The Reiki Cafe 

It's been a couple weeks since I started daily meditation with the master symbol. I won't give you a blow-by-blow, since experiences will be different for everyone, but I can certainly recommend this practice for you to try.

It has had these effects so far:
- accelerating and clarifying the healing process
- bringing more balance
- on occasion, unbalancing me as I adjust to new awareness (ego rebels, overindulges and the body suffers a little)
- clarifying my healing work and deepening others' trust in what I do
- increasing my ease at softly speaking truth
- enhancing awareness and empowerment within dreams (the first night's work was most impressive)
- with all the above, giving me a deeper understanding of the symbol itself (hint: you don't understand it, you become it)

As far as the practice goes, it's very challenging. As Buddh01 said, you might want to visualize the symbol a bit at a time, to build the whole picture. I found the breath key to holding the symbol in mind -- breathe in, see the symbol form, up from my belly; breathe out, see the symbol flow out to the world, returning to my belly in the next breath. After a few days' practice, as soon as I would sit to visualize the symbol, it would project in front of me, then move over and into my body, so that I was basically breathing the symbol and identifying my body with it.

I would do the practice at night before bed, and carry the visualizing into bed with me to fall asleep practicing. Some nights I would spend quite a while with it, other nights just perfunctory honoring of the practice.

I found another benefit -- during the day, when any anxiety triggered, I would breath and see the master symbol, to help me get back in balance.

So, I plan to keep working with this and exploring it more deeply. At some point will start to bring in the other symbols and do the same with them.

I believe one can benefit from meditating with any symbol or picture of divine practice. And the effect of having the symbol absorb into me confirms my belief that holding visualizations in front of our mind's eye, like a movie screen, should only be transitory, as it can reinforce the notion of separateness from the observed.

Also I suggest, that if you try this and find yourself breaking a sweat, back off and try less effort and more breath. Let it arise within you, like taming a wild animal -- that is exactly what you're doing, by the way -- or is it releasing a domesticated animal into the wild??

Blessings,
Aronaya

P.S. Thanks, Buddh01, for touching off the flame of debate, and prompting my experiment!

Hi, Aronaya,

I'm glad your meditation is going well. I didn't understand your description of effects, so I'm asking whether you can elaborate on part of it. E.g., you said,

>It has had these effects so far:
>- accelerating and clarifying the healing process

What was the healing process like before your meditation? After? Thanks.

Following is a description of my experience w/ symbols. I tried meditation on the reiki symbols a few years ago and it didn't do much.
But,
Before that (and before I was initiated by a reiki teacher) I was browsing in a bookstore when I first saw the reiki master symbol in a form that was legible. I read the symbol, and then I "saw" golden light jump in through the top of my head, race through my body, and then settle into my central nervous system. It was as if I'd been overloaded; I staggered through the aisles of the bookstore for 20 minutes until I felt "normal" enough to drive home. I later "tried out" the golden light, and found it was somewhat different from the qi frequencies I'd previously used. (That convinced me to look for a reiki teacher, and a few months later I found the person who became my teacher.)

Bruce

Glad the practice is going good.
I tried with the Power symbol, but It took a back seat to other stuff that I'm going through.
Bruce,
My path to reiki was less intense than yours, but still brings a smile to my face.
During the time that the visitations in Medejegorie were happening, I imagined how nice it would be to hold out my hands and healing would happen, but it was only a transistory thought, I was 10 or 11 at the time.
Moving on through time, my sisters picked up a book at the local store, I paid for it since I was earning, wasn't to keen on the book, but read it, loved it, and followed the series down the years. I was 19/20 at that time.
One of the books in the series had a reiki practitionar in it, I thought it was just make believe, but again felt, wouldn't it be nice... 26/27 I think this time.
At 29/30 I read in the local advertiser of Reiki practice and attunements, remember, up to this I thought it was just make believe. I couldn't believe my eyes.
I rang the number straight away, The rest is as you know...
Still I smile.

I think I used those words as generalities, as the specifics were somewhat private. So I'll try a happy medium.

By "accelerating and clarifying", I was referring to getting clearer vision of what my work is, and making peace with feminine and masculine aspects within myself. The clearer vision gave more confidence, at the same time made me a little excited, hence the acceleration. Excitement is a two-edged sword; it's easy to come off balance and that is what happened in the days since I wrote this first post.

In the excitement, I let go of the meditative practice, and now find it a good idea to return to it.

I also find it good to be general about personal outcomes, because everyone will have a different subjective experience, and I'm reluctant to create specific expectations about subjective effects.

Hope that helps somewhat -- I'm happy to continue the conversation if you want to zero in on anything. Don't worry about asking for specifics or privacy -- I can always politely decline with no offense taken.

Blessings,
Aronaya

Thanks for response. Follow-ups follow.

aronaya said on

>By "accelerating and clarifying", I was referring to getting clearer vision of what my work is, and making peace with feminine and masculine aspects within myself.

The context in which you used the terms was to say that meditation on the master symbol resulted in accelerating and clarifying the healing process. Does that mean when working on someone, results that previously occurred after a longer time now happen in a shorter time?

>I also find it good to be general about personal outcomes, because everyone will have a different subjective experience, and I'm reluctant to create specific expectations about subjective effects.

If that's a concern, a simple reminder of YMMV may be sufficient to address it. Just as the same applies to discussion of healing experiences. But anyway, thanks again, and I look forward to your further response.

Bruce

Hi All,

Some interesting stuff here Aronaya on your experiences with the symbol meditation. Apologies for being out of the loop on this discussion for a couple of weeks at least now - just been so incredibly busy of late , but I am fascinated by your comments and want to come back to this and join in with the discussion.

Many blessings,

Steve

jaguar said on

>Glad the practice is going good.
>I tried with the Power symbol, but It took a back seat to other stuff that I'm going through.
>Bruce,
>My path to reiki was less intense than yours, but still brings a smile to my face.
>During the time that the visitations in Medejegorie were happening, I imagined how nice it would be to hold out my hands and healing would happen, but it was only a transistory thought, I was 10 or 11 at the time.
>Moving on through time, my sisters picked up a book at the local store, I paid for it since I was earning, wasn't to keen on the book, but read it, loved it, and followed the series down the years. I was 19/20 at that time.
>One of the books in the series had a reiki practitionar in it, I thought it was just make believe, but again felt, wouldn't it be nice... 26/27 I think this time.
>At 29/30 I read in the local advertiser of Reiki practice and attunements, remember, up to this I thought it was just make believe. I couldn't believe my eyes.
>I rang the number straight away, The rest is as you know...
>Still I smile.

Jaguar,

Thanks for recounting your experience. Must've been quite a surprise, to see the reiki ad!

Bruce

With the accelerating and clarifying bit, I primarily meant my own healing progress. However, I did find that let me be more present and mindful with clients, which has a benefit for them. In other words, less interference from my monkey mind is a good thing.

Way too soon to know what kind of speeding-up effects that might have for clients' healing. I'm optimistic it can't hurt, as I feel it helps me with more balance and less forcing or fixing mentality creeping in. We are always evolving with this work.

To be objective, and identify a specific improvement in healing, would entail a double-blind study across a larger population than little old me. The NIH has funded some studies like that, but me, I just do my work and hope for the best.

Blessings,
Aronaya

Stop by anytime!

Blessings,
Aronaya