Feb 2003

Crawling our way through the rainy season, the last thing needed is more depressing news. A friend of mine, Josh Parce, pays his bills bussing tables at a restaurant in town. Fed up with the crap that was being served his way, in a moment of frustration and anger, he shook his fist and cursed the gods. “What else?” he asked menacingly in the middle of work. It was kind of funny, but a little scary at the same time because I could tell he was really, really pissed off. That night, he fell off his skateboard and got a hairline fracture, which began a series of undesirable circumstances. When it all ended, Josh recollected that cursing and provoking the gods began the whole thing. Never again, even jokingly, he said, would he tempt fate like that.

This leads a thinking mind to believe if one can curse and challenge the gods and get messed up in the process, the inverse must be true: there must be words or deeds that can be said or done to bring unstoppable joy and fulfilment into a life. Who can guess why chaos is easier to bring into a life than harmony? None of us need more helpful hints on how to screw up. So the friendly folks at The Seattle Sinner offer you, our cherished reader, some good food for thought. Any object, especially a crystal, held suspended by a chain, over your palm, will rotate clockwise as if by magic. Try it now, take off a necklace and the charm will spin counterclockwise over your index finger and alternately clockwise over your middle finger.

This is a matter of fact, phenomena like the rate of gravity or Newton’s laws of physics or anything else learned in earth science class. Yet, neither I, nor anyone I know, was ever taught or shown this in a school. Why does an object spin every time in one direction over one finger and in another direction over another, without any physical contact? There is invisible energy coming out of your hand that spins stuff. A Japanese man in the mid 1800’s, Dr. Mikeo Usui, traveled the world for years to discover the hands on healing technique used by Jesus and talked about a great deal in a popular book about his life. However, after a Doctorate of Theology from the University of Chicago and after combing ancient Sanskrit texts for mention of his specific technique, Dr. Usui returned to Japan with no greater knowledge of what Jesus did than before he left. What is a Japanese monk to do? Meditate, of course.

Dr. Usui sat, where else, on a mountaintop, Mount Kuri Yama. He piled twenty-one stones, tossing one over a cliff to mark each passing day. On his final day, he received a vision and the wisdom to channel the energy of the universe through his hands thus healing and harmonizing the recipient of the energy. He called this technique Reiki, which means something like ‘universal life energy.’ Dr. Usui dedicated the rest of his life to healing anyone who asked for his help. Reiki made its way to America by way of a Hawaiian pineapple worker.

A Japanese monk rediscovers and popularizes a healing technique like that of Jesus of Nazareth? It sounds like some media attention-getting plot by some fanatic fundamentalists. I had to try it. If this energy had been discovered at The Mayo Clinic or Fred Hutchinson, every pre-med student in America would be trained in its ways. If Freud had been revealed the power of this natural energy, Reiki would be the psychologist’s greatest tool. However, because of the West’s mistrust of the East’s secrets and mysteries, Reiki remains a branch of ‘new age’ teachings on the bookshelf above UFO sightings. Reiki is a gift from the creator of the universe available to us all. The gift of channeling this universal life energy can only be bestowed upon a person from another Reiki Master, following an unbroken chain from every Reiki Master alive today directly to that Japanese man, Dr. Usui.
I lay, eyes closed, fully clothed on a massage table. Kate, the Reiki Master, places her hands on my head. Her hands are hot, I can tell. I can feel that they are a temperature above normal. It is hard to describe the sensations that follow. I think she is moving her hands according to chakras, but I do not know anything about that sort of thing. I was open minded, for sure, but not expecting much. Either way, she moves her hands over my forehead, chest, abdomen, and legs. Most people, she tells me as we begin the session, experience powerful emotions that have been previously blocked. Some people have gotten very angry and left the session, others have cried. I on the other hand, got very giggly. Taking extraordinarily deep breaths, especially for a smoker, I began to laugh and laugh.

Kate says it seems as if a spirit is tickling me. That sends me over the edge and I am laughing like I am six and my baby-sitter is unmercifully tickling me. Kate actually had to stop for a while to let me calm down. She finished what she does by dancing her hands around my body from head to toe. With my eyes closed and without being touched, I still knew what her hands were doing. I could hear them jingling like bells closing the healing session. When it was over I felt rejuvenated, whole, refreshed, focused, a greater high than any drug has ever offered me.

Reiki is unique in many ways. Like water finding the shortest path down hill, Reiki always knows where and what to heal, whether anyone else does or not. Reiki can never do harm and always works every time. It is a natural phenomenon that does not rely on a belief system anymore than gravity does. If you feel that something has got to give in your life before something major snaps, there is no better time to try something new that always works.