WE’VE BEEN TAUGHT to connect with different aspects of Reiki by using certain symbols and/or kotodama; but what about our energetic condition at the time of doing this? How can we knowingly put ourselves in an optimal vibratory state for maximizing the effectiveness of Reiki?
Obviously, it’s best to be still and calm and somehow meditative….but can we be more specific than that? Can we adjust our vibratory frequency to an optimal range?
The study of brain waves (as measured by electroencephalograph) has led scientists to define 5 particular ranges of brain activity, each one associated with characteristic behaviors or effects, as follows:*
* Delta (approx. 0.5-4 cycles per second): the predominant realm of human brain activity from birth to age 2; after that time, Delta is the state of deep, dreamless sleep, in which the concept of individual/ego dissolves completely — and so do awareness and memory; Delta can also be used for deep, hypnotic programming.
* Theta (approx. 4-8 cycles per second): this is where we spend most of our time from age 2 to 6; the realm where we access intuition, instant healing, accelerated learning, and the feeling of Oneness-with-All; the shamanic state (it’s no accident that shamanic drumming is done at frequencies of 4-7 beats per second!); Theta is also used in hypnotherapy.
* Alpha (approx. 8-12 cycles per second): we move primarily into this realm from age 6 to 12; it’s a relaxed, meditative state, the awareness of “self” and consciousness.
* Beta (approx. 12-35 cycles per second): we begin to show sustained periods at this frequency around age 12; it’s the realm of the highly focused, individual ego, where most adults spend most of their time.
* Gamma (above 35 cycles per second): the realm of “peak performance”; the state of consciousness that some people have referred to as “the zone.”
* My descriptions of these are compiled from various web sources and The Biology of Belief, a book (which I greatly recommend) by Dr. Bruce Lipton. Dr. Lipton credits his descriptions of these brain states to Dr. Rima Laibow, in Introduction to Quantitative EEG and Neurofeedback, by James R. Evans and Andrew Abarbanel.
IT’S OBVIOUS that a vibrational frequency in the Theta range is by far the best for doing Reiki. I feel (via muscle-testing) the Reiki itself puts us naturally in Theta vibration — and have also found that putting myself intentionally in Theta vibration helps me transmit Reiki and seems to make the Reiki more effective!
How to Achieve Theta
I discovered this quite by “accident” one night, years ago — when I was not even aware of the different brain-wave states. I had agreed to do distant Reiki with someone (my Reiki Master!) late at night….and had fallen asleep before the appointed time. I awoke in the middle of the night — not even knowing what time it was — remembering that I had to do the Reiki!
I sat up in bed, barely awake, and attempted to do it. I could not even get my eyes fully open; the lids were nearly closed, in fact. I could not even hold a mental focus for more than a minute or so. I tried a few times, and then simply mustered as much intent as I could, that Reiki be received by my teacher at the time we had agreed on. Then I lay back down in the bed and was immediately asleep.
My Reiki Master called on the phone the next day, to tell me in detail of the most wonderful Reiki she had received through me; it had been a spectacularly transforming experience for her! I was quite surprised, to say the least — and too cowardly to tell her how things had gone at my end. But it was a great lesson for me — one of the most important to date — about doing Reiki. It taught me, first of all, that intent is more effective than procedure; and that I did my best Reiki when I was half-asleep!
What had struck me most about my experience that night was my deep state of drowsiness, and the nearly-closed position of my eyes. I kept feeling there was something important in that. So I began, when doing Reiki after that time, holding my eyes intentionally in that position. I would let them close, almost-but-not-quite all the way, and I would un-focus the vision — and I noticed an immediately enhanced flow of Reiki!
Simply letting the eyes drop almost-but-not-quite closed put me immediately in a deeply meditative state. There was a slight feeling of drowsiness, but it was easy to stay right on the edge of it, on the border between consciousness and unconsciousness. I’ve been doing Reiki this way ever since, and have only recently encountered the scientific data that confirms why it works so well!
There’s great and amazing information, on the web, regarding Theta brain-waves and their effectiveness in instantaneous healing, accelerated learning, deliberate creation, and the relationship of DNA to all this.
Don Beckett is a practitioner and teacher of Usui Reiki on the island of Hawai’i. His comprehensive e-book, An Exploration of Usui Reiki and Beyond, can be downloaded at
http://new-reiki-books.johreiki.net/.
There seems to be a lot of controversy and confusion about the Reiki symbols. For a long time, they were kept secret from everyone not initiated to the second level of Reiki. For decades, Reiki teachers (following in the footsteps of Hawayo Takata) did not allow even their students to keep written copies of the symbols! This led to many changes in the symbols over time, from people not remembering them precisely; the imprecision was passed from generation to generation of students, and compounded by each generation of teachers.
