Reiki

I can't believe a week has passed since my last entry on the blog... I signed up for a course on the first level of Reiki. Reiki is bioenergotherapy or treatment with energy. It was given by Elif who is a Reiki master. She is Turkish but has lived in Kathmandu for many years and has been practicing Reiki since she first got here. I really liked the course, everything about it. I like the place (Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center), the fellow students (four of us), the atmosphere and the training itself. I like the fact that I can really feel the energy coming out of my hands, and when I am "scanning", or having my hands above the person, I can feel where the energy is and is not in the person. Ocasionally I feel tingling in my fingers or even a low electrical shock. It's really amazing. First Elif tought us the philosophy and "tuned" us to give energy and then we practiced on ourselves. Two of us got very relaxed, peaceful and well-rested. Two of us, including me, had a really bad belly ache and didn't feel good for the first three days of treatment but on the fourth day the energy came and I personally woke up ready to climb Mt. Everest. So I like how the reiki works for me and seems to be working for people to whom I gave Reiki but what I like most about this type of treatment is the philosophy behind it: although the person can feel the energy he or she receives, it is himself or herself who is really doing the treatment by absorbing the energy. If a person is not ready to receive it and resists it, there may not be effects. Elif said that the healer is really just a vassel; the true healer is oneself. There's no one really who can heal us except ourselves. When I first got to the office of Susan, my Chinese doctor in New York, in June of last year she asked me "Are you ready for the treatment?" (Are you ready to take part in your healing? Without your participation I won't be able to do anything.) Elif told us how, from the perspective of Reiki healing, the sickness is seen. I have heard this philosophy many years ago during the psychology class in college and I read about it in many books afterwards but I understood it fully when I got to Susan's office: like many things illness is a work of our subconscious mind. I developed my own sickness, unconsiously. When we feel inadequate, worthless, unloved, insignificant, we look, or rather our subconsious mind looks, for something to make people love and accept us. We may think we want to be cured but really it just feels so good to be so weak and hopeless that people have to take care of us, we poor little things. We don't even really try hard to be healthy again. We may go to see a doctor, take the medicine he proscribes, but then we still do things that we know are ruining our health. I was thinking about this this morning and since I like metaphores I liked this one: at a certain point after we come to this life we start feeling there's too much to think about, remember about, figure out about. It seems impossible to grasp all the daily life "stuff." We put an add in the paper: "Wanted. Subconsious specialist to take care of stuff. " He answers our ad. We are too busy and too hectic to check his references. We hire him. We give him an empty, vast and beautiful, bright room in our house (our body). He moves in, covers the windows with curtains, closes the door and unpacks all the equipment and switchboard to deal with our stuff. He puts a sign above the door "Subconsious." We sometimes visit the room and check on him but gradully we stop checking, we stop going over the accounting papers and his business plans. He is left alone. He gets bored sometimes... And he starts playing with the switchboard to make his life more fun. Instead of "food" when the stomach says it's hungry he pushes "food", "food", "food" whenever he feels like it. Brain says it's sad, the guy pushes "angry." We feel happy, he pushes "not worthy enough, get over it." We are curious about something and want to try it, he pushes "fear." He is out of control, he loves this game he is playing with us. He is rolling with laughter when we feel one thing but do other thing - just as he tells us to do. We do things which bring exactly adverse outcome of what we hoped for. But sometimes a day comes when something happens (a signal, a meeting, a circumstence) which reminds us about this guy whom we hired long time ago... We storm into his office, look at the switchboard, see the real work he is doing for us, and we fire him on the spot. He leaves and with him he takes his switchboard and all the things he has been collecting all these years: the huge amount of memorabilia from the past: emotions filling big jars and standing in every corner of the room, bottles with never-shed tears, boxes of anger stuck under his bed, photos of all the people who hurt us, abandoned us, abused us... All that he takes with him. The room is again a vast open space. We open the door, open the windows, let the air come in and for the breeze to take all the dust away. Through the window we see a meadow and out of it many trails of possibilities leading to the horizon... But first we have to undo the damage we have done to our bodies with the help of the subconscious guy. Now we really want to get rid of our sicknesses. We look for whatever is out there: modern medicine, alternative medicine, herbs, therapeutical massage, Reiki, meditation, therapy with laughter, therapy with dance, with art, with scream... We are not just trying it but really want it to work for us. We look around and find something that helps us the most to feel well. So... coming back to Reiki. There's the energy which goes to the person's body and which can trigger the desire to change... Elif told us that in her practice she saw people cured of any type of disease, including cancer. So if I can draw the energy from around me, concentrate it and send it to a person and the person wants to take it and use it, I will be very happy to do it. And then whatever happens next is up to the person.

There are still many things I want to write about today. I will run to the Center and come back later to tell about Tibetan medicine, the Monkey Temple, the streets of Kathmandu and the friends I met over the past few days.