessions and classes and practices and workshops, my heart, my mind, and my entire being to be a tangible space where you can realize unlimited, unconditional love.
Is it boring, talking of almost nothing but love? Saying the same thing in many ways and sometimes the same ways?
Maybe.
But perhaps it’s time for me to give permission to myself to do it anyway. Don’t you think?
Reiki is Love. Can we really get too much of it?
With all my heart and soul,
Alice
Like what you read here? Leave a love note in the Comments, subscribe to future posts, follow the blog withbloglovin’, and join our community by clicking Like on the Reiki Pulse Facebook page. And share! Spread the love wherever it is needed.
She introduced me to a world of wild mind and free writing and Zen and spiritual engagement and arty-hippy Taos and living with great presence and freedom.
To my burgeoning suburban teen self, this was a huge eye- and mind- and heart-opener. It changed my form.
It’s interesting reading her most recent book, The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. She has clearly grown, matured, stripped down, and settled over the years, deep in her dual practices of writing and Zen. So have I in my own way, so reading this book feels like Natalie and I are old friends meeting in a different place.
Here is a one-page chapter I keep coming back to:
“Seven Attitudes of Mindfulness”
“Mindfulness means to be aware, awake. To be alive, attentive, receiving as we move through our day. Not brittle, blind, disjointed, out-of-touch, stressed, nervous, excited – or at least aware of these states and even having a bit of compassion for ourselves. This list is a reminder of another way to be in the world – really a relief, a way out of distress.
1. Nonjudging 2. Patience 3. Beginner’s mind 4. Trust 5. Nonstriving 6. Accepting 7. Letting go
“These seven attributes are the state of mind advantageous for writing, sitting, walking. Also for approaching your employees, your boss, friend, lover, enemy. A way to carry yourself. And we can so easily forget. Put the list on your refrigerator.”
I haven’t printed it for the fridge yet, but I think I will. How about you?
Warmly,
Alice
Like what you read here? Leave a love note in the Comments, subscribe to future posts, follow the blog withbloglovin’, and join our community by clicking Like on the Reiki Pulse Facebook page.
Stack the elements of yourself with a sure mind, using great delicacy and balance, from the robust foundation on up toward the sky.
Offer all of yourself to the universe as a stable and elegant structure ready to hold any truth without crumbling.
Be ready to share the home of you as refuge to any who need your shelter.
Be a temple of strength and compassion.
Ring the bell in the tower of you to share the vibration of true nature with any who might overhear it and open their ears and souls to the sound.
And shine the light from the top of the lighthouse that is your being as a beacon showing all beings the way home.
This is what we build with the system of Reiki, laboring joyfully, even playfully, with gentle openness and perseverance, day by day, brick by brick.
We build ourselves in service to ourselves. We build ourselves in service to all. And we know there is no difference.
May each of you find shelter when you need refuge. And may you take the steps to build yourself into the robust and beautiful temple that is your true nature revealed.
One of my personal challenges lately has been to notice when I turn to my practices (meditation, hands-on healing, writing, chanting — doesn’t matter which one) to make something in my life, my mind, my physical body, or my emotional body “go away.”
Those are healthy times to turn to a practice, for sure. But awareness and acceptance of our expectation and desire to “just fix it, just disappear it, it’s uncomfortable” can help us drop into a cleaner, clearer space of being while practicing.
This cleaner, clearer space is where true healing takes place. Although that healing might not look like what we are grasping at.
Can you relate? Do you sometimes turn to healthy actions clouded with unhealthy expectations or desires? How do you handle that when you notice, if at all? Or do you think it even matters, since it’s a healthy action? Please share in the Comments below, it would be great to hear from you.
Just as everything in our lives can be meditation, so too can everything in formal meditation/practices be a distraction from true meditative clarity of mind.
May we all notice when we naturally and understandably expect and desire discomfort to Go Away. And in that noticing, may wefind our peace with our discomfort so that true purity of mind has space to emerge.
Reiki Pulse’s Latest Flyer About Reiki: Click on Image to View a Larger Version
When people first encounter Reiki, maybe from a friend or a website or flyer, they often can’t wrap their minds around it. It seems a little cuckoo. A little “out there.”
It doesn’t help that different Reiki practitioners and schools have different approaches, some of which are somewhat removed from the Japanese origins of the practice.
When you take the system of Reiki back as much as possible to its Japanese roots, it’s really not that “out there.” The system of Reiki is a simple meditation and healing practice, no more cuckoo than sister practices from other traditions such as yoga or qigong.
The system of Reiki sometimes seems “out there” because it is hard to describe.
By its very nature, any spiritual practice is hard to encapsulate in words. These are mystery practices.
Engaging directly with the mystery – of life, existence, and what lies beyond existence as we know it – is so worthwhile. But we have to let our brains step out of the driver’s seat to truly explore.
So in Reiki, understanding is not necessarily the same as intellectually knowing.
Words are fantastic tools for exploration. Our brains are excellent protectors, creative drivers, and life navigators. I don’t advocate abandoning language or intellect. But words can be limiting.
It’s true that understanding without words can make us uneasy, since we are so used to being able to place our experiences in nice, neat idea boxes with labels carefully pasted on the outside.
But understanding without words is also powerful, without those boxes keeping things contained.
Understanding without words is limitless.
Do you want to be limited or limitless? There are many right answers, as in any spiritual inquiry. What are yours? Your answers are colored by your own experiences and might be nuanced and even contradictory. Please share your thoughts below if this post sparked something in you.
May each of you embrace words for all they offer you. And may you also settle under those words and engage directly with the mystery of being.
Warmly,
Alice
Ps. The irony is not lost on me that I have used so many words to explore this concept! You have to start somewhere.
Alice Risemberg
walks by your side
on the path.
Your hand held
gently in hers,
you are empowered to
claim your own knowing
and
discover your own true,
clear, and balanced way.
Healing Sessions
Traditional Reiki Classes and Practices
Private Reiki Instruction
Meditation Classes and Practices
Unique In-Person and Online Workshops and Courses
Writing on Spiritual Engagement
Openly Sharing Her Personal Spiritual Journey
Roseville, California
Sacramento Area
&
On the Interwebs
0 Comments