Compounding things even further, Usui Reiki began to mutate into other varieties. New flavors of Reiki were born, seemingly as fast as flavors of ice cream — and, building on what they thought was the original model, the inventors of these new varieties added even more symbols.
At some point, a certain Reiki teacher blew the lid off the secrecy issue, by publishing a book that exposed the Reiki symbols (many variations of them) for all to see! That, in itself, created plenty of controversy. The Reiki world polarized, into those who applauded the exposure, and those who thought it was sacrilege.
WHAT NO ONE (outside a small number of people in Japan) knew at that time was that the Reiki symbols were not essential, or even necessary, in the first place! And that they were not even introduced into the practice of Reiki, by Mikao Usui, until very near the end of his life.
Now, thanks mostly to a group of people in Japan, who learned Reiki in the early 1900s from Usui himself, we know how the symbols came to be used in a way that Mikao Usui had never used them, and how they came to be regarded with such mistaken importance.
The final 3 students that Usui taught were quite different than the others. They were military officers, not accustomed to using Buddhist meditations or Shinto kotodama (as were his other students) — and so he gave them symbols instead. The symbols were to help these 3 students connect with particular energetic aspects. The symbols were NOT used by Usui in his Reiju empowerment procedure.
As it happened, at least one of these final students, Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, did not learn the Reiju procedure from Usui (who passed away before Hayashi was ready for it). It seems he learned it later from another of Usui’s students — but then, in his own practice of Reiki, he replaced Reiju with an empowerment ritual of his own.
Dr. Hayashi became, for whatever reason (and contrary to Mikao Usui’s intentions), the self-proclaimed standard-bearer of Reiki, after Usui’s passing. And the other 2 final students — Jusaburo Ushida (a.k.a. Gyuda) and Kan’ichi Taketomi — became, respectively, the first and second Presidents of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (”Usui Reiki Healing Method Society”). Thus, the Reiki symbols were given an importance and a function they had not had for Mikao Usui.
Years later yet, a Japanese-American named Hawayo Takata would become Hayashi’s most famous student. She would take the role of standard-bearer after Hayashi’s passing — and she would pass on his method of giving Reiki empowerment (which came to be called “attunement”), featuring the implanting of those famous Reiki symbols into the student’s energy field! Through Takata and her lineage, this “attunement” procedure of Reiki empowerment has been the standard, worldwide, since the 1970s. Many variations have been born, and yet the central element of almost all seems to remain the implantation of the Reiki symbols.
When I learned the Reiju procedure, I liked it so much better than the “attunements” I had learned, I’ve been using Reiju ever since. Taggart King (from whom I learned Reiju) has experimented with Reiju vis-a-vis “attunements” (involving symbols), and has reported that students receiving Reiju seem generally to have greater awareness of the energy than students receiving “attunements”.
RECENTLY, ALL THIS was brought to mind when I received a Kundalini initiation. The giver of the initiation asked if I would like to have the Reiki symbols removed from my energy field. Her feeling was that the symbols often become obstacles to spiritual growth. On giving it some thought, and knowing that the symbols were not necessary (they were put there during attunements I received), I couldn’t see any reason to keep them. I had them removed.
This brought up other questions. Was it true that the presence of Reiki symbols in the aura could impede one’s spiritual growth? Was it necessary for people to have them removed? My intuition, confirmed by muscle-testing, said No — that the symbols were only symbols, and what mattered was our attitude toward them. If we viewed them as “training wheels” on a bicycle (as the Usui Gakkai recommends), and if we let go of them once they had served their purpose, they would not cause a problem. They would be no more than artifacts of our journey (as they were intended to be in the first place); at the very worst, no more than “space junk” in the aura, like spent rocket casings orbiting the moon.
Of course, had the simple elegance of Usui Reiju merely been retained, instead of replaced by more complicated “attunement” procedures (based on the implanting of symbols), this “space junk” would not even be there for us to contemplate; and, had the Reiki symbols not been imbued with a mistaken sense of power and magic and secrecy, they would be much easier for people to let go. In fact, had Hawayo Takata found her way to another one of Usui’s students than Dr. Hayashi, the world at large would not even have learned of Reiki symbols!
THE MORAL of the story, then: Reiki symbols were intended only to be “fingers pointing at the moon” (and the sun, and the earth : ^ ). Let’s not mistake the finger for what it’s pointing at! Reiki symbols are not Reiki. It’s much better to get beyond the symbols, to the Source.
Don Beckett is a practitioner and teacher of Usui Reiki on the island of Hawai’i. His comprehensive e-book, An Exploration of Usui Reiki and Beyond, can be downloaded at
http://new-reiki-books.johreiki.net/.
