Healing ourselves means to make whole, and this doesn’t always mean fixing a physical issue. Wholeness is a state of mind, a mind in which we feel happy, content, at peace, and full of compassion and insights.
For example, let’s look at the precepts:
Do not anger
Do not worry
Be grateful
Be true to your way and your being
Show compassion to yourself and others
We can just say them 3 times once a day, which is wonderful. Or we can sit down in meditation and meditate upon the precepts. By meditating on the precepts we start to gain a direct insight into why we get angry, why we get worried, why we do not feel grateful even if we have so many things in our lives, why we find it hard to be true to our way and our being, and why we find it difficult to be compassionate to ourselves and others.
But sitting down in meditation takes up more time than just saying the precepts 3 times, and this is why it is not often taught in a class as a form of healing ourselves.
However, as the precepts are the foundation of the system of Reiki, meditating on the precepts is a very important element of Mikao Usui’s teachings as a means for healing ourselves.
What starts to happen when we gain a direct insight into our anger and worry? We start to see why we get angry and worried in the first place. And by seeing this we can take action to soften our anger and worry. If we do not see that we get angry or worried in the first place, if we are blind to our own anger and worry, then we can not do anything about it at all. Thus a direct insight into our anger and worry helps us to soften the grip on our anger and worry. Instead of clinging tightly to it, we can feel the anger or worry, acknowledge it, and then let it go.
By softening our grip on anger and worry, we start to feel more grateful, and this will move into being more true to our way and our being. By taking that a step further, we also will now become more compassionate to ourselves and others.
Thus we can see that meditating on the precepts is a method for healing ourselves. This in turn will help us to create a more compassionate mind/heart, therefore allowing us to be more compassionate to the world around us. The precepts are directly about healing ourselves, which indirectly has a healing affect on the world around us.
If we look at each practice within Mikao Usui’s teachings in this way, we can start to see that meditating on the symbols and mantras is about healing ourselves, that practicing the meditation practices like Joshin Kokyu Ho is about healing ourselves, that the reiju/initiation/attunement is about healing ourselves, and that hands-on healing on ourselves and others is about healing ourselves. But remember, healing ourselves is not just physical healing. Real healing – wholeness – is a state of mind/heart in which we have found inner peace, a state of mind/heart which is filled with compassion and insight.
Based in Holland, Frans Stiene teaches in North America, Europe, UK, Australia and Asia.
Frans is also the author of Reiki Insights, it is the continuation of his previous book The Inner Heart of Reiki, taking your personal practice and understanding of the system of Reiki yet another step deeper.