Teaching a level two student the subtlety of non-present Reiki is a deep walk into metaphysical spirituality. In Western teaching we get around this by creating a sense of distance. We teach students that Symbol 3 is like using the telephone to dial across distances. We use teddy bears to focus students and teach them how to bring a non-present being into presence symbolically. None of this is bad, it is an outer look at some very difficult concepts for westerners.
The essence of non-present Reiki is especially challenging to deal with in our western mind-oriented approach to tactile, physical life. We do not have the built-in, generational understanding of time, energy space, and spirit found in many other cultures. Ours is a culture of one life to live and it is lived here – on the physical plane of our understanding and experience. We must find physically understandable ways to speak, teach and envision what is happening in non-present Reiki. The phone works.
If you are ready to go a bit deeper, let’s dive in.
Reiki, after all, is translated as “Spiritual Energy” so the first hurdle is that we are not dealing with the physical. While learning to practice Reiki we become more open to experiencing that which is non-physical, through the physical. We “channel” energy. What we are taught is to recognize that we are always channeling energy because we are energy.
Shifting this state of mind and being is essential in Reiki practice. Learning Reiki practice is the process of becoming sensitive to the flow of energy that has always been all around us. We learn and access the wonderful gifts that this flow of energy brings to us in living physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually on the planet. It’s an awesome journey of discovery, healing, and delight.
Who knew we had such capacities? We are certainly not taught anything about these growing up except maybe to fear them for their differentness. I compare it to teaching a very young child not to go near the stove for fear of burning. Later, when their capacity to understand increases, we teach that same child to cook.
So how does cooking lead us to non-present Reiki? As we become more familiar with ourselves and nature as an expression of spiritual energy, we begin to let go of the need for physical understanding and reference points as a means of verification and support for our practice.
In level two training in the Eastern Tradition, we begin to consider the world of non-duality and oneness.
These are foreign concepts to our westernized minds. We swim awkwardly around them trying to view them from a point of view that makes sense. We have no reference points of familiarity upon which to pin our understanding and so we struggle like beginner swimmers who need swimmies to stay afloat – teddy bears and telephones…
When we let go of using the mind to understand, we begin to experience the oneness of Reiki practice. The non-duality of underlying spirituality in everything. Frans Stiene says that we learn non-duality through duality – this concept took me a long time to understand.
As we bring opposites together, focusing on and tending to them, non-duality, oneness is seen, experienced, understood. Dark and Light, Good and Evil, Hot and Cold. In every duality, you cannot have one without the other, otherwise there is no reference point. In non-duality, one is the other – they are inseparably energetically one, otherwise you cannot have the two. In the physical world this energy appears as opposites, two sides of itself.
Everything is energy.
Energy moves from form to formless all the time. Our thoughts and emotions are energy without form. They come and go. Within our bodies particles are traveling at such speeds that they go in and out of the state of matter. We are in such transition that the body remakes itself every 7 years. We don’t have the physical capacity to perceive this constant motion, speed, and transformation.
Let this lie like a gentle light behind your everyday living. Let it be a light of understanding that helps you see things from a changing perspective – slowly. NO rush.
Now when I tell you that you are a body and you are bodyless, does your mind rebel or does it say, oh? Maybe so…..
Working with non-present Reiki is stepping off the dock of physicality and knowing yourself to be part of the incredible energy in constant motion throughout the universe.
While you are anchored here through grounding practices so that you come home to your physical state, understanding and experiencing the energy of Symbol 3, one of the translations of which is “right consciousness”, allows us to experience the non-duality of true nature through consciousness of it. Working in this spiritual realm there is no time, distance, or separation. This is the work of non-present Reiki – your own true nature and ability to be non-bodied presence, intention, love, and energy in the flow of universal love and energy flowing constantly around in and through all. When we bring our intention into this spiritual flow, and because we are at the same time embodied beings, we are able to work in deeply healing ways within this earthly realm of existence, healing soul journeys, restoring spiritual energy and life, finding answers to inner questions and enhancing the life of the entire planet.
Not all experience the gentle pull of spirit-love-universe-god-goddess toward this work so do not fret if this does not appeal to your soul. Live the best life your heart calls you to! But understand that non-present Reiki practice is the conscious activation of your unbodied state in your bodied state, empowering you to move through physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels in the non-duality of Spiritual Energy, bearing healing light with intention and love.
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