by Michael Abedin

There are a lot of metaphors for spiritual quests – a path, a doorway to enlightenment, a corridor filled with sparkling lights or raging demons.  The old spiritual standby, though, is the Journey Up the Mountain.
Around a hundred years ago or so, a man named Mikao Usui made such a journey, and returned with the keys to a system of hands-on healing – one we now call Reiki.  (Pronounced “Ray-key”.)
This was the culmination of a seventeen-year search prompted by a question supposedly asked of Usui in a Bible History class he was teaching at an American university, although he was Japanese by birth.  Some writers dispute the story of that search, but, like other stories of great spiritual leaders – the teachings of the Buddha, the life of Elvis –it’s almost impossible to prove or disprove.
 
Think he’ll be back soon, or should we give him a few more months?
Seems some students asked Usui if he believed what he was teaching from the Bible was true.  Of course, he replied.  “Then,” they asked, “could you demonstrate one little miracle for us, like Jesus did?  Raise the dead, or heal someone with a touch?”
“Hold that thought,” was his reply, more or less, and he set out to find an answer.  He discovered that Christianity had lost touch with that part of its teachings, so he read the Buddhist sutras and found that the Buddha was also said to heal people, but no one remembered how. 
Just to be sure, he learned a couple of languages – ancient Chinese and Sanskrit – and reread the sutras.  Twice.  The original Sanskrit showed symbols with reputed healing power, but no clear instruction on how to use them.  Seventeen years had passed.
Disheartened, Usui retired to a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, where the abbot sent him on his journey up the sacred Mount Furiyama to fast, pray, and meditate.  Like a Samurai throwing away his scabbard as he went into battle, he gave some boys at the monastery a few coins and told them to come get his body on the twenty-second day if he hadn’t returned.
Since it’s tough to keep track of time when you don’t eat for three weeks, Usui lined up twenty-one stones and tossed one away each day.  Just before the dawn of the twenty-second day (the darkest hour, of course), he tossed the last stone, ready to admit failure.  Dark clouds suddenly rolled up and intense bursts of lightning landed all around him. 
The moment of truth had arrived, after seventeen years – and, like many of us do when we finally get what we ask for, he got scared and ran away.  He realized this was his answer, though, and the universe would protect him.  He turned and calmly faced the clouds, and was immedaitely knocked on his butt by a bolt of lightning and thought he was dead.
Luminescent colored bubbles of light floated out of the clouds, containing the symbols he’d seen and instructions for using them.  “These are the keys to healing,” a voice told him.  “See that they are not lost.”
On the trip down the mountain, he saw the boys coming to fetch his body.  He also stubbed his toe and stopped the bleeding with a touch, cured a toothache, ate a hearty Japanese breakfast at an inn, healed a case of arthritis, and realized he was on to something.  He went to live with the beggars in the slums, healing them for free.
Eventually, though, he realized the people he was healing and sending back into society were returning with the same problems and begging again – because, as one guy explained, it was easier than working. In a flash of insight, Usui realized he was giving away something that people would value more if there were an equal exchange of energy – money, service, or some other form. 
He threw off his beggar’s robes and began giving Reiki treatments and attunements to those willing to offer that exchange.  Down through the years, the art of Reiki healing was passed on from one Reiki Master to the next, up to the current day.
How is it passed on?  Reiki means “Universal life force” in Japanese, the energy that’s said to animate all living beings, the stuff that quantum physics tells us is vibrating in everything at a subatomic level.  A Reiki practitioner becomes an antenna of sorts for a specific frequency of that energy, one that’s said to have the potential to heal on all levels – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. 
That energy has the potential to be transmitted to a clothed recipient simply by lightly placing the hands on them in a prescribed order (avoiding contact with breasts and genitals).  The recipient is then said to have the choice of using that energy to heal, harmonize, and balance to the highest level they’re ready – the practitioner doesn’t really “do” anything.
Practitioners get their dials turned to that frequency through an attunement process, a spiritual entrainment of sorts by a Reiki Master – not necessarily someone who’s mastered everything there is to know, but someone who’s operating in the sense of a master tape or document from which accurate copies can be made, or a master key that opens any locks.
 
Keep your socks on – and hang on to that feather.
A lot of new healing systems and energies seem to be arriving these days, although none of them are really new.  (Usui, in fact, is said to have “rediscovered” Reiki.)  Some of them are arriving with the force of that lightning bolt, so powerful in their raw state that they’re knocking people on their butts.
Reiki was – and often still is – taught over a period of time, with intervals set in the 1970’s by the Reiki Alliance between first degree, second degree, and Master levels. Mikao Usui, however, attuned students straight to Master level the same way he was attuned by the bolt of lightning, and independent (non-Alliance) Reiki Masters often take students straight through all three levels to Mastery in two-to-three day intensives using written material, without knocking anybody out of their socks.  (Always a good idea to wear clean ones, though, like your mom told you.  You never know.)
Interestingly, the collective consciousness has risen and Reiki has become so grounded in the last hundred or so years that Reiki Mastery is sometimes a good preparation or precursor for other modalities – and for those delightful energetic downloads that seem to rush in with more frequency these days.
What’s the best healing modality?  Like anything else, it’s largely a matter of taste.  On the highest level, they’re all the same, and are pretty much like the feather the crows gave Dumbo to convince him he could fly – a way of allowing you to remember something you forgot you knew.
 
Austin All Natural publisher and editor Michael Abedin is an eighth-generation independent Reiki Master Teacher of the Usui lineage who studied under Laurie Grant, founder of the ARCH system of healing.  He’s holding a Reiki Master intensive with attunement to all three levels, Nov. 13-15 in Austin.  For information or reservations, (512) 879-7299, or email michaelabedin@yahoo.com.