During Reiki self-treatment we gain moments of peace, when the mind is quiet and we get an experience of our true nature. We rest from the mind’s incessant thinking, and in this moment there is a great opportunity to witness our true being. I am understanding when people tell me that Reiki is not ‘powerful’ enough for them (I have been there too), and they feel the need to learn more and more techniques and healing modalities – as if stuffing more knowledge into the mind will help to silence it! Or perhaps it is a misunderstanding of our true nature being the mind itself. But anyone who does a regular Reiki practice becomes aware that we are more than our mind. If you have not felt it fully for yourself then simply be aware during your self-practice. Become more alert during the times of quiet. When the mind slows its chatter, can you perceive the silence in between thought? Does this silence feel dead to you? Or full of life and awareness? As the mind silences further, are you still present? Are you still aware?
This space, or pure presence is your true nature, it is what is always present. Thoughts come and go, emotions come and go and are therefore not permanent. If they are not permanent, how can they be the real you? You are what is under that – and you don’t get to that by stuffing your mind full of information. In fact the opposite is true.
I have done the stuffing process myself for many years. In the beginning, when I first learnt Reiki and experienced these moments of blissful silence I was in fact closer to the truth than I knew. But somehow as I gained more experience, and went up more Reiki levels my own inner lack of confidence kicked in and began the stuffing process. I lost the initial innocence and purity of the process as I became a ‘Reiki Master’. I felt enormous pressure to be ‘wise’ and ‘masterful, lol! So I trained as a hypnotherapist, a Bodytalk practitioner, a life coach, a Law of Attraction specialist, an intuitive healer…blah blah…stuff stuff…and yet, after 10 years of stuffing myself with knowledge I didn’t feel any closer to my inner truth. In some way I intuitively felt I was distracting myself and missing the point completely. Luckily for me this intuitive pull got stronger and I started dumping all this excess knowledge. And as I dumped and focused on Reiki, and on my self-treatment and the experience rather than the knowledgeable dialogue; I began to see the truth of what I had already found 10 years previously.
I am not saying that only Reiki can do this for you, but it is certainly a very viable pathway. Reiki allows the body and mind to rest, and it is a natural and easy process that automatically happens as you let go into the process. Of course you need to be disciplined in actually setting aside time to do your practice, but this is essentially all you need to do with Reiki. Any other types of ‘add-ons’ with your Reiki self-treatment such as visualisation techniques are useful in the beginning but remember it doesn’t allow your mind to rest fully. In effect knowledge is the food of the mind, but silencing your mind is the food of your essence, your true self. So next time you do your self-treatment, stay with yourself and don’t get distracted by the mind – you are not your mind, you are so much more. Feel it for yourself, feel into the spaces in between thought, and feel for the presence that is life itself. You are that.
