retinal perspectives

how do I know reiki is working

I was talking to a friend of mine about distant reiki (where you send reiki to someone who is not in the same location with you), and she asked me how I know whether it's working.

Think about what it feels like when you hold your hand over something hot, maybe a fire or a stove burner. You can feel the heat, and there is almost a thickness to the heat, like it's an actual object that you can touch.

Well .. it feels sort of like that. Only it's not hot. And instead of feeling the energy coming up from the object, it feels like it's being pulled from my hands. If I hold my hands so they are facing each other, it feels like there is this mass of dense thick "stuff" between them.

When someone does not accept the energy, or when they've had enough, the pull just stops (or doesn't start at all) - and my hands feel normal again.

I don't know what it feels like for other people, but that is what it feels like for me, and it really is the most fascinating thing.

I, I, I

I am kind of in a pickle here. I was clicking on a blog post to respond to comments and noticed that I use the word "I" quite a lot. It made me feel like I am writing a blog that is all about me. Which I sort of am, but I am only writing about me because I think it might be useful to you. I don't know what will be useful, or when it will be useful, or how it will be useful, but I believe that somehow, it will be useful to someone. To that end, it really isn't about me at all. (Well, I guess it still is, because it is about me wanting to share with the hope that it is useful. Argh.)

The pickle is that I don't know if that is clear and, if it's not, I am at a bit of a loss as to how to change it.

Don't really have an answer right now .. not even entirely sure why I am posting this .. but here it is.

one step at a time

Turns out, pursuing your dreams is scary stuff - no matter how slowly you are moving.

On the one hand, what if I fail. After all, it feels scarier to fail at something I want to do than it does to fail in general. On the other hand, what if I succeed. After all, who am I to want to follow my dreams and be happy instead of just being grateful for what I have and making the best of things until I eventually die.

Sigh.

There are a million good reasons for following my dreams - and a million not-so-good reasons for not following them. The problem is that the good reasons are hard to remember when I'm stuck in the hard.

I was thinking about this one day and something occurred to me.

Visiting Machu Picchu has always been a huge dream of mine. (I read every book in the library on the Incas when I was young.) Whenever I saw photos of it, my heart would swell until it very nearly didn't fit inside my chest and a huge lump would enter my throat. I wanted to visit it so badly.

A couple of years ago, I was planning a vacation and decided to visit Machu Picchu. REI Adventures had two tours: one where you hiked the Inca trail to Machu Picchu and one where you took the train. I wanted to hike there. I mean, just imagine walking in the footsteps of the Incas and seeing Machu Picchu through the Sun Gate after hiking for four days to get there! I still get chills at the very thought.

Except I couldn't get myself to sign up. I'd be all ready to sign up for the hike, and then I'd start listing all the reasons why I should do the non-hike trip instead and then would manage to talk myself out of the trip entirely. This went on for two months.

It turned out that as much as I wanted to hike, I was even more scared of actually hiking. Mostly, I was afraid of getting altitude sickness. (I blame Google and my penchant for finding every bad story when doing searches.) But I was also afraid that I might not be in good enough shape for the hike.

One day, I managed to sign up anyway. I spent a great deal of my remaining time freaking out. And then I was there.

The hike was hard. There was no denying that. (Clearly, I should have spent more of my freaking out time on the trails.) But as long as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and resting when I needed to, I was fine.

It was the second day that I was most freaked out about - we had to climb over 4000ft in elevation to a pass at around 14000ft. But again, as long as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and resting when I needed to, and doing the zig-zag thing instead of just going straight up, I was fine.

I still remember the moment when I reached the pass. I cannot even begin to tell you how incredible it felt. In that moment, I thought that I would never again doubt whether or not I could accomplish something.

I don't really know if this story has a point .. except that maybe when we're in the hard, it would help if we forgot about the summit and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

eta: Victoria Brouhard wrote a great blog post about how to make a decision between doing or not doing something that seems very scary to you. I found it very helpful. You might too.

wherein I serve my ego and learn humility

One day, one of my neighbors said, "I think I need some of that reiki thing; my shoulder is killing me." He kind of sort of meant it because his shoulder was in so much pain, but he didn't mean it enough to have me actually try it on him. Instead, I did a distant session for him later that evening.

I saw him a few days later and asked if he noticed anything. "Of course not. It still hurts. I start physical therapy on Tuesday."

Oh man, was I disappointed. Really disappointed. This puzzled me. While I like to hear back after a distant session - and it's nice to get feedback that the person noticed something - I am generally not attached to the results. Before every session, I ask that whatever happens happens for the highest and greatest good of the person I am working on. I am me. I am not them. Their body knows what they need most in that moment. The energy knows where it's needed most. Being attached to a specific result would just be me, thinking I know what's best for someone else.

