My Reiki Journey with Frans Stiene Part 4 – Frans’ Shinpiden Class in Philadelphia in July 2010

(read Part 1, Part 2  & Part 3 of Sundar’s journey)

From October 2007 through July 2010, I’ve had the privilege of being guided by Frans in my Reiki practice as it flowered, merged with, and became one and the same as my personal spiritual path. I looked over all the email exchanges and Skype chats with Frans over these many months, and I was shocked to find that I’ve bombarded Frans with dozens of emails. And these emails are no ordinary emails, they are each these massive, 1000+ word bombs (kind of like these posts I’m writing now), each laden with big questions. I’m shocked to see that Frans had replied to every single one of them, and often within 24 hours! This is crazy. For a person with hundreds, if not thousands of students, it is completely crazy to be able to keep up with all their questions and give them high quality, thoughtful answers. And do so, and still have time for teaching new students, doing healing work, and have a life in general! I wouldn’t be able to do it. I know few teachers who would do it.

But this is Frans’ way! Always listening, always accessible, always ready to help his students. To quote a response from Frans in a private email exchange with me when I thanked him profusely for his ongoing support:

It is always great to have a sounding board as we experience so many things when we are on the path. I have some great teachers myself who are always open and these have been great examples for me.

This is not your typical teacher of any kind of subject including Reiki. This is the mindset of a traditional spiritual teacher. How old fashioned! And how lucky we are to have one of these unique specimens in our midst in these modern times, to guide us!

Through emails, text chats, and video chats, Frans steadily monitored my progress on the path, and guided me through deeper and deeper aspects of this amazing practice we know as Reiki. My own progress has not been smooth. Rather, it seems that my way of experiencing this is, first as a huge leap in insight, understanding and energy shifts, followed by weeks and months of horrible pain in watching the body and mind and feelings struggle to catch up to that level and harmonize with it. It would take me many more 1000+ words to share the specifics of this, but suffice it to say for the purposes of what I’m sharing – if it were not for Frans’ continuous presence and guidance, I’d have quit the practice back in March of 2008 when I was in the midst of a veritable s&*t storm which I am sure was the after effects of the leaps I experienced earlier on the path. On countless occasions, Frans has held my hands, so to say, and led me from what seemed like an impossible place to get out of, to the light again! Again, this is the hallmark of a real spiritual teacher, in my personal opinion.

After trying to catch up with him in 2008, and 2009 and not succeeding in making a visit to the East or West coasts to meet him, I finally got a chance to see Frans again in summer of 2010. My Reiki teacher friend Joe Moon was organizing a Shinpiden workshop with Frans in Philadelphia. I signed up to re-sit this class. The main reason was to just go catch up with Frans in person after many months of electronic communications. I was simply not ready for what followed.

To do justice to relay what I experienced in this class, I turn to an email note I sent to a Reiki teacher friend, Zeynep Yilmaz, right after the class:

His teachings have gone even simpler, if that is even possible! And they’ve become more profound in the process.

He has changed many small things and some big things that made resitting in the class a fantastic experience.

Frans has gone so much deeper in his own practice. For my part, I’ve gone some steps deeper as well, and was ready for moving even deeper. The combination was simply explosive.

I had a hands-on healing session with him, and that was mind-blowing. Beyond what I experienced myself, what he experienced in the healing session was even more mind boggling.

Then there were the experiences during the meditation and attunements, which were so strong that they surprised me deeply (mainly because I didn’t expect such powerful effects from attunements/Reiju). After one of these Reiju / attunements,I was burning up so much that the person sitting next to me had to bring ice cubes to douse the burning, and believe it or not, it took nearly an hour with ice to cool down!

I understood just how shallow my Reiki practice has been, and how to make it go much, much deeper.

One of the last things we did was a practice of Reiju with another student – this was so much deeper, so much more powerful than I’ve ever experienced, since it was prefixed around the notion of literally being the light. The student I performed Reiju on felt burned on her right shoulder from the massive heat blasts that came from me, and physically sweating from the Reiju’s heat. And I wasn’t “doing” anything so to say. And if that was strange / crazy, it wasn’t half as weird as what she saw and picked up inside me, which mysteriously corroborated with what Frans found in me independently during the healing session (no way both could have known the same thing). 

One person in class used a word to sum up Frans: “integrity”. Here’s a person who practices first what he teaches – Reiki as a spiritual path. And the deeper he has gone, the simpler and more profound his teaching has become. And he is going deeper still each day.

One last thing I re-realized – Frans is deadly funny 🙂 He is just plain crazy, weird, funny! For me, where I stand, the weird things he does, the sheer antics he initiates, the use of ‘s&^#’ and ‘f#$@’ sort of words in the midst of profound teachings is just simply unbelievably awesome. Spirituality as fun. Not spirituality as a boring/serious affair. Something I really should learn to emulate.

I now know why I was feeling that pull to go see him again 🙂

I’ve toned down the specifics of my experience because it is too personal and too profound to relay in a public forum – or at least I don’t feel I’m ready to do that yet. But these words do give you a glimpse about the deep nature of my experience.

And there’s even more in this journey with Frans so far. Coming in Part 5.