Pulsations: The Reiki Pulse Blog

Reiki Precepts

lotus Do You Feel Powerful?
0 Comments

IMG_2881

Do you feel powerful?

 

If you are not peaceful, you are not powerful.

 

Think about it (go ahead, I’ll wait).

 

Inner peace is empowering.

 

Invite inner peace, cultivate it, welcome it, radiate it, be it.

 

Whatever your cause, whatever your belief or need, inner peace is the core of real power.

 

May you let your inner peace shine through. May you let that natural peace be your source of strength and potency in the world. 

 

Warmly,

Alice

 


 

Like what you read here? Come follow my blog with bloglovin’ and join our community by clicking Like on the Reiki Pulse Facebook page.



lotus Keep It Simple
2 Comments

Love Heart 2

 LOVE.

 

(That is all.)

 


 

Like what you read here? Come follow my blog with bloglovin’!



lotus True Confession Time
2 Comments

As part of a recent Brave Blogging Link-up (before the Reiki Pulse blog was up and running), I published “This I Know: You are Whole and Complete Right Now,” a piece on my history of depression and the way Reiki helped me deeply transform.

 

 

It was, indeed, a courageous leap to share this part of my story to convey an important message. And your responses were humbling in their kindness, generosity, and shared truth-telling of your own.

 

But it is one thing to share a personal issue that has been safely moved to the “past” category. It is another thing to share what is still happening right now.

 

So here is My True Confession (not, I’m afraid, as deliciously titillating as those in the old magazine): I have ulcerative colitis, and I am in the midst of what is often called a “flare up” right now.

 

Yes, I am a Reiki practitioner and teacher. Yes, among other things, Reiki is a healing art. Yes, I still get sick. At the moment, pretty darn sick (though thankfully not life-threateningly so).

 

My feeling that this information is something to be confessed is exactly why I am sharing today. Shame or hiding can be a big signpost that reads: Your wires are crossed! You are deeply misunderstanding something. Dig into the shame and uncross your wires to let go of needless suffering.

 

In my case right now, my misunderstandings are stacked one on top of the other, it seems.

 

Many times we understand a truth intellectually, but in our whole being, we don’t really understand. We don’t know it to our core, and we can’t live it (yet!).

 

Our heads get it, but it’s like experiencing a piece of fruit, say a luscious strawberry, through a pretty painting of the strawberry. The painting gives the illusion of three dimensions, but we can’t really pick the strawberry up and look at it from all angles, taste the sweetness on our tongues, or feel the squish and burst of juice in our mouths.

 

So what is keeping me from fully tasting my fruit? What ideas am I clinging to that keep me from understanding holistically what I intellectually know to be true?

 

Well, let’s start with an old favorite, the idea that there is something wrong with me that I need to hide. That my body’s imbalance and unwellness are a sign that I must not be a “good” Reiki practitioner and teacher. That I “shouldn’t” be sick at all.

 

And under all that, I find lurking the idea that there is something inherently “better” about being healthy.

 

Or even that there is truly such a thing as “healthy” versus “unhealthy.”

 

Whew, we’re digging deep here now!

 

In “The Deepest Acceptance: Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life,” Jeff Foster writes:

 

“In every label, there is an implicit judgment. In creating the opposites beauty and ugliness and then seeking beauty, we go to war with what we call ugly. In trying to be beautiful, in trying to feel beautiful, in trying not to feel ugly, we end up going to war with this present experience and trying to reach its opposite–even though it actually has no opposite! No wonder we suffer.”

 

So it is with “healthy” and “unhealthy.” Aha!

 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have seen and experienced many specific stories of incredible physical, emotional, and mental healing through Reiki practice and support. I don’t mean to dismiss the potential there. Nor do I wish to dismiss the complexity of what “healing” might look like versus “cure” (a big topic for another blog post).

 

In fact, the system of Reiki is ultimately a completely holistic engagement through spirit that requires absolute openness in terms of desired outcome. In Reiki practice, as in life, we cannot cling to our expectations. We must allow whatever is holistically required to emerge, regardless of what we think should be true.

 

This, to me, is the single biggest challenge in practicing Reiki: to let go of expectations and get out of the way so that true healing can unfold, unhindered. And so that suffering can be shed, no longer needed, no matter what is happening internally or externally.

 

Personally, I have gotten better and better at letting go of expectations. But clearly I have plenty of letting go yet to allow, especially related to my own life and body.

 

Part of me just plain wants to Not Be Sick. I admit it. Seems reasonable, right? My Reiki practice helps me see this part of me clearly for what it is.

 

But part of me also knows – KNOWS – that what I am experiencing as “sick” is just life right now in this moment. And it’s ok. My Reiki practice helps me experience this part of me clearly, too.

 

Which “part” of me do you think is suffering more? Is the suffering helping me get what I want anyway?

 

Ironically, my best chance for the “health” I seek is to stop grasping at it. This does not mean to roll over and passively give up on action. It means to choose action from wisdom, not fear or grasping or shame. The wisdom that comes from remembering our inner light that is radiating right in this moment, not some imagined “better” time in the future.

 

My shame about sharing this part of my current life openly shows that I am operating from fear. The fear is understandable but ultimately not helpful. Better to take the curtains down and just live openly as who and what I am in this moment.

 

Even better to take the lessons of the shame and also the experience of unwellness in as part of the richness of this embodied existence. As it is.

 

And best to just be. No labels, no working at finding lessons, no fighting. Allow life to unfold, moment by moment.

 

May each of us recognize shame as it arises and look for the named ideas within it that are limiting. May we gently let go of labeling and clinging to ideas and rest in the light of being that is beyond any distinctions and names.

 

No matter what we might be feeling, may we accept our experiences as true and right for the life that we inhabit, right here, right now.

 


Like what you read here? Come follow my blog with bloglovin’!



lotus Is It Fear or Is It Love?
2 Comments

“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. 

 

Move the way love makes you move. 

 

Move the way joy makes you move.” 

 

~ Osho

An acting teacher I used to study with often said that all emotions, which are the primary tools in an actor’s toolkit, boil down to love or fear. Whatever other emotions you are experiencing, they are really just shades or colors of love or fear.

 

In my Reiki practice, these two emotional “categories” sometimes feel like different experiential “spaces” to me.

 

Fear feels restrictive.

 

Love feels expansive.

 

I no longer think of them as separate, exactly. It’s like fear is this tiny box within giant, gentle, infinite love.

 

When we are caught in fear, if we can open the box, we can enter the freer love space (and the love can enter us).

 

And if we can get rid of the box altogether, ending the habit of fear reaction, we can ultimately be nothing but love! Which is what we really are already.

 

Fear is humanity’s natural lens, narrowing our view.

 

It’s not so easy to let go of fear. But if we keep practicing, the box stays open more and more, with complete disappearances on occasion.

 

For me, I am more able to see the box lid come down. When I can see it crashing down, I can more easily slip a little wedge in before the lid closes completely. Which makes it easier to open the box again.

 

And sometimes I can see the box forming around me in time to just say, “No, thank you, box. I appreciate your kindness in trying to protect me, but it seems the love space might do a better job of keeping me safe.” And poof, no more box. Just like that.

 

And of course, other times, I’m just trapped in the box. I can’t see anything but the box. But understanding it IS a box helps me break out again, sooner or later.

 

Having experienced the love space more and more, it is easier to trust that intellectual understanding of the box even when I can’t see through it yet.

 

The box is ultimately made up of our notions of self versus the universe. This self-ness is an intrinsic part of our humanness.

 

But there is a way to exist simultaneously as self and all. This seeming contradiction holds the greatest potential for human existence: to be me and we and KNOW we are small me and great we at the same time.

 

A nuanced version of one of the five core Reiki precepts is “Do not be worried, fear is distraction.”

 

Distraction from what? From our innate universal spaciousness. From pure love.

 

May each of us rest in the gentle ocean of love more and more each day.

 


 

Inspiration Credit & Appreciation: Thank you to Elise of Brenner Reiki Healing for reposting the Osho quote on her Facebook page. And thank you to Osho, Indian spiritual teacher, for leaving us such wonderful teachings in simple, beautiful words.



lotus Heed Your Ever-Changing Beat
0 Comments

origin_8647598479

 

Sometimes listening to and following your inner rhythms requires you to be a warrior.

 

And though it sounds like a contradiction, sometimes being a warrior demands that you radiate supreme gentleness.

 

Be fierce. Show yourself bold kindness and understanding no matter what your speed or spontaneous syncopation.

 

Allow yourself to move with glacial slowness or hummingbird swiftness based on what you truly need right now, not based on expectations from others or your own critical (and often afraid) self.

 

What’s your speed today? What’s your rhythmic pattern of the moment?

 

Dance to it without inhibition. I promise you, it and you are beautiful.

 

 


 

 

Image Credit & Appreciation: Duda Arraes via photopin cc



lotus Sitting Gently in the Fullness of Yes
2 Comments

IMG_1656

 

In this moment, I am suffused with gratitude.

 

This effortless thanks binds me on the cellular level with all beings and beyond being.

 

May all of you touch your genuine, unforced thankfulness today and every day. May it make your heart the heart of all beings and beyond being.








Welcome to the Reiki Pulse community!

Share your e-mail to get access to an audio mini-collection on Anchoring in Earth Energy.

You will also receive occasional e-mail updates from us, always filled with love.

May they serve you and your light.