A Wider Context for the Precepts
This morning I pulled an archetype card.
It was a dark circle with clenching hands that gave me a shiver to look at.
Then I noticed a white dove flying up out of the clenched hands and began to wonder what it all meant.
I felt the darkness and heaviness of the black circle, the tension of the clenched holding hands and the lifting of the dove.
This card is called The Vow
Its Roman numeral is LIV …. Live
I read on, opening my heart to listen to what appeared to be fearful, and received the blessing of wisdom’s revelation – actually, I got excited.
And so, this article was birthed.
The instructions in the reading were to learn the five yamas. I am not a yogi, so I had no idea what they were. But the number five resonated with the five of the precepts we learn and teach in Reiki practice. And that is exactly what the yamas are. They are moral guidelines for living a spiritually alive life.
The Precepts are the same tool in Reiki practice. I have just been teaching them as the guidelines for mental and spiritual focus to a student and love the gentleness of the concept of a guideline as opposed to a commandment. My students always lighten as they grasp the concept of guidance rather than forced direction with impossible to achieve standards. The precepts become something they can stand on, rest on, build on, as they move forward in their practice.
Today I recognized the immense and undisclosed power held within their practice.
These five simple precepts are vows. They are intentions. They are contracts with the universe and all of nature. The ancestors and the heavens bear witness to our intentions. The earth hears our whispers and records them in creation. The precepts are power-filled vows we offer to the universe and the universe responds to support us in manifesting their qualities in our lives. What makes Reiki practice so vital – and any other spiritual practice – is that it brings intentions and vows into mindful awareness.
My latest student echoed this as she was introduced to them by stating that just focusing her awareness on the precepts was an important aide for her practice of them. This awareness enlivens the precepts within us and within our lives. They become not only guidelines but the measure by which we calibrate ourselves – honing the work and reaching for a deeper and truer expression, a finer rendition of our lives as shaped by their instrumentation. Living the precepts is a delicate expression of becoming, of living in an evolving state of being. They are an expressed intention that is a life vow, bringing all the forces of nature and spirit into play as we honor our word and set our course to live by their light.
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