After thinking about it some more, my mind went back to the session. Instead of drifting off into emptiness as usual, my mind was chattering away. "Ha. I can't wait to ask how the session went. I know this is going to help his shoulder. I just know the pain is going to decrease. He'll have to admit that it works. And then he will finally stop ragging on me. Oh, I can't wait. I will try not to say 'I told you so.' .."

Wow. I was really focusing on his highest and greatest good there, wasn't I.

See .. this particular neighbor thinks reiki is wacky. Which I should be ok with, right. I am totally ok with people thinking this stuff is wacky and rolling their eyes at it. I think parts of it are wacky myself - and it wasn't so long ago that I thought it was all wacky. But he laughs at me for it. All the time. And while I laugh and make light of his comments in the moment, it turns out that I do not really find them all that funny. And since I am horrible at conflict (even conflict that is not even conflict), I don't know how to politely ask him to please stop - especially since he isn't trying to be mean and I know that my reaction to his comments is all about my stuff and not about his comments at all. 

All of that is just to say that, as it turns out, I didn't really want to help his shoulder pain. Well, I did, but not because he would feel better. Well, not that I didn't want him to feel better. I mean, I would have been happy if the pain decreased because he is a nice guy and pain sucks. But really, I wanted to help him because it served me.

Yup, that was me, inserting my big fat ego into what should have been a loving act of service - and being served a heaping dose of humility in the process when I didn't get the result that my ego was looking for. A lesson that I appreciate, even if I am embarrassed about it.

the light in all of us

I posted this a while ago on my photo blog, but I thought I would share it here as well, since it partly explains why I want to share reiki with others.

In one of the classes at the Be Present Retreat, Andrea led us through an exercise where we identified the values that are important to us at this point in our lives. The exercise was surprisingly more emotional than I realized it would be.

My values were:

• to be unapologetically myself
• curiosity
• to connect with others (to hear people's stories, to share my stories, to meet people where they are, and to remain in a state of acceptance and support)
• to see the light in everything (to see the beauty and light in everything and everyone, to share that with others, and to help others see the beauty and light in themselves)

It was really the first and last ones that touched me to the core. That night, I could not fall asleep. I laid in bed, tears rolling down my cheeks, as I thought about the last one. Seeing the light in everything is actually my soul's purpose, though I never had the right words to express it.

As I've mentioned before, at some point next year, I plan to shift to practicing reiki. While lying there, quietly crying, I realized that I now know that is really the right path for me. I've long believed that there is beauty and light in everyone, except I didn't really believe that there was beauty and light in me. Reiki was the thing I found that helped me begin to believe it was true of me too - which is one of the reasons why I want to share it with others.

I saw energy again - hurrah!

I had another experience with seeing people's energy. I was at a seminar and we were doing Shiva Nata. After moving for a while, we stood still, closed our eyes, and put one hand on our heart and one hand on our belly. As I closed my eyes, I saw everyone's silhouette in my mind's eye - all warm and golden and glowing. As with the first time, it was amazing. I wanted to clap with glee.

We were doing Shiva Nata as a way of working with our resistance. The second time we stopped and closed our eyes, I saw a warm golden glowing silhouette again. This time, it was me. But, behind the silhouette was a gigantic hulking black shadow that was towering over the golden silhouette. The shadow was my resistance. That was not quite so amazing. (Truth be told, I cried when I saw how large it was.) But it's there. And eventually it/we will learn that it is only a small part of me.

It is interesting that the two times I have seen people's energy were both during yoga/meditation practice. It makes me wonder why that is, and how I can use those lessons to learn to see it during other moments as well.

channeling the creative spirit

My hands and feet are pretty much always cold. Even indoors. It's kind of a nuisance. Recently, I discovered that there are such things as fingerless gloves. Since your fingers are free, you can type and write with them - so they can be worn indoors! Genius idea. (Apparently they are not a new invention. Who knew.)

I bought myself a lovely pair of off-white wool fingerless gloves and pretty much wear them constantly. My hands stay warm now. The happy news is that besides the warm thing, there is a whole other benefit to wearing them at work. Whenever I look at them, I remember that I am more than my job, and that even if I don't get to use it very often at work, my creative side is a hugely important part of me.

See, I discovered that the gloves existed when I started seeing photos of women wearing them on a lot of the artists' blogs I frequent. I think that must be why they seem to exemplify the creative spirit.

I wish I had discovered this sooner because I must confess that every time I walk down the long, grey, sterile, colorless hallway, and then down the long rows of grey, sterile, colorless cubicles, a little piece of my spirit dies a bit. (Not to rant, but I cannot be the only person who considers the all-grey an abomination to the senses. Just sayin'.) And no matter how much color I surrounded myself with inside my cubicle, I had never found a way to bring it back - until now